Casey Anthony found not guilty of murder

Jon Stewart says that american media thrives on sensationalism and lazyiness, if so then Grace is a perfect fit.

Of course for example we have all kinds of serous public issues to address and the media was concern for weeks if a Congressman twitter jpgs of parts of his body or not to willing adult females.

Oh, absolutely. They (juries) sometimes seem to take it that a possible death sentence means the defendent has to be really guilty. A twenty to life sentence maybe means they kind of seem to be guilty.

This isn't funny exactly, but a picture with some piquance -

and now I've learned to seek Getty Images as an interesting source; this photo by Roberto Gonzalez

There is not a question in my mind that Casey will self-destruct in some manner or other within a few years.

I question if she will even last as long as OJ before she will find a way to go over the cliff once more.

It is hardly likely that she will have a long and happy life.

But Arella Mae, Caylee was never "missing"--she was dead.

Reporting her "missing" within 48 hours would still have resulted in a fruitless search for a living child.

Even if you believe the defense's fantasy that the child died of an accidental drowning in the family pool, it was the child's death that Casey failed to report. And, because of that, and because the body was not found for months, a great deal of forensic evidence was lost.

Why name a missing child law after a child who was never "missing"? That's my problem with Caylee's Law--I think it should just pertain to the immediate mandatory reporting of a child's death. That accomplishes the same goal you want to see in terms of preserving forensic evidence.

This was allegedly a death qualified jury--meaning that all those jurors had to be willing to impose the death penalty if that's where the evidence and the law led them. But I'm not so sure that all these jurors were willing to impose the death penalty, in any event, and that might have been one of the problems.

And the trial portion of the case is distinct from the penalty phase. A first degree murder conviction does not mean the death penalty is automatic--she could have been given life in prison without parole if that's what the jurors wanted. Only two women have been executed in Florida since 1972, and both had killed more than one person, and one of them (Aileen Wuornos) was executed for killing seven. So, I don't think there would have been an outcry if Casey Anthony had received a life sentence since many people generally oppose the death penalty.

And I really think the jury disregarded, or failed to properly understand, the forensic evidence in this case that indicated a homicide by asphyxiation using duct tape as the weapon (duct tape of the same type found in the Anthony home), in addition to the possible use of chloroform to first sedate the child, with the presence of chloroform found in the trunk of the car that only Casey Anthony used, and the odor of decomposition also found in that trunk, and evidence that the body had been in that swamp, decomposing, for months and had not recently been placed there.

The homicide might have been accidental. Maybe Casey had regularly used chloroform to sedate Caylee so she could leave the passed-out child in her car trunk so she could be free to socialize, and, maybe this time the chloroform was fatal and the duct tape was placed by Casey to make it look like someone else had killed the child , or, because of Cindy Anthony's threat to gain custody of Caylee, maybe Casey vindictively, and impulsively, covered the child's nose and mouth with the duct tape and fully realized what she had done 5 minutes later when the child was no longer breathing. I don't know that she methodically plotted the child's death, but I do believe she killed her child, possibly as an act of aggravated child abuse, which could also be considered felony murder under Florida law. While that would be first degree murder, it is not necessarily a crime that requires the death penalty. A verdict of guilty on just aggravated child abuse, without a guity verdict on felony murder, would not have involved either the death penalty or life in prison.

I just listened to two alternate jurors in this case--neither felt the evidence indicated a homicide because there was no murder weapon (duh?), no DNA, no blood (duh?), no chloroform found in the home, and one of these alternate jurors fully bought the defense story that this was a "dysfunctional family", so he felt they all might have been involved, and that George Anthony's "confrontational" behavior on the witness stand indicated he might have been hiding something. I don't suppose this alternate juror even considered the fact that George Anthony was possibly being falsely accused of sexually molesting his daughter, and of also criminally covering-up the death of his granddaughter, with no way to defend himself from these horrible allegations, other than to simply deny them. Why shouldn't George Anthony have been "confrontational" on the witness stand? He also tried to kill himself over this horribly tragic ordeal. This alternate juror also admitted that, although the things Jose Baez said about the Anthony family, and about George Anthony in particular, had never been proved by any evidence, he still couldn't get these things out of his mind. Similarly, this alternate also bought the possibility of an "accidental drowning", simply because it had been mentioned by Jose Baez and he didn't think Casey had motive to murder her child.

These two alternates certainly sounded like they had been conditioned to expect a level of direct evidence which could never be present in any circumstantial case, even a strong circumstantial case--what prosecutors call the "CSI effect" from the unrealistic depictions of evidence in TV shows. And they didn't separate out the theories that Jose Baez concocted from the actual evidence presented in the trial. They seemed very gullible to me, and all too willing to believe things Jose Baez said, even when these things were backed up by no evidence. They seem to have completely disregarded Casey's own behavior, which indicated no grief on her part about the death of her child (she was seen in a Blockbuster video store with her boyfriend the evening of the day she claimed Caylee drowned in the pool--looking for videos, while her dead child was in a trash bag in the trunk of her car ). But, since Jose Baez said that," People grieve in different ways," jurors bought this crap, and disregarded evidence of a mother who seemed quite happy to be rid of her child, until Cindy Anthony blew the whistle on her daughter's lies by finally calling the police.

If these two alternate jurors, as well as Juror #3, reflect the thinking of the other 11 juors that decided this case, the prosecution's case went right over their heads. Jose Baez offered them simpler alternatives they could grasp--it was an accidental drowning, the prosecution's evidence was "fantasy science", Casey was a slut and a liar but a loving mother and not a murderer, the Anthony's were a dysfunctional family and that's why Casey couldn't report her child's accidental death--she had been conditioned to lie, Casey really was grieving when she got her Bella Vida (Beautiful Life) tattoo two weeks after Caylee died because "people grieve in different ways", ignore the duct tape found on the skull because we don't know how Caylee died and besides, the duct tape is linked to George Anthony and not Casey, ignore the odor of decomposition that was in Casey's car, just think about all the reasonable doubt...and then you won't have to think too hard or too long about all that prosecution evidence in order to reach a verdict. And those jurors don't seem to have thought too long or too hard about all that prosecution evidence that indicated a homicide by a mother who wanted this child out of her life, and out of George and Cindy Anthony's life as well. They wanted Casey Anthony's fingerprints on that duct tape, a photo of her putting the duct tape in place, and an eyewitness who saw her dump the body in the swamp--and, without those things, they could cling to Jose Baez' notion of reasonable doubt and get out of the jury room fast and finally go home.

The only reasonable doubt I can see is reasonable doubt of Casey Anthony's innocence regarding the death of her child.

I think I agree with you about that.

Any sane person problem with such a law would be that it is being put forward to benefit politicians trying to ride a wave of emotions to cover a situation that is almost unheard of and have a good chance of being misused beside.

As far as being misused depending how it is written I can see cases where a child is taken by one parent or some family member and the other parent wish to have more then 24 hours or whatever the time frame they are talking about for reporting to settle the matter inside of the family instead of by law enforcement for example.

Might be nice if we have laws on the books that are useful and needed instead of a law to deal with a once in a lifetime or many lifetimes event of a Casey Anthony.

Now if we had a time machine and could go back to 2006 and pass such a law there might had been a point to it.

Don't you think we should have a law requiring everyone to immediately report the death of a child? Or the death of anyone?

I KNOW she still would have been dead. I guess you misunderstood what I meant. IF the search had started immediately there might have been DIRECT evidence found.

So, why not just have a Caylee's Law that requires the immediate reporting of a child's death?

Why get into "missing children" at all in this particular law? This child was never missing--she was with her mother until her death. That's my point.

Huh? I'm not trying to disagree with you on anything. I was only talking about this one particular instance and what might have happened IF.

Because the nanny state wants to know when kids run away from home, so that the state can find the kids and also investigate the home situation. It is a nice can of worms here, giving the parents the choice between risking a felony charge by staying quiet or inviting the state to invade their family. There is no such thing as private business according to the nanny state. The state could have kept the law to the requirement to report the death of a child, or any person or that matter, but during my lifetime the state has rarely passed up an opportunity to grab more power, the media attention that this case has gotten makes for a perfect opportunity for another go at rubbing out the rights of individuals to defy the state.

You know it hit me that I remember reading reports that child welfare have a problem keeping track of the children in their care in Florida.

It would seem that when you are dealing with older children they tend to do things like leaving foster care for the families they had been removed from or finding other arrangements that they are happier with.

As the care system had been slow to either track down such children or get the police involved I can just see the jails fulling up with social workers and the police being under water with the numbers being reported to them.

Talk about unintended consequences of passing laws on waves of public emotions.

Instead of passing stupid laws the states should get their own house in order when it come to their care of children

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http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91590&page=1



Experts: Losing Foster Kids Is Easy

+By Geraldine Sealey
June 5

The case of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, who was missing from a Florida foster home for more than a year before anyone noticed, has drawn the ire of a shocked public. But perhaps it is more surprising that there aren't more Rilyas out there.

Florida's child-welfare agency failed to see 1,237 children in its custody last month, officials announced this week. In Rilya's case, the state did not notice she was missing for 15 months. Her caseworker stands accused of falsifying monthly visit reports.

"Our job is humanly impossible," Christina Castel, a central Florida child protective investigator told state legislators on Tuesday. "I can't help but think we are being set up to fail." Castel took on 60 cases when she was hired two years ago — the professional standard of the Child Welfare League of America is 17 per caseworker.

Florida foster-care employees also lack cell phones, laptop computers, and access to critical information for their cases, they say.

The Rilya Wilson case has brought the overburdened, beleaguered child-welfare system into national attention. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil-rights activist, called this week for a criminal probe into the girl's disappearance, and Florida politicians holding hearings are looking for scapegoats.

Lawyers, government officials, caseworkers and advocates who devote their lives to child welfare say blame for the system's ills should be spread far and wide, and that even if Florida is a bad case study, its experience is not rare.

"Florida is like much of the rest of the country only more so," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. "What happened in Florida could have happened in almost any system, but if someone described the [Rilya Wilson] story and asked what system it happened in, I would say Florida."

Problems From Washington State to D.C.

For sure, Florida's foster care misery knows company.

Almost 600,000 children are in government care across the country, and even the $15 billion spent annually to protect children from neglect and abuse is not enough to help agencies meet their own legal and professional requirements.

All too often, experts say, caseworkers carry heavy loads that make it possible to lose track of children — or even impossible to keep track of them. The average caseworker's load is 40 to 60 children.

And historic, crippling state budget shortfalls further threaten the child-welfare systems across the country.

In Iowa, nearly $23 million has been slashed from state child-welfare programs even though child-abuse cases have skyrocketed to an all-time high, the Des Moines Register recently reported. At the same time, about 340 state human-services jobs have been cut or left vacant.

In Mississippi, federal officials are keeping tabs on whether money and staffing shortages at the state welfare agency are endangering children and families. Almost half of the state's social worker positions are vacant, leaving less than 200 caseworkers handling 3,000 children.

In Seattle, a newspaper disclosed dozens of instances in which children under the care of child-welfare workers died from abuse or neglect.

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize this year for exposing records of the deaths of 180 of 229 children under the city's care.

Age-Old Debate: Money vs. Resources

Florida's experience not only highlights the worst problems in foster care, but illustrates the difficulties of improving the system.

The state has convened nearly a dozen special panels to study child welfare in the last 15 years, and is still unable to prevent tragedies like Rilya Wilson's. Even a new $230 million computer system designed to keep track of children under state care got a failing grade from half of the caseworkers who used an early version of it.

Is there a solution? As with many public policy issues, the age-old debate focuses on whether to throw more money at the problem or devise better strategies.

While many child-welfare advocates say money would surely help, they agree that it is not enough.

"It's not an either-or; you need increased resources and better ways of doing business," said Mary Lee Allen, director of the child welfare division of the Children's Defense Fund. "If you don't have a vision, pumping dollars into the system won't help children. The question is, How will we better protect children?"

Still, experts say budget cuts can ultimately hurt child safety. All too often, policymakers train their fiscal axes first on programs aimed at prevention, they say. Cutting such programs could be counterproductive since they help keep children out of the foster-care system in the first place, Allen said.

"We believe strongly that when you look at the tragedy in Florida, it is the tragedy about to happen in too many states," Allen said. "If we're going to make a change we'll have to put more resources into the front, prevention end."

Accountability Fights Corruption

Michigan provides a good example of how boosting prevention programs can help keep kids safe, she said. Caseworkers help families to identify what they need to stay safe and together, then the child-welfare agency approves and monitors the plan to keep the family together.

Other positive examples can be found in Illinois, where parents serve as "recovery coaches" to other at-risk parents, and in Arizona and Maryland, where child-protective agencies and alcohol and drug agencies work together. In Massachusetts, domestic violence and child-protective offices make joint efforts.

Alabama and Pittsburgh are also considered national leaders in child welfare for programs that seek to keep families together and cut the use of foster homes.

Increased accountability for caseworkers and their supervisors is one critical reform that does not have to be expensive, said Sarah Hechtman, a lawyer with Children's Rights, an advocacy group involved with litigation over Florida's foster-care system.

Caseworkers are often young and inexperienced, carry high caseloads, and have supervisors with equally high workloads who cannot do an adequate job, she said. Worse, Florida state workers have been accused of hiding files and mishandling cases to cover up for shoddy work. Dishonesty in the system is not rare, Hechtman said — her group is filing lawsuits over corruption issues in New Jersey and Wisconsin.

"It runs rampant throughout the system," Hechtman said. "Unfortunately, doctored records and lying to the court is all too familiar to those of us who work with these systems."

I assure you that if you talk to supporters of this law that you will get told " it would only be in outrageous situations such as the Anthony case that parents would get charged for failure to report a run-away, cases where the child turns up dead" but then you notice that this is not how the law is written. What the state wants is a hammer to use on citizens at its own discretion, as we see with the over charging with the intent to better the states position in the plea bargain negotiations the state prioritizes advancing its own interests over fidelity to fairness.

You can never never trust the government or it agents to used common sense in enforcing laws. You had to assume that the laws will be enforce as written.

Look at the child porn laws that was passed to protect children from harm being used to go after children/young people for sending pictures of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends by way of cell phones cameras.

It gotten to the point in fast order where the laws needed to be change to protect young people from prosecutors labeling them for life as sexual predators or at least threatening to do so.

In the case of this law it will be a very very very rare event for it to be used in the manner it is being sold to the people and would just gather dust however no "useful" law/hammer of that kind will not be used by prosecutors in short order.

Well said.





David

Yes Hawkeye tend to hit the nail on the head more often then not and I will second your comment concerning his posting.

Sorry Hawkeye in not giving you full credit in my reply and agreement posting on this matter.

I had not been talking about reporting the death of a child but of reporting a missing child in short time frame to the police.

Second a law that demand you report a child death that you hold or might hold some legal responsibility for his or her death would likely run into the 5 amendment barrier.

It would be similar to a law that demands that you call the police and report the death of someone you had murder.

And last who in the hell would need such a law to report a child death unless they hold some legal guilt over the matter?