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Casey Anthony Trial: Exchanging Logic for Sensationalism 6 July 2011

So the verdict came in yesterday on the trial of Casey Anthony for the alleged murder of her 2 year old daughter, Caylee Anthony. She was found not guilty on the counts of murder and abuse, but guilty on three counts of lying to investigators regarding facts related to the case. There is so much that went wrong with this case and verdict, I do not know where to begin. I did not follow the case, so I do not have all the information, but here are some facts to which I am aware:

FACTS

1. Casey did not report her daughter missing to police, even after several weeks.
2. Casey’s parents made first contact with police.
3. The child was found with duct tape over nose and mouth.
4. Casey lied to investigators on multiple occasions about the circumstances around this case.

Inductive Reasoning

1. Fact #1 suggests that Casey killed her, knows who did, or did not care. For a normal person, if their child were missing, they would call police immediately, at least the same day, and definitely not longer than a few days. If she lied to investigators about this situation (e.g., that a nanny that did not exist had her) then that should be even more suspicious. Instead, it is treated as a separate, isolated issue.
2. Fact #2 indicates that it is unlikely the parents are to blame. It also means we have no way of knowing if Casey would have called the police at all.  The fact that the grandfather attempted to commit suicide could be taken either way – as sympathetic or guilty.  His explanation sounded genuinely sympathetic – but that is just his testimony.  Although I am having a hard time understanding the motives of the witness Krystal Holloway if she were not telling the truth.
3. The defense explanation was that the child died in a drowning accident. There was no evidence at all to support this theory. No normal parent or grandparent would bury their child after an accident. Any teenage babysitter would have called 911. If this were true, the Anthony family would not even know whether the child could have been revived.
4. Fact #3 clearly, undisputably, indicates that the child was murdered and did not drown, discounting the above theory.
5. Fact #4 indicates she is hiding information.

There were also serious failures within the court that helped sacrifice logic for sensationalism. For example, one of the explanations for the shocking verdict was that there was information presented in the courtroom on TV when the jury was not present. That means, the public had more information than the jury, when it is really supposed to be the other way around. It should be clear that someone in that family murdered that poor child.

Other Plausible Explanations

1. Casey knows who killed her and is covering it up.
2. Casey’s brother murderd her.  He demonstrated abnormally strong emotions for being “left out” of the child’s life. There is also the theory that he is the father, which makes sense given the previous sentence.
3. Casey is being framed by another member in the family. This explains the weird internet searches. No normal person would Google “shovel”. This would also explain the mother calling police and saying, “it smells like a decomposing body.” Most people do not know what that smells like.

This case really demonstrates how broken the court system is.  The general public should never have more information than the jury.  Facts should be the foundation of arguments but are often over-shadowed by smoke screening of irrelevant information.  Many people cannot distinguish opinion from fact.  Many people are still persuaded, even subconsciously, by personal appearance of the defendant, witnesses, and even victims.  The focus should be on the crime and victim, and not the individual defendant.  We need to apply logic (deductive and inductive reasoning) more in the courtroom.

I hate writing about this kind of stuff, and reading it, but we cannot turn our backs on it.  We need to protect our children and not facilitate the system into continuously neglecting them and their rights.

The end result of all this is that there is no justice for 2 year old Caylee Anthony.