Anthony verdict

[veronica_rich]

OK, Florida fen (and others, I suppose) - I kept up almost not at all with the whole Casey Anthony thing, aside from having heard her and her daughter's name once in a while in the news the past few years. (Yeah, you might think this hard to do, but I assure you, there's plenty else in the news to occupy me, since watching certain other topics is sort of part of my job.)

What do you think about today's acquittal?

Comments

[captsparrow4evr.livejournal.com]

I think the prosecution blew it big time. They should have gone for involuntary manslaughter and made the case that she only meant to keep her little girl quiet and asleep while she went out and partied. Instead, they pushed for Murder 1 and she got off because it didn't survive the premeditation test. They wanted to make an example of her. It's just sad.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

This is basically what I just heard an analyst say on television. They used the term "overcharged".

[captsparrow4evr.livejournal.com]

"Overcharged" is what they do to you when you go to a movie. "Mischarged" I think would be a better term for it. In any case, they didn't connect the dots clearly enough for the jury. I don't know that they had the evidence to do so.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

Well, "mis-charged" would mean making the wrong charges. The lawyer interviewed used "over-charged" and sort of explained he meant that the charges laid were the most serious charges that could be brought, e.g. Murder 1, instead of manslaughter, concealing a dead body, etc.
Hey, it's not *my* term. It is apparently not unique to this lawyer:
To file a criminal complaint for more serious crimes than the known facts support, most often to intimidate the accused into accepting a plea bargain.
That definition is from one of several online legal dictionaries (legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/over-charge) where I found it. It was actually apparently first used to refer to this case by CA's defense years ago, according to the quick google I just did

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I don't think even OJ was tried on capital murder, was he? Wasn't it termed a "crime of passion" when it was tried? I don't remember.

On a related by definite tangent - I don't know if she did it, or how, or what, or whatever. I will say this: Giving birth or fathering children does not canonize a person. There have been instances I've seen in my lifetime of a parent who "accidentally" ran over their child behind the vehicle, or "accidentally" left them in the car to roast or freeze while they went in somewhere, or a number of other actions the media and police called accidental - that I've questioned. Not everybody wants children, and not everybody once they have children, wants to put up with them for 20-some years. I mean, think about it: Not only do you get rid of the annoying little pest with one of these "accidents," you get all kinds of sympathy and back-pats for being the grieving parent.

(Lest you think I'm just cynical, there was actually a case in the city where I used to live, where a well-known business owner left his baby locked in his vehicle for a good stretch of time one hot day, and the baby died. It was termed an accident, and the general consensus was "aww, poor Daddy, he just didn't know." What the fuck didn't he know? That it was hot? That locking any living thing in a small space with lots of closed windows in the SUN might dehydrate it? How goddamn dumb was he? Yeah, right.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

Just to play devil's advocate about the locked in car thing:
Today one of the local radio personalities detailed on air how she and a bunch of people broke into somebody's car to rescue their puppy. The couple that owned the puppy had left the window open a crack but the inside of the vehicle was still hot enough to bake cookies. They were astonished that this wasn't enough. So, do people hate their puppies? Or do they just have lower IQs?
(I should mention that I recall hearing a story about some guy who left his kid in the car and was arrested pretty soon after. You see, he left the kid in the car outside the police station, when he went in to do something. Dumb!)

However, this doesn't mean I don't think that parents don't "accidentally" kill children. My friend Mari told me about some local case where a child in an East Indian family died with a broken back because he uncle "accidentally" fell on her.