This is going to be a short and bitter commentary. I did not watch any news coverage consistently until I discovered the verdict had been rendered via Twitter, so i can only speak in generalizations about the not guilty verdict.
I assume by the reactions of people with whom I have similar viewpoints that I should be shocked Casey Anthony was found not guilty, but i cannot honestly be. From what little I do know of the case, Anthony is an unpleasant, narcissistic type personal too immature to care for a child. This point is weighed against the forensic evidence in the being questionable. If I had to guess, I will bet the jury found Anthony more sympathetic than I did, and had it drilled into them the forensics evidence had to be perfect for a convinction instead of beyond a reasonable doubt. I am not shocked if this is the case.
You cannot discount the emotional impact of staring at a defendant everyday for over a month, knowing full well she has been sitting in jail for nearly three years with presumably nothing on her mind but her dead daughter. I think that is far fetched in Anthony’s case. I can only assume her lackadaisical manner as the verdict was read and her smiling demeanor afterwards, both over relief she had dodged a bullet, were evident throughout the trial. But if juries take the innocent until proven guilty to heart as they should, then their instinct is towards sympathy.
Let us face it. Anthony is young, attractive in better times, and her daughter caylee was adorable. No one wants to think there is anything sinister going on there. Did the jury go too far with it? I would need to know their rationale for finding Anthony guilty of misleading police during the early investigation. The only reason she would lie to police is to cover up wrongdoing, yet they found her not guilty of child abuse and first degree murder. What did the jury believe she lied about and why do they believe she lied? How can the lies have no connection to covering up her knowledge of cCylee’s murder?
Juries have a habit of tuning out technical arguments on complex issues, especially if they are drawn out too long. Days upon days of forensic evidence will make a jury’s eyes glaze over. They will develop a negative view of forensics out of boredom, so it is easy for an experienced defense attorney to cast doubt on its value. The more complicated some thing sounds, the easier it is to convince a jury there are a lot of tings that can go wrong. When a jury is sick of hearing about it and does not understandf most of it anyway, the prosecution is in trouble.
There is also a reason prosecutors work for the government instead of making at least twice as much in the private sector--they are either inexperienced, or not that good at it. Most of these folks are biding their time until they can hit the big leagues--assuming they even can. The private sector wins out yet again.
When it all comes down to it, a trial is barely controlled chaos that becomes completely uncontrolled when it moves into the jury deliberations room. Who knows what jurors are thinking? Or over thinking, for that matter. They may have thought Anthony was young and naïve rather than immature and sinister. They may have thought the prosecuting attorney was an arrogant bully. They may have latched on to some nearly irrelevant factor to make their decision. I have heard rumors the jury got hung up on the lack of fingerprints on the duct tape. Weird stuff like that happens, so I cannot find myself terribly shocked Anthony got off the hook.
