Caylee Anthony, Tragic Accident or Murder in the 1st degree?

[stix]

A Florida jury has cleared a young mother, Casey Anthony, of murdering her two-year-old daughter, rejecting the portrayal of her as "a lying, no-good slut" who would rather go nightclubbing than rear her child.

The jury unanimously found Anthony, 25, not guilty on murder, manslaughter and child abuse charges in a case that has gripped US talk shows and cable news television. But as she cried with relief at the verdicts on the more serious charges, she was convicted of lying to the police after claiming that her daughter, Caylee, had been abducted by a nanny when Anthony was driving around with the body of the child in the boot of her car.

Anthony would have faced a possible death sentence had she been convicted of first degree murder but will serve no more than four years in prison when she is sentenced on Thursday.

The verdict was met with outrage by some outside the court who denounced it as a miscarriage of justice comparable to OJ Simpson's acquittal for murder. But Anthony's lawyers praised the jury for resisting what they portrayed as the "media assassination" of their client since her arrest, particularly by television talkshow hosts and celebrity lawyers who pronounced her guilty before the trial was over.

Prosecutors had alleged that Anthony murdered Caylee because she stood in the way of her party lifestyle and interest in men. They told the jury that she killed her daughter, in part with the use of chloroform, in 2008 and then buried her body in woods near the family home in Orlando several weeks later. Caylee's body was found with three strips of duct tape over her mouth and nose.

Anthony's father, George, told the court his daughter left home in June, 2008 taking Caylee with her and did not return for a month. Anthony's parents asked repeatedly to see the child but their daughter told them she was too busy with work. Anthony also claimed that Caylee was being looked after by a nanny. It was later established that the nanny did not exist.

Anthony maintained that claim until her parents received a notice that their daughter's car had been towed away. When they went to pick it up, George Anthony said that he noticed a strong odour from the boot that he and a worker in the tow yard both told the court smelled like a decomposing body.

Anthony's mother, Cindy, then called the police and reported Caylee missing.

"There is something wrong. I found my daughter's car today and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car," she told the emergency operator.

The prosecution honed in on Anthony's failure to report her daughter missing during those 31 days.

"Responses to grief are as varied as the day is long, but responses to guilt are oh, so predictable," the lead prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, said. "What do guilty people do? They lie. They avoid. They run. They mislead, not just to their family, but the police. They divert attention away from themselves and they act like nothing is wrong. That's why you heard about what happened in those 31 days."

The prosecution relied on controversial scientific evidence including the testing of air taken from the boot of Anthony's car, which the court was told revealed the presence of decomposing human flesh and chloroform. The defence challenged the reliability of the tests.

The judge refused to permit the prosecution to have the jury sniff a can containing an air sample from the car.

Before the case went to the jury, Burdick showed two images of Anthony at a nightclub after Caylee went missing and of a tattoo with the words "beautiful life" in Italian that the prosecution said she obtained after her daughter was already dead.

"At the end of this case, all you have to ask yourself is whose life was better without Caylee?" the prosecutor said. "This is your answer."

But the jury rejected that explanation and accepted the defence's contention that Anthony was guilty of nothing more than being a panic stricken young mother who covered up an accidental death out of fear.

The defence said that Caylee had drowned in the family swimming pool and that her mother then panicked. It claimed that Anthony's father knew about the accident and helped his daughter dispose of the body.

It said that George Anthony, a former police officer, placed the tape over the dead girl's face to make it look like murder in order to cover up the failure to report the death. The man denied his daughter's account.

The defence also claimed that Casey Anthony had been sexually abused by her father and brother and that was a factor in her erratic behaviour

Anthony's lawyer, Jose Baez, said the prosecution had attempted to portray his client as "a lying, no-good slut" who murdered her daughter in order to go nightclubbing when in fact Caylee's death was "an accident that snowballed out of control".

One of the prosecutors, Jeff Ashton, told the jury the defence failed to present any real evidence to back any of its claims and that the allegation that George Anthony staged a murder to cover up a lesser crime made no sense.

"That's absurd. Nothing has been presented to you to make that any less absurd," he said.

But the jury was not persuaded that Anthony killed her daughter either deliberately or by accident.

The prosecution's case appears to have foundered on the lack of a definitive medical assessment of how Caylee died, uncertainty about what role the chloroform was meant to have played and the lack of any scientific evidence tying Anthony to her daughter's death.

Outside the court, the verdict was met with astonishment and anger.

"Where's justice for Caylee?" Janine Gonzalez told the Orlando Sentinel. "Do you mean to tell me that in Florida you can kill your child, toss her on the side of the road and go free? She [Casey Anthony[ better move and move to a faraway place."

Ti McLeod, a neighbour of the Anthony family, said: "The justice system has failed Caylee."

But Joe Adamson, an Orlando businessman, was sceptical about the prosecution's use of forensics.

"I think it is really great that we have science, but we also have common sense," Adamson told the Sentinel. "These guys [jurors[ didn't buy into science fiction."

Prosecutors were clearly stunned by the verdict, saying that they were amazed the jury rejected what they portrayed as a wealth of evidence against Anthony.

Lawson Lamar, the Florida state attorney, said: "We're disappointed in the verdict today because we know the facts and we've put in absolutely every piece of evidence that existed. ... This is a dry-bones case. Very, very difficult to prove. The delay in recovering little Caylee's remains worked to our considerable disadvantage."

Anthony's parents were reported to have gone in to hiding following death threats.

"The family may never know what happened to Caylee Marie Anthony," said Mark Lippman, a lawyer for the parents. "Despite the baseless defence chosen by Casey Anthony, the family believes that the jury made a fair decision based on the evidence presented, the testimony presented, the scientific information presented and the rules that they were given by the Honorable Judge Perry to guide them."

After the verdict, one of Anthony's lawyers, Cheney Mason, condemned the "media assassination" of his client since her arrest, including by other lawyers who appeared on television talkshows to pronounce her guilty before the trial was over.

"Bias and prejudice and incompetent 'talking heads' saying what would be and how to be - I'm disgusted by some of the lawyers that have done this. I can tell you that my colleagues from coast to coast and border to border have condemned this whole process of lawyers getting on television and talking about cases they don't know a damn thing about," he said.

Among those who have been the focus of criticism is Nancy Grace, the presenter of a show on CNN, who has almost doubled her ratings since the trial began with ritual pronouncements that the "tot mom", as she calls Anthony, was guilty.

Grace defended the media in comments on the CNN website.

"I find it interesting that his first reaction was to attack the media like we had something to do with it," she said. "We didn't have anything to do with it; this was all tot mom ... There is no way that this is a verdict that speaks the truth."

But Baez, said: "I think we should all take this as an opportunity to learn and to realise that you cannot convict someone until they've had their day in court."

After first reading this my initial reaction was one of utter disgust at the fact that this woman had blatently gotten away with murdering her own child. However, after reading more about the case and looking deeper i came to the conclusion that yes, she may well of committed this horrendous , selfish crime, but the system is not so much about making sure the guilty are found guilty, as it is about ensuring that if a person is innocent that they are not falsely inprisoned for a crime they did not commit. Whether it is right or wrong is another matter.....

What do you think?

Here is the New York Times version of events.... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/us/06casey.html

And a blog from the Telegraph that somewhat reiterates Jordans comments below.... http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100095620/justice-was-done-casey-anthony-is-not-the-new-o-j-simpson/

Didnt want to clog the thread up even more!!

[Jordan]

The journalist that wrote this article might need to do a little bit of brushing up in American jurisprudence. A defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove that the crime with which the defendant is charged did indeed occur as argued.

That doesn't mean the jurors do not believe that Casey Anthony is a "no-good, lying slut" (I'm sure they do, and in fact Anthony was convicted of a few charges related directly to lying to law enforcement officials). It also doesn't mean that they believe the defense's assertion that Caylee drowned accidentally in a swimming pool, but rather that they didn't have enough evidence that proved without doubt that Caylee was killed as described by the prosecution. I think they all agree that it's far more likely that Caylee was murdered.

Or perhaps the jurors just wanted to spite that blowhard Nancy Grace.

This could be a bad example of groupthink. Even though a lot of evidence was ruined by the delay in finding Caylee's body, there still seemed like more than enough evidence to prove that Casey killed her daughter. But the prosecution stupidly entered some evidence that was challenged, and in a first degree murder trial--especially one in a state where that is a capital crime--the prosecution had better have its shit together.

I can't believe I'm writing a post about this; the whole circus surrounding this trial irritated me to no end.

[MPH]

Looking at all the evidence there is no doubt to me that she killed her daughter.

Legal technicalities and wordings however means a guilty woman goes free. again.

[stix]

I think this is one of the strangest decision I've ever heard.I'm so speechless when I heard the verdict for this case.In June 2008, Casey Anthony’s daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, went missing. This went unreported by her mother. Then, six months later, her remains were found. This got Casey Anthony arrested and charged with murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter and lying and providing false information to the police. Now, on July 5, 2011, she was found innocent on all charges except lying and providing false information to the police. Many reactions have come out of this. Some say that a woman who murdered her child like that should never have been released. They are angry about the decision. Others are happy that she is released feeling like there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest she actually did anything wrong. Even though she is being released, she won’t be off the hook completely. She will still need a payday loan to pay for prison time.

Hahaha!! Quality spamming!!!!