The Casey Anthony verdict came in a couple of hours ago as Not Guilty on all of the important counts regarding the death of her daughter. My Facebook immediately lit up with comments from people in disbelief. I've been pondering this myself since the verdict came in and with few platforms from which to voice my opinion, I resort to my blog.
I am not surprised by the verdict. Do I believe Casey Anthony murdered her daughter? At this point in time, with the information I have, I do. However, the prosecution had no PROOF of this and therefore lost the case. There were no witnesses, no DNA evidence and no cause of death could be determined. The evidence that was presented either did not link Casey directly or had alternate possible explanations. On what then, should she have been convicted? Gut feelings? Emotions are running high, but you cannot convict on emotion. I have heard a loud and general outcry that justice has not been served and that may be true in this particular case, but I would argue that this illustrates the superiority of our judicial system. I, for one, am grateful that I live in a country where my guilt would actually have to be proven to be thrown into prison for life or put on death row. Second and third world countries have judicial systems where there is no need for evidence, trials or jurys to hold a person hostage in a brutal prison system and thank God, that is not America. Heaven forbid that any of my friends who are so upset at this outcome would ever be incorrectly convicted of a crime of which they were innocent because a jury of their peers thought they probably did it, but had no direct proof of guilt.
In this case, someone definitely failed that poor little girl either in inability or incompetence. I don't know if the police botched the investigation or if the prosecutors failed to connect the dots. I wasn't there. But I know the jury is not to blame for concluding that no one was able to provide hard, undeniable proof of her mother's guilt. It may never be clear what happened to her.
The one solace I have is that the murderer of a two year old baby will, one day, face the Ultimate Judge and receive eternal justice. He has all of the facts and proof necessary to redeem and condemn and human error will never play a role in that judgement.
2 comments:
well said
Guess I have to disagree a bit with your determination of what constitutes proven guilt. DNA is a wonderful way to easily prove guilt but it is a recent advancement. Convictions have been substantiated "beyond a reasonable doubt" with much less evidence than was available in this case. Maybe we are becoming a bit hung up on the concept of DNA and eye-witnesses as being the ultimate proof of guilt. If you only take Casey's own claims of an accidental drowning, guilt is established. When a child accidentally drowns, a mother does not apply duct tape (for what purpose?) and dispose of her child in a garbage bag all while telling her family the child is alive and well.
I'm grateful that you are reasoning through this tragedy but I think there is a ways to go on this one.
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