Did the jury get it wrong, or...

[TotallyObsessed]

That's not true, if you're going to prove a 1st degree murder charge, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that person killed the victim. She drove around with a body in her car, that makes her responsible for child neglect, failure to report a death, etc. But did she and only she have access to the duct tape? If the answer is yes, the guilty. Was there any evidence she was at the dump site, either by dirt on the car/wheel well/computer searches of the site, dirt on the shoes, etc? If the answer is yes, then guilty. Is there evidence she had chloroform or ingredients to make chloroform? If the answer is yes, then guilty.

JA himself said that their strongest evidence was the 31 days, that's it. That proves she's negligent, that proves she's a horrible mother, that proves she at least had some knowledge of her dead child. It does not necessarily prove she was the one who killed her.

Herein lies the problem. Reasonable doubt does NOT, I repeate NOT EQUAL ALL DOUBT. Any reasonable person could have come to a Guilty verdict.

 

[crucibelle]

That's not true, if you're going to prove a 1st degree murder charge, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that person killed the victim. She drove around with a body in her car, that makes her responsible for child neglect, failure to report a death, etc. But did she and only she have access to the duct tape? If the answer is yes, the guilty. Was there any evidence she was at the dump site, either by dirt on the car/wheel well/computer searches of the site, dirt on the shoes, etc? If the answer is yes, then guilty. Is there evidence she had chloroform or ingredients to make chloroform? If the answer is yes, then guilty.

JA himself said that their strongest evidence was the 31 days, that's it. That proves she's negligent, that proves she's a horrible mother, that proves she at least had some knowledge of her dead child. It does not necessarily prove she was the one who killed her.

BBM. On the interview I watched with JA, he said the duct tape was the strongest piece of evidence they had.

 

[TotallyObsessed]

I recently just watched a case where a guy was convicted of murdering his wife. There wasn't a whole lot of evidence there, it was all circumstantial and in fact most were even questioning if he did it. There wasn't anything directly linking him to the crime, outside of being controlling and always fighting with each other.

Then toward the end of the states case they produced a google search which showed he was looked up the dump site the day before his wife disappeared. And there you had 1st degree, because that piece of evidence directly linked him and nobody to the crime.

If it were me, I'd need some sort of smoking gun to convict on 1st degree. It doesn't have to be anything big either. Before the verdict in this case, I thought that smoking gun was probably Dr. Vass' testimony but yet I can someone see why jurors would question it. I'm not sure what to think of the shovel, she probably used it but the state never really went further into that other to say she asked for it.

So, to answer your question, I'd need some sort of proof to convict. In this case, I thought she was guilty as well but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be open to hear other opinions as to why they think it was NG. Would it had swayed me? I cannot say, hindsight is 20/20. Understandbly, most here are thinking with emotion, something which the jury did not (and should not) have

BBM: You're kidding, right? Google search for dumpsite but NOT google search for choloroform? Ok. Got it.

And while I am very emotional about this case, I also have a brain.

 

[Boytwnmom]

to people and told them her father hit a squirrel, she abandoned it next to a dumpster and left trash in the trunk to mask the smell. I know there's more but I am too mentally exhausted to try and explain this anymore....

I don't disagree there was a body in the trunk. I don't disagree about the duct tape being used to suffocate. But is your only evidence that Casey did these things was her partying and CA/GA being unhappy? Where is the evidence that Casey not only put her in the trunk but put duct tape on her?

I'm just trying to play devils advocate from the jurors perspective.

 

[TotallyObsessed]

I hope that the tragedy of this case results in higher standards for juries, or at the very least a law professional being present during jury deliberations. You should not be automatically qualified to sit on a jury just because you have a driver's license or are registered to vote. I was a fan of Judge Perry's but I can see now how rushing the jury selection process was a very bad idea.

I feel the exact same way. I admire and respect Judge Perry. But in hindsight, I now see that his rush to seat a jury did NOT get a "cream of the crop" type jury. He seated the first 12 to meet the criteria. Instead of selecting a pool of say 40 jurors that the state and the defense could then cull from. Bad luck of the draw. What are the odds you would get 12 alike thinking people who all wanted to go home instead of do justice for Caylee?

 

[Sustained]

This is what I think happened:

Casey had been chloroforming Caylee from time to time - Zanny the nanny

6/16: After George left, Casey returned home and once again used chloroform so that Caylee would nap and Casey would be free to putz around on her computer, phone, text, etc.

Instead of sleeping, Caylee whined and whined about wanting to go in the pool so in frustration Casey said - "Okay, go!" (helped her in; put up ladder - something like that)

Caylee drowned. Casey got her out of the pool and laid her on the ground. Casey could NOT call the ambulance or cops because they would find the chloroform in her system! She had to cover that up!

All the things Baez said George screamed at her, Casey instead was saying to herself - there is usually an element of truth in a lie.

To cover up what had happened, Casey put duct tape over her face in an effort to make it appear a kidnapping. Wrapped her in a Pooh blanket, placed her in the laundry bag and placed her in the trunk and left the house trying desperately to figure out what to do next.

After a couple of days, smell from car was overpowering so she put her body in the woods and abandoned the car by the dumpster. (Remember she told her friend in prison, "If they never find her I'll spend eternity here.")

Family did not know any of this until considerably later. After grand jury handed down a true bill of indictment (with 1st degree premeditated murder charge) they did everything in their power to save Casey from death penalty.

In Casey's mind (and probably the mind of the family) it was a terrible accident. In the legal code it is felony murder because of the use of chloroform.

So Caylee went swimming w/o her lifejacket and swimsuit and Casey helped get in the pool ? Not likely. Remember Caylee was found with street clothes on ...

It is more likely that she overdosed Caylee with chloroform, put her in the trunk, and she died sometime in the evening on the 16th or the next morning. I'll buy the fake kidnapping story, but at the least, this is felony murder with aggravated child abuse.

 

[magic-cat]

That's not true, if you're going to prove a 1st degree murder charge, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that person killed the victim. She drove around with a body in her car, that makes her responsible for child neglect, failure to report a death, etc. But did she and only she have access to the duct tape? If the answer is yes, the guilty. Was there any evidence she was at the dump site, either by dirt on the car/wheel well/computer searches of the site, dirt on the shoes, etc? If the answer is yes, then guilty. Is there evidence she had chloroform or ingredients to make chloroform? If the answer is yes, then guilty.

JA himself said that their strongest evidence was the 31 days, that's it. That proves she's negligent, that proves she's a horrible mother, that proves she at least had some knowledge of her dead child. It does not necessarily prove she was the one who killed her.

Just let me get this straight.
You DO think she drove around with a body in her car?
But do not think it is proven that SHE is the one who put it there?
So who else?
Who do YOU think KILLED Caylee?
And upon what evidence do you base that?

She HAS been proven to be responsible.
Look at the evidence.

 

[Boytwnmom]

and so thoroughly. This is just such a classic case of a clearly guilty defendant and an unmotivated jury who didn't understand or seek to understand the law. There was nothing wrong with the case. The jurors own statements show the only problem was THEM!

They took the OS as evidence, they took RC's testimony about snowball out of control as evidence, they believed they could not convict without a cause of death, they were concerned about the death penalty. These people asked no questions and clearly were completely incorrect about many things and simply didn't care enough for even one of them to speak up forcefully. Our system only works if all perform properly. It was bad enough that the DT was unethical and skirted the rule of law and bounds of decency but the jury worked in concert with them to subvert justice and that combination is a very frightening prospect.

And for those who support the jury despite the clear evidence they did not understand the law and their instructions and did not ask questions nor spend much time deliberating, what if next time it's the prosecutors who skirt the law, tell a crazy OS, have a judge that helps, and a jury who doesn't like the defendant or the defense attorney and so they find an innocent person guilty? Is that OK too?

Think of your normal everyday life.
Think of your car.
Think of your trunk.
Now think...
There is a dead body in YOUR car trunk.
You have OPENED your car trunk to put in and take out gas cans, and to put IN a bag of garbage from your BOYFRIENDS apartment.
You have texted to your friend, on more than one ocassion trhat your car stinks-like dead squirrels.
There is no evidence anyone else drove your car.
There is no evidence anyone else HAD your car.
You run out of gas or are sputtering and READY to run out and you KNOW it because it is a fact you have run out of gas several times.
You abandon the car-next to a dumpster on a parking lot, backed in so the trunk is not facing where people would WALK by but backed in...

Now...
you have no car anymore it is towed and under lock and key from three days after you abandon it.
19 days later police cadaver dogs are called in.
Two of them HIT on YOUR car trunk.
Your daughter, who is 2 years old is missing and has not been seen in 31 days.
The policeman who SMELL your car all agree that it smells like a dead body, which they are very familiar with.
There are stains in the trunk but the trunk is remarkably clean looking, as though recently having been cleaned.
When the police ask YOU where your daughter is?
You lie, for the next 24 hours, and then continue lying for the next three years.
You go to trial.
Experts in their fields testify in open court that there was a dead body in the trunk.
The chemicals present in a "sniff" test are consistent with a dead body. (This is just extra-remember, too many people have smelled and admitted that there was the smell of a dead body in the trunk.)
There is a hair with a classic death band-a thing only known to come from a CORPSE at this time, inside your trunk.
There are paper towels with what is known as GRAVE wax, adiopecere, inside the garbage bag that came from YOUR trunk, that ONLY you could have placed there, because you had access to the garbage AND the trunk. (This is extra too-the testimony of those who smelled it is enough to establish beyond a REASONABLE doubt that there was indeed a dead body inside the trunk-not to mention the cadaver dogs.)
The hair is mitochondrially consistent with belonging to your missing daughter.
The hair is too short and untreated, so cannot belong to any other member of the mitochondrial line...meaning-it is absolutely your daughters, bearing a classic sign of having come from a CORPSE.
Remember your daughter is still missing...
And you are still lying...
Six months later they find your missing daughter a quarter mile from your home, and hers: she is a skeleton. There is no tissue remaining.
She is found in a swamp KNOWN to be a grabage dumping grounds to folks in that area, and evidenced by the multitude of garbage taken from the area.
She is found partly inside bags and partly strewn across the ground.
She is wrapped in a blanket.
She is double bagged in garbage bags.
That "package" is inside of a handled vinyl/canvas laundry tote (for ease of carrying one might deduce).
Her skull is on the ground.
There are three overlapping pieces of duct tape stuck in her hair and wrapped around her face, holding her bones in place.

Can we REASONABLY agree-
There absolutely WAS a body inside Casey's trunk.
That body was the body of her daughter Caylee.

I mean, this one is simple to follow...Of course there was a body in her trunk. That body was Caylee's. The only question on this score we could even TRY to confuse ourselves with is who put the body there?

And beginning there and REASONABLY following the trail that IS in evidence?

There being a body in the car should not even be in question. If it was? Someone was not paying attention. Because the body in the trunk is definitely in evidence.:waitasec:

 

[magic-cat]

So...

Someone else put her daughters dead body in HER car trunk?
And then she drove off with it and drove around with it for a few days?
And then what? Someone else took the body out and threw it in the woods?
That makes utterly no sense at all.
Why look to the farfetched when you have the REASONABLE staring you in the face is what I cannot comprehend?

 

[cityslick]

BBM: You're kidding, right? Google search for dumpsite but NOT google search for choloroform? Ok. Got it.

And while I am very emotional about this case, I also have a brain.

I should have clarified, they proved it was him and only him that did the dumpsite search because it was done on his work computer at his job. Meaning, it wasn't the family computer where multiple people could of had access to it.

The state says that ICA did those searches by ruling everyone else out by saying they were at work but then CA gets up there and lies about the searches. Why is everyone in that family lying? Who is the jury supposed to believe here, George?

 

[TotallyObsessed]

So...

Someone else put her daughters dead body in HER car trunk?
And then she drove off with it and drove around with it for a few days?
And then what? Someone else took the body out and threw it in the woods?
That makes utterly no sense at all.
Why look to the farfetched when you have the REASONABLE staring you in the face is what I cannot comprehend?

Exactly. About as far fetched as the jury voting Casey GUILTY on lying to Law Enforcement....
wait, did I hear that? Lying? About what? Lying? To cover up what?
sooo.....if she lied, then ... what?? She just didn't feel like coming up with the Casey 4.0 story that day that her child drowned?

The one thing NOBODY and I mean NOBODY has asked any of these talking heads on TV is just WTF would Casey SIT IN JAIL for 3 years BEFORE coming up with this story? What does that tell you? It was a masterful defense crafted over that period of time, and they lucked out with a jury with exactly the right level of ...shall we say...gullibility.

 

[annalia]

I should have clarified, they proved it was him and only him that did the dumpsite search because it was done on his work computer at his job. Meaning, it wasn't the family computer where multiple people could of had access to it.

The state says that ICA did those searches by ruling everyone else out by saying they were at work but then CA gets up there and lies about the searches. Why is everyone in that family lying? Who is the jury supposed to believe here, George?

It seems pretty clear that CA lied to keep her daughter off of death row. She was impeached.

No one else was at home when the searches were done, it is the same as having an alibi. Why keep going back to it just to try to make it possible that it could have been someone other than Casey?

It's the 'totality' of the evidence, while the jury wanted t a CSI - AHA moment, when put all together points to no one but Casey.

Hypotheticals were all that got her off.

JMHO

 

[cityslick]

So...

Someone else put her daughters dead body in HER car trunk?
And then she drove off with it and drove around with it for a few days?
And then what? Someone else took the body out and threw it in the woods?
That makes utterly no sense at all.
Why look to the farfetched when you have the REASONABLE staring you in the face is what I cannot comprehend?

Once again, if the jury thinks GA's testimony is bogus, where does that leave you?

They have said the 1st degree vote was 10-2 in favor of NG. 10-2. It wasn't even like the 6-6 manslaughter (or was that child abuse) vote. That means it wasn't even close in their mind as to who definitely had something to do with that childs death.

You're attacking me simply because I'm trying to present an opposite side of the argument.

 

[dvdman]

You call it what you want to I call it "Dumb Luck". Though as you stated if you were found "guilty" of lying to cover up a murder then how are you not guilty for the offense itself? It doesn't make any sense.

Exactly. About as far fetched as the jury voting Casey GUILTY on lying to Law Enforcement....
wait, did I hear that? Lying? About what? Lying? To cover up what?
sooo.....if she lied, then ... what?? She just didn't feel like coming up with the Casey 4.0 story that day that her child drowned?

The one thing NOBODY and I mean NOBODY has asked any of these talking heads on TV is just WTF would Casey SIT IN JAIL for 3 years BEFORE coming up with this story? What does that tell you? It was a masterful defense crafted over that period of time, and they lucked out with a jury with exactly the right level of ...shall we say...gullibility.

 

[Sustained]

Once again, if the jury thinks GA's testimony is bogus, where does that leave you?

They have said the 1st degree vote was 10-2 in favor of NG. 10-2. It wasn't even like the 6-6 manslaughter (or was that child abuse) vote. That means it wasn't even close in their mind as to who definitely had something to do with that childs death.

You're attacking me simply because I'm trying to present an opposite side of the argument.

No attack here, but which specific testimony of GA are you referring to ?

 

[cityslick]

It seems pretty clear that CA lied to keep her daughter off of death row. She was impeached.

No one else was at home when the searches were done, it is the same as having an alibi. Why keep going back to it just to try to make it possible that it could have been someone other than Casey?

It's the 'totality' of the evidence, while the jury wanted t a CSI - AHA moment, when put all together points to no one but Casey.

Hypotheticals were all that got her off.

JMHO

If CA lied, did GA lie about anything? How do you know?

 

[Hisimage]

I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter if CA lied anymore at least in the case of the jury. It certainly didn't seem to come into their calculation. For them it was all about the proof. If the body and smell in the trunk don't prove it, if the 31 day binge didn't prove it, if the lies about Zanny didn't prove it, CA lying would not have made the difference.

Listeing right now to DT lawyer (death penalty one) talk on HLN and it makes me angry. She is now saying KC does not even know what happened after the accident. That makes it even worse. If my baby died you better darn well tell me what you did with her after her death.

 

[magic-cat]

So Caylee went swimming w/o her lifejacket and swimsuit and Casey helped get in the pool ? Not likely. Remember Caylee was found with street clothes on ...

It is more likely that she overdosed Caylee with chloroform, put her in the trunk, and she died sometime in the evening on the 16th or the next morning. I'll buy the fake kidnapping story, but at the least, this is felony murder with aggravated child abuse.

...about the clothes that were found with Caylee.

Perhaps Casey dressed her in a shirt her mom and dad would not recognize because they had never seen it and a pair of shorts that was getting too small that would not be noticed as missing...shorts that were perhaps a little tight but would still go on so they no longer used them? And a shirt she had gotten from one of her credit card stealing sprees and kept concealed from her parents. This would help in the area of Cindy not noticing something was gone. Was it ever asked in all of this entire case of anyone if Caylee had a pair of shoes missing? Or was she running around at home, barefoot, when she died? Did her mother dress her in that outfit she was found in while she was still alive? Or did she remove those clothes she died in and replace them with these?

Questions we will never know the answers to unfortunately.

 

[cityslick]

No attack here, but which specific testimony of GA are you referring to ?

I think they didn't trust his testimony as a whole (for whatever the reason). Once you throw that out, then what? Did he really know anything about his granddaughter?

Personally, I don't think he did, but I also don't think he's the most truthful person in the world either, if for any other reason because he's an Anthony.

 

[magic-cat]

Once again, if the jury thinks GA's testimony is bogus, where does that leave you?

They have said the 1st degree vote was 10-2 in favor of NG. 10-2. It wasn't even like the 6-6 manslaughter (or was that child abuse) vote. That means it wasn't even close in their mind as to who definitely had something to do with that childs death.

You're attacking me simply because I'm trying to present an opposite side of the argument.

It does not matter in the least if George lied about everything.
There are other things on record that SHOW who was where when and Casey was at the house during the time when Caylee would have died.
The desperate 911 call from Cindy is enough to let the jury know that she was hysterical and had JUST discovered her granddaughter was not where her daughter had been telling her. She traced it back in her mind, then, when it was all fresh, and determined that Casey and Caylee were there father's day night, and cell records confirm this.
Cell records confirm she was at the house the next day AFTER HER DAD was gone.
Video captured that evening with NO Caylee and showing her happy and content with not a care in the world?

It leaves me right back where I was, with Casey killing her innocent helpless 2 year old daughter, throwing her in the car trunk and going to meet her boyfriend just hours later.

George and anything he says is NOT what I am basing my REASON on...I am basing it on REASONABLE deduction, extracted from the facts and evidence applied.

It isn't about George or any of them being liars.
It is about Caylee is dead.
Her mothers car smelled like a dead body.
She lied to family, friends and police about where her daughter was.
She is guilty without a word from George.