Casey Anthony

[AnCap Dave]

It's been the talk of the internet, at least with people I know. Apparently, she was let go from the murder charges, instead only charged with lying to police. I admit, I didn't really pay too much attention to the case, so I'm in no position to decide whether or not she is guilty or innocent, but I've seen a lot of arguments that claim that she was definitely guilty but their arguments are nothing more than just anger and frustration, rather than legitimate arguments regarding evidence.

Here is a string of comments from Facebook.

I'll withhold names for privacy's sake.

i cannot believe this woman was set free,damn country i swear its not ok to lie to police but killing your children is ok i guess wow man im angry like a hornet right now

i hope the rest of her life will be hell and full of threats, random punches etc. the public will never accept her.

Guilty of providing false information to police. That will probably get her probation and time served. Basically, she has gotten off scot free with murdering her daughter. Fuck the state of Florida for allowing this to happen.

she was partying when her daughter was missing that is evidence enough ,she didnt give 2 shits that her daughter was gone,she was a burdin she said..im sorry that is just plain wrong,why have a damn kid then if there just a problem

I wish I was Canadian right now. I'm ashamed of our country for allowing this travesty of a verdict to happen.

it took her a whole MONTH before she reported that her daughter was missing... some mother she was

yea that alone should of put red flags up,how they came up with this verdict is just nuts

if my kids were an hour late i was on the phone and in the car hunting their asses down

Yeah, I saw that shit too. God, fuck this piece of shit broken justice system

So, we can abuse and kill our children now?? What country am I living in? This just can't be true.

There is no doubt in my mind that she killed that poor child. What is wrong with that jury? I don't understand this at all.

It's Florida. They do everything backwards there. There's no justice for the young children. JonBenet, then Nixmary Brown in New York, now Caylee Anthony.

They definitely come off as just angry, rather than having actual reasons to believe that she was guilty. Like I said though, I don't know the details, and have no idea what kind of evidence was put forth. All I know was that apparently the evidence wasn't that great if they dropped the murder charges all together.

So what do you guys think about this? Do you think she was really guilty?

[MrBogosity]

I'm preparing a segment for the next podcast on this. All my opinions will be in that.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Not a perfect parallel, but one of Alan Shore's closings in Boston Legal sums up the high points

Schadenfreude. From the German words, Schaden and Freude, damage and joy. It means to take spiteful, malicious delight in the misfortune of others. We used to dismiss this as simply an ugly side of human nature, but it is much, much more than that. Recently a Stanford professor actually captured Schadenfreude on a brain scan. It's a physiological medical phenomenon. When we see others fall it sometimes causes a chemical to be released in the dorsal striatum of the brain which actually causes us to feel pleasure.

If you watch the news or read the papers, which of course you don't because the Judge said not to, but if you did, you would see the undeniable delicious joy of the media and the public over Kelly Nolan's plight. I have no doubt that you want Kelly Nolan to be punished.

She married for money, she had an affair, she carried on naked in the pool with her boyfriend. She's cold, materialistic, unlikable, and it might bring you all pleasure to see her go to jail. But as for evidence to establish that she committed a murder beyond all reasonable doubt? It just isn't there. The only possible route to a guilty verdict here is Schadenfreude.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Something else though is that this case will hopefully shed some light onto forensic "science"

[MrBogosity]

Not a perfect parallel, but one of Alan Shore's closings in Boston Legal sums up the high points

I LOVED that episode. And that last line applies here 100%.

Something else though is that this case will hopefully shed some light onto forensic "science"

I'll have something to say about that in the podcast as well.

[AnCap Dave]

Not a perfect parallel, but one of Alan Shore's closings in Boston Legal sums up the high points

Actually, as I was reading that quote, it became a lot more apparent that Schadenfreude was the case in regards to the reaction. I ended up writing a note on Facebook about this. I honestly think this court case has done more to showcase the psychology of everyone watching the case, rather than showcase who really is responsible for the death of Caylee Anthony.

With the results of the Casey Anthony trial, people are in an uproar because she was found not guilty for the murder of her daughter, Caylee Anthony. The evidence of the case was completely circumstantial and held little to no credibility within a court of law. While I am not in a position to claim whether or not she is guilty of murder or not, I can say that based on the reaction that this has received in conjunction with the evidence of the case, I think people wanted her to be guilty, rather than having a legitimate reason to accuse her of being guilty.

To quote Alan Shore, a character from Boston Legal and The Practice:"Schadenfreude. From the German words, Schaden and Freude, damage and joy. It means to take spiteful, malicious delight in the misfortune of others. We used to dismiss this as simply an ugly side of human nature, but it is much, much more than that. Recently a Stanford professor actually captured Schadenfreude on a brain scan. It's a physiological medical phenomenon. When we see others fall it sometimes causes a chemical to be released in the dorsal striatum of the brain which actually causes us to feel pleasure.

If you watch the news or read the papers, which of course you don't because the Judge said not to, but if you did, you would see the undeniable delicious joy of the media and the public over Kelly Nolan's plight. I have no doubt that you want Kelly Nolan to be punished.

She married for money, she had an affair, she carried on naked in the pool with her boyfriend. She's cold, materialistic, unlikable, and it might bring you all pleasure to see her go to jail. But as for evidence to establish that she committed a murder beyond all reasonable doubt? It just isn't there. The only possible route to a guilty verdict here is Schadenfreude."

While this isn't a 100 percent parallel of the Casey Anthony case, there are a few things to note. Notably, the idea that people wanted Casey Anthony to be guilty, yet the evidence to support her guilt was incredibly flimsy. I believe that because people didn't like Casey as a person, they would want her to be found guilty for murder just to give more credibility as to why they don't like her as a person. You may be wondering what I mean when I say this, but to give you a better idea, I'm going to quote a specific post from a conversation on Facebook about the case. For the sake of the user's privacy, I will leave their name out of it, though if this person would like to respond, they are more than free to do so.

"She was partying when her daughter was missing that is evidence enough ,she didn't give 2 shits that her daughter was gone,she was a burden she said..I'm sorry that is just plain wrong,why have a damn kid then if there just a problem."

Notice the first line before the comma.
>She was partying when her daughter was missing that is evidence enough

While this would make her a terrible parent, does this make her a murderer? This is merely circumstantial, and holds no bearing on whether or not she is guilty based on legitimate evidence. This is what I'm talking about. Casey may be a terrible person. She may be an amoral parent and someone who you wouldn't want anything to do with. Does this mean she is a murderer though? So far, there isn't any legitimate evidence to say so.

Now, you may be thinking, "Why did she wait a month then to even report that her daughter had died." That is actually a very good question, however, I think if we look at how the case went down, we can get ourselves an idea of exactly why. She had a daughter that was roughly 3 years old when she died. If this was some freak accident, then chances are, had she reported this right away, she would have ended up getting arrested anyway for reckless endangerment and neglect, so either way, she would have faced charges. Of course, this would make anyone nervous. When you are dealing with a dead child, your mind can take you leaps and bounds to all different thought processes. This would also explain the constant lying during the case, which she is getting in trouble for. All of this could have ended up coming back to her as being a neglectful parent, which she would have been charged for. To those of you who are parents, you probably will claim that you would have no problem reporting if your child was dead, but you really can't make that claim because you were never put in that decision, thus you never had to experience the irrational state of mind that something like that would bring about. Casey Anthony is not getting off completely free either. She did lie in a court of law, and there are serious repercussions for this, not to mention the woman with the same name that she used to claim killed her child is suing her for defamation of character. So if you want Casey Anthony to face legal prosecution because you don't like her, well you're getting it, but until there is some better evidence to showcase that she did actually murder her child, then insisting that she is still guilty is tantamount to Schadenfreude.

Of course, like I've stated previously, I'm in no position to make any positive claims of guilt or tell you what her frame of mind was like during the situation. Her frame of mind is basically guessing on my part.

[AnCap Dave]

Having this discussion with people on Facebook, and someone threw this at me:

While you make a compelling argument, we can't make any positive or assertive claim to the guilt of a person committing the majority of crimes. We personally would have to be there to witness the crime with our own eyes, and then trust completely what we see. If tried by jury, every juror would have to witness it. Even a confession isn't proof without witness. Kind of sets lots of criminals free on lack of evidence.

Apparently there is no such thing as DNA evidence or anything like that right?

[MrBogosity]

Except there was no DNA evidence in this case.

[AnCap Dave]

Except there was no DNA evidence in this case.

That is true, but my statement was more for court cases in general rather than this specific one, as the person I quoted made a broad statement about any court case by jury.

[AnCap Dave]

So I've gotten a few responses to my Facebook note:

A very good note, but I do think that the aspects you mention are debatable. For example, dismissing the criticism of some of the parents that a person does not know how he/she will react when their child is mortally injured on the basis of lack of experience is unfounded, since experience and psychological analysis does show how a proper parent would react. Let me elaborate.

When a child gets injured, as a parent you cannot be in your rational mind enough to determine that the child is dead on the basis of a pulse. In fact, what you mentioned is a pretty well-though out judgement- something that a parent cannot maintain in such a situation. The first thing you do in that state of panic is call 911. It's a matter of universal human psychology. Unless, as you say it is a freak accident that would unequivocally point, even to the most distressed mind that the child is dead. Now, try to find at least one example where that is possible- that a parent would immediately determine that her child is dead simply by observing it. There are very few that come to mind- such as decapitation. And this is ignoring the fact that there isn't even the smallest statistically relevant information of parents doing what she supposedly would have done.

Which raises another question- how does even the most irresponsible parent let their child come to such serious bodily harm? Coupled with the pages of her diary pointing to "making a right decision" and "being happy for the first time in her life", combined with the mental actions that occurred during such a horrible event, provide strong evidence that she saw her daughter as a burden, lacking in even the most basic tenants of parental love. This in itself is horrible, but granted, not proof of murder.

However, and this is a question that I want to pose: is it legal, in a way, to pose, if-if instances in a prosecutor case? Since there are only 2 options: either she killed the girl, or she was criminally negligent leading to manslaughter, which, although not a legal classification in Florida itself, it still present in some states like Pennsylvania, and outside the US, like the UK. In any case, it can be argued, and at the very least, the prosecutor would have made a strong case on that basis.

I disagree. No one lies to that extent without a motive for doing something. Let's recall some of the lies that were told during this entire ordeal.

First, they claimed that Caylee was kidnapped (a long time after she went missing). Casey made up an imaginary nanny and said that she took her daughter. There was a search to find this imaginary kidnapper.

When they found the scent of a dead body in the car that dropped Caylee's body in the swamp (that was miles away from her parent's house), Casey and her parents claimed it was old pizza. There were also levels of chloroform in said car.

There were searches on Casey's computer that only she had access to at the time of the searches that looked up ways to make chloroform. *cough*thiswaspremeditated*cough* They blamed these searches on the nanny; at the trial, the mother claimed she searched those things. None of this is true. The mother didn't have access to the computer during the time those searches were made.

Okay so the kidnap story fails. Caylee's body is found. Casey acts surprised.

Blah blah blah.

Ummm she died in the pool. Yeah, that's it! Why did you say she was kidnapped? Why did you make up that nanny? You pretended that Caylee was alive and we had to find her. While we're at it, why did you dispose of her body in a bunch of plastic bags and cover her nose and mouth in all of that tape?

They also used a lot of sympathy tactics in court that had nothing to do with the case. She made up a story that her father and brother sexually harassed her as a kid. The defense put up a picture of Casey when she was like 15. She whipped out the "break into tears" card. Yada yada.

None of the stories that Casey told made any sense. I didn't even post half of the other made up stuff she claimed. She just lied and lied and lied, but why? When they wanted her testimony in court, she pleaded the 5th.

Even though they weren't capable of figuring out the exact cause of death of Caylee, Casey had a motive to get rid of her, she stalled long enough so that they couldn't figure out the exact cause of death, and the searching on her computer clearly pointed out that she was trying to kill somebody. Heck, her parents even said that she's guilty at one point, however, they didn't specify what she was guilty of.

She did it. Point blank period.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Another interesting point, since one of the jurors came out publicly, the jury was already debating a guilty verdict already because they knew it was a death penalty case.

[AnCap Dave]

Some people will think of anything to justify a guilty sentence....

What I am amazed is that the prosecutors could easily have made this case in concordance with the first degree murder. They could have argued that the evidence point that the mother f@cked up badly: either she killed her child, or she was negligent to the extent that the child was placed in harms way, or to put it more delicately: she was negligent below the reasonably basic standards of security that one parent should provide their child. There are is no other explanation for the facts- any other explanation would in fact represent unreasonable doubt.

In the end, it all came down to the prosecutors. They thought that the sentiment generated by a clear cut case of negligence would secure them a bigger sentence and a conviction on the more serious, but less evidence-backed charge. It's a clear that the prosecutors tried to deal with the jury's emotions, rather their rationale and the facts at hand, and ultimately, a lost case was the price to pay.

And let us not forget that the jury probably knows that while they did the rational thing on the basis of facts (which is what is asked of them), they did not do the right thing, which was in part a responsibility of the prosecutor. Let us not fool ourselves, the woman did it. Whether she killed her herself, hired someone, or merely knew that the girl will die, she was ultimately involved in her death with a clear and conscious mind. It is the rational legality of it all that provides for such instances, but the alternative would be sentencing a heap of innocent people on the basis of prejudice, and eventually, madness and stupidity. It is a sad day when that byproduct takes on a shape of a dead 2 year old girl, and its murderer walking free.

[Virgil0211]

I don't remember who said it first, but it's a sentiment I share. I would rather spare ten murderers than harm one innocent.

[AnCap Dave]

Apparently someone decided to make a petition in regards to this case. I read this on another forum, but they've yet to provide a link to the petition itself.

On July 5, 2011, at 1:15 pm CST, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of
first degree murder in the death of her daughter Caylee Anthony. The
only charges she now faces are four counts of falsifying police reports,
each of which only carries a 1 year prison term. Since she has been in
jail since August 2008, she will be out of jail ENTIRELY too soon.

I'm writing to propose that a new law be put into effect making it a
felony for a parent, legal guardian, or caretaker to not notify law
enforcement of the death of their child, accidental or otherwise, within
1 hour of said death being discovered. This way there will be no more
cases like Casey Anthony's in the courts, and no more innocent children
will have to go without justice.

Also, make it a felony for a parent, legal guardian, or caretaker to not
notify law enforcement of the disappearance of a child within 24 hours,
so proper steps can be taken to find that child before it's too late.

The case of Caylee Anthony was tragic, and there is no reason for
another case like this one to hit the courts. Let's do what is necessary
to prevent another case like this from happening.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

The best kinds of laws are the ones made as knee jerk emotional reactions to freak events