<p>If you want me to treat your opinions with respect, try to present a rational and logical argument next time.</p>
<p>11 hours to find her not guilty. Think about that for just a moment. That’s how sure they all were. And they had all the facts of the case at their fingertips.</p>
<p>If they all saw the same evidence and heard the same arguments, is 11 hours really such a short time to discuss it before agreeing on a verdict? 11 hours seems like a long time to me.</p>
<p>mantori: Jose Baez’s statement was basically him on a soapbox going off about how wrong the death penalty is and what an honor it was to Caylee’s memory that there wasn’t a false conviction made today.</p>
<p>I thought, all in all, it was pretty inappropriate for the moment-- but I don’t have much experience with this kind of thing to be an adequate judge of that.m</p>
<p>In any event, I’ve said my piece. It’s highly unlikely that the current crop of nay sayers will ever change their minds at this point.</p>
<p>You want inappropriate? The defense team had an after-trial party a block from the courthouse with drinking and celebrating. How appallingly insensitive.</p>
<p>11 hrs for all the counts.</p>
<p>Well, I would think that finding her guilty of four counts of lying to investigators took all of five minutes. That only leaves the question of whether there was proof that she intentionally killed her daughter. If the answer is no, then that covers the three felony charges. 11 hours strikes me as plenty of time for that discussion. But then, I’ve never served on a jury in a criminal case, so I may be way off-base.</p>
<p>I’ll sign off tonight with this closing argument: Na-na-na-boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo, if you disagree with me you’re dumb, and what I feel must be right or else I wouldn’t feel it, would I? (Sorry, I guess I’m just wallowing in the muck now. It’s hard to stay objective when the heat is on. 
)</p>
<p>11 hrs is very fast for a capital murder case. And in those scenarios it’s pretty much always a guilty verdict.</p>
<p>That’s one of the main reasons why the defense was so stunned. They thought they lost for sure.</p>
<p>I think I need to clarify something, The evidence was in her favor. However, a jury pool adds a human element to the equation which can make the ultimate decision highly unpredictable. On the strict merits of the case, she should have been found not guilty, but with a jury, you just never know.</p>
<p>This sums up why the jury acted properly:</p>
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<p>Casey Anthony is scum, a liar, a slut, a sullen insensitive creep – but none of that is evidence of murder. We don’t convict people because we don’t like them. The prosecution didn’t come anywhere close to meeting their burden.</p>
<p>Casey Anthony’s own aunt was on last night and she was shocked at the verdict. She said the jury was either not too bright or just very lazy. She was very upset.</p>
<p>My only question: If she was innocent of murdering her child, why wasn’t she willing to take the witness stand and answer questions from the prosecutor, giving an explanation? This trial went every day for eight long weeks, and not once did she take the stand. She sat behind and watched other people argue about her directly in front of her face – for hours every day, for eight weeks. (The camera showed her as being noticeably vocal with her defense attorneys…why not bring that same vocality and clarify what really happened [to the prosecutor, to the judge, jury, and most importantly of all, the sensational media] that she didn’t murder her child?)</p>
<p>Is it just me who thinks that there’s something fishy about her not willing to testify?</p>
<p>I think most people believe she was involved in the tragedy,myself included…However,the evidence provided by prosecution was weak to get the guilty verdict they sought</p>
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<p>I don’t see the problem here actually. Had a triple murder case here earlier this spring where the defendent was found guilty. The prosecutor was at a local establishment within hours less than a block from the courthouse. </p>
<p>You have to remember these people have spent large parts of the last 3 years preparing for this case. For some of them, this could be the biggest case of their careers.</p>
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<p>That’s her Constitutional right. Really she has nothing to win by taking the stand.</p>
<p>but of course, hops-scout, that wasn’t the question.
I am guessing those posting here are aware she isn’t required to testify.
No one asked if the law required her to testify.
Oliver-twist finds it odd that she chose not to testify.</p>
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<p>Tell me what she had to win by getting on the stand. Apparently she didn’t need to. Remember she doesn’t have to prove anything-- the prosecution does. And they failed.</p>
<p>I don’t find it odd that she chose not to testify.</p>
<p>Casey Anthony is weird – a pathological liar if nothing else. She would not have made a good impression on the witness stand. </p>
<p>I also don’t find it odd that the jury didn’t convict her of murder. There were too many alternate scenarios that could not be ruled out; that’s what reasonable doubt is all about.</p>
<p>I did expect that they would convict her on one of the lesser felonies, such as aggravated child abuse or manslaughter. But I guess they felt that the prosecution’s case was too weak even for that.</p>
<p>Looking back we can see she didn’t need to testify. Was that so clear though, when the trial was going on? Certainly most of the public and most of the reporters felt the prosecution had done well enough to get a guilty verdict. At that point in time, it seemed a long shot to get such an acquittal. At that point it would have seemed the odds favored an innocent Casey telling her story. She went against the odds, but won. Like in Vegas playing blackjack- a player is allowed to draw on a 20, but only an ace helps him. He might draw, and he might get that ace, but odds are that playing that way he will lose.</p>
<p>This statement “Remember she doesn’t have to prove anything-- the prosecution does. And they failed.” Is so simplistic and so idealistic it just doesn’t cover real-life situations. It isn’t true in this case, there is so much more than just that.
If it were the only thing that was true, then when the prosecution rested, Baez would have said “They didn’t prove their case, we have nothing to prove, the defense rests.” No it takes more than that. Baez presented many many other scenarios in an effort to convince the jury that the prosecutions’ scenario wasn’t the only one possible. So in that sense, they had to prove to the juries’ satisfaction that there was more than 1 explanation. He was successful.</p>
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<p>I don’t know.</p>
<p>I think the loudest reporters thought the prosecution had done well enought to get a guilty verdict. I never thought that.</p>
<p>The prosecutor was arrogant and overly ambitious. The case was a press case, and he wanted the press. It’s that simple.</p>
<p>Nobody is going to plead out on a capital case. You go to trial. I don’t even think you’d plead out to murder one on a capital case. You might as well take your chances. I mean, unless you were caught red-handed.</p>
<p>Still, the longer the case went on, the less convinced I was that they could get a conviction. Cases aren’t tried in the media, which is why they got jurors from elsewhere and sequestered them. It is the job of the prosecutor to know the rules of evidence.</p>
<p>heck, some of the evidence they were giving had never even been used, or rarely used, like “cans of air” from the trunk??? Too much CSI, imho.</p>
<p>So, now she is free. IF she is smart, the next time we hear from her, she’ll be the one on CC trying to figure out how to get into college with that record. ;)</p>
<p>Let me amend my statement then. Poetgrl, isn’t certain a majority of news reporters thought there was enough evidence to convict.
Let me amend that to- of the reporters I saw, an overwhelming majority thought there was.
Poetgrl isn’t certain a majority of people thought there was enough evidence to convict. So she believes a majority might have said ‘not guilty’. Let me amend that to- a majority of people posting on this thread feel there was enough evidence to convict.</p>
<p>My thanks to poetgrl. I don’t want to make broad generalizations that are wrong.</p>