<p>Part of the problem with comments I am reading on here is that people make this out to be some sort of tug of war, where the defense presents a case, the prosecution presents a case, and whichever is felt to have proven their side better wins, and that is not how a trial works in a criminal matter. It is up to the prosecution to prove their case, the defense does not have to offer an alternative story to explain what happened, and in fact in many defense cases they don’t even offer one (often because there isn’t one to offer). Most defense cases stem around pointing out holes in the prosecutions evidence, a lot of what defense attorneys do comes in cross examination, leading to doubts about prosecution witnesses. Likewise, when defense counsel puts people on the stand, they generally are people brought in to damage what the prosecution said in their case, and if they put enough doubt in the juror’s minds about the prosecution’s case, they are supposed to vote to acquit. </p>
<p>Even if the defense story seems cockamamie, the prosecutor could find nothing in the evidence that refuted that story, and unless the parents testified (which I believe they didn’t) that the daughter was lying, they had nothing to show it was false, and remember, the defense doesn’t have to prove their story is true, they prosecution has to show it is false. The defense story, as weird as it seems, answers things like like the girl had duct tape on her and so forth. And if the story was not true, why didn’t the prosecution put the parents on the stand to refute the story? And why didn’t the parents, who claim the daughter is lying in the press, say that in court? (like, maybe they were afraid that they would be charged with perjury, which you cannot be by saying it in the papers). Some of the posts on here are using things that were not in the court trial, like the parents claims she is lying or the frantic calls (which i don’t believe were in the trial). The most damming thing in this case was the lack of phyical evidence that the girl in fact had been suffocated and the lack of evidence of chloroform in her system, the evidence they have only says her body was in the trunk of the woman’s car, which could have happened if in fact she drowned. </p>
<p>Basically, the DA’s case came down to claiming the woman was a bad mother, that she was some tramp, that because of that she had motive to kill her daughter and they expected a jury to hear the defense story, hear the circumstantial evidence and do what people on here have done, assume the whole thing to be true. One of the things that makes me think the jury found her not guilty was that the DA couldn’t prove she was an abusive mom, there were no prior accounts of her being an abuser, there was no proof the child had been mistreated or that the mother otherwise hated her, their basic proof was in the woman’s behavior in the time after the daughter was dead, which was reprehensible, but doesn’t prove anything. </p>
<p>As far as this line “Why would anyone bother to try a case when there is no evidence upon which reasonable minds would disagree?” </p>
<p>DA’s are politicians and come under tremendous pressure, and not to mention the fact, they also often have aspirations. Why did the DA in the Duke case, supposedly a slam dunk, do what he did? For something as horrible as this,they know they need to get a conviction, and they probably felt they had a slam dunk with this one, thinking juries would be swayed by the crime and the circumstantial evidence to convict the mom, especially after they slimed her on the stand. As far as reasonable minds disagreeing, how about the evidence that wasn’t there, the evidence that the girl had been in fact murdered, that she had been chloroformed…all the evidence that ‘reasonable minds’ would agree on was circumstantial, and in many cases, circumstantial evidence turns out to get the wrong person. </p>
<p>A law professor wrote an interesting op ed in today’s NY Daily News, and he said that the prosecutor screwed up in charging her with capital murder in this case, that juries are very, very reluctant to convict people on death penalty cases with circumstantial evidence, that had they tried her on murder 2 they might have had better luck with a conviction. The difference being that with murder 2, or life without parole, if the accused is innocent, there is the chance that they can be set free if new evidence comes up, but if they are doubtful in a capital case they are more likely to acquit rather then face sending someone to be executed. </p>
<p>One other point to people, I recommend reading about what was actually presented in court, not what the papers are claiming, not what Nancy Grace and the like who tried it in the media are saying, look at the evidence the jury heard, and hear what the judges instructions were to them. You are operating with all kinds of things that were not allowed in the trial, you are operating without the judge’s instructions, and you also don’t know what was discussed in that room,you are operating with all kinds of hearsay and statements that are not in that courtroom.</p>
<p>One other point, as a veteran of juries, you can go around claiming these were 12 stupid jurors, but based on my experience, it isn’t that easy to get 12 people to agree on anything in a jury. In the opposite case, where jurors are mostly leaning towards conviction, there are always those holding out, and in this case, if the evidence was all so clear, all so logical, you would figure by shear odds that at least a couple would have held out, but they didn’t, it took them only 10 hours to come to their decision, and that says something, it is a lot more likely to have one or two idiots then all twelve.</p>
<p>Is the mother innocent? I don’t know, but quite frankly, if I were the Orlando people, I would push for a shakeup in the DA’s office and their ME’s office, they obviously did a crappy job on this one. I have doubts that the mom was innocent, but based on what I have read, including the statement of the jurors who have talked so far, including an alternate who wasn’t in the deliberations (makes it 13 to acquit), sounds like the DA was a complete screw up and the ME’s staff were incompetent.</p>