On July 5th, 2011, at 2:15 PM EST, Casey Anthony was found :not guilty: of the murder, manslaughter, or aggravated assault of her daughter, Cayle Anthony, and :guilty: on four counts of lying to the police. What do you guys think should have happened?

A bullet to the back of her head is what should've happened (guess it still can) :zenitora:

I was pissed. I've strongly believed in her guilt for a while, and I still believe she's guilty. But it seems the jury doesn't see the same way.

WHYYY?! It was clear that she didn't give a shit about her kid and was convinced that she was the murderer but she somehow got off the hook? Despicable.

Weird coincidence. here we had a: Not guilty of intentional murder, for a guy who murdered his two young kids. So the guy only has to follow a therapy an then will be realease in society.

In both case, it is horrible...

My personal theroy is that The Defense choose witness which wouldn't give a death penalty and could spread that belief to the others. Still, at least we got a mini rant from Geraldo out of this.

From some things I heard there wasn't enough real hard evidence and they couldn't even say what the cause of death really was...yet I find this whole case a bit odd and confusing

I wasn't surprised by the outcome at all. Listening to everything and paying attention to the circumstances, it's pretty obvious that she either did kill her or was heavily involved in whatever happened. But the fact is that there was no actual decisive evidence pointing to Anthony herself. The prosecution's evidence and case was all circumstantial. And people can point to her odd behavior all they want, but that doesn't count as *proof*, unfortunately.

Like they said in Apollo Justice: Anyone can see she did it. But "anyone" does not include the law.

And as the defense attorney said, Anthony is not in any way obligated to prove her innocence. The burden of proof is entirely on the prosecution. And they didn't have enough.

Legally, it was the correct choice. Which does suck. But everyone else is pretty damn sure she did it. And she ended up throwing a bunch of her own family members under the bus for the sake of getting acquitted. I'm sure she's not exactly going to be living a perfect, happy life after all this.

The Jury did the right thing to do in this case. The Prosecution only had circumstantial evidence to use against her. A circumstantial case is not enough to the System's standards, so she was declared not guilty (note: innocent and not guilty aren't the same thing). But guilty or not, she won't live a normal life. The media milked the story, the entire US know about her felony, she's an almost-felon. Some members of Society won't accept her, others will mock her, others will go against her.

From this day forth, Casey Anthony is forever cursed with the burden of killing her own child and with her conscience and Society reminding her of it every single day of her life. Dont' be surprised she committed suicide a couple of days after.

I have a number of opinions on this.

1. While i wholeheartedly disagree with the sentence, it is the 'correct' legal sentence. The prosecution only provided circumstantial evidence, and as Phoenix Wright can attest, circumstantial evidence means jack in court. Only hard, decisive evidence does. There is reasonable doubt that she comitted the murder, and therefore could not be convicted for it. However, on that note....

2. She should have been convicted on more. Even if she didn't kill the kid, she was heavily invovled. 4 seperate lies to the police involving babysitters and non-existent people. 31 days spent partying BEFORE telling police the kid was missing. The duct-tape. (If it was a simple drowning, what's with the duct tape?) All of these do point to foul play and some sort of connection she had to the incident. She should, at the BARE MINIMUM, gotten negilent homicide or child abuse. 31 DAYS.

3. Because she's been declared innocent, Double Jeopardy is now in effect. She needs not fear the case anymore. Meaning there goes a heck of a lot of potential information.

4. The case was horribly handled by both the prosecution and the defense. Neither had direct evidence (though the burden falls on the prosecution) and neither really did anything to sway me either way. Defense tried some bull with Sexual Assault, but that wsa never proved by the defense. Prosecution didn't have enough evidence, for a variety of reasons. Took too long to find the body (that THIRTY ONE day delay didn't help) being chief among those reasons.

No matter what, we don't know the full story, and with the path of Casey Anthony now blocked by legal, we're not going to find the truth. The miracle never happen. We aren't going to know the full details completely. Here's hoping that karma or god or whatever diety or system you believe in knows the truth and acts accordingly.

inb4 Casey Anthony's "I didn't do it (but if i did, here's how I would do it)."

After to talking to mom, who has studied law, the jury did what was legally correct. The jury based their ruling off of the evidence, and the not guilty ruling was what the evidence showed. Like has been said, they just had circumstantial evidence and in no way could they pin Casey Anthony down. And if AA has taught us anything, it's that circumstantial evidence sucks. :hodohobo:

And apparently, the prosecution for the case was just horrible. :yanni:

I don't know if it's good or bad news, but no way will Casey Anthony be able to live a normal life anymore. I mean, the entirety of America knows her as the person who killed her baby now, and most normal people are convinced she did it. Not guilty verdict or not. After all, not guilty doesn't mean innocent. :lana:

What's really annoying me about this case now is all the people whining about the verdict when they really know absolutely NOTHING about law. :gumshoe: While it's pretty awful that she won't be punished by being thrown in jail for the rest of her life, the court made the right ruling based on the evidence.

...wow, I rambled a bit more than I meant to. :yanni:

As has been said, the jury gave her the legally correct verdict. There was no evidence for either side. As Edgeworth once said, "In the courtroom, proof is everything. Without it, you have nothing."
But here in the good ol' USA, you get no second chances. You can't get the verdict, then appeal when you have more evidence. Nope. If the prosecution can't prove, the first time, you killed your child for a life of parties and alcohol, then you get to go back to your terrible, disgusting life without a care in the world.
Although, joke's on her, because her family hates her and who would invite her to anything?

Though what the jury ruled was legal within the law, I cannot believe that they only held the case for 10 hours and they immediately thought "Well. There's no way in hell that she could have killed her daughter!" Neither side had concrete evidence and the defense attacked her own father by claiming that he molested the kid, then killed her to cover it up! Unfuckingbelievable! (Getting a little mad as I write this, bear with me)

Though the defense's only argument was the lack of evidence against her, the prosecution at least had circumstantial evidence that no one took into consideration. The car, the duct tape, and the swamp near her house? It seems to me that a courtroom is nothing more than a realistic form of entertainment. The jurors being paid off for a Not Guilty verdict for a clearly Guilty woman. There's a dead girl on the hands of that woman and she's not getting the punishment she deserves.

I believe the point of the jury system is to provide a verdict without the need for concrete proof. I get this idea of thinking from Apollo Justice's last case where Phoenix implements the jury system for the first time and he points out that the jury must use their intuition to decide the Defendant's fate.

Here's an amusing story of my dad who's a lawyer: He mentions to a coworker that they must have gotten the 12 stupidest people in Florida for that case. The coworker replies with "No, they got the 12 stupidest people in the US instead."

I hope I didn't overdo this, this trial just got me really pissed off. Also, I hope I didn't make any mistakes, that would make me quite foolish for this rant.

The strangest thing is... they never wondered who else could have killed the child. They were all about her not guilty, nothing else.

They have like 100+ evidence it has to point to someone.

I'm sure Casey has something to do with this.

The one thing I'm bothered the most is the jury. They said they took like 10 hours and a few mins to decide. It's not even half the day. A case for 2 years was only decided for 10 hours. There's something wrong with that. Plus, the judge banned releasing the names of the jury in public.

Though I heard the defense attorney said something about people assuming she did do it and such, and something about the justice system. I forgot... it was on the news.

The defense's argument was that the prosecution had no concrete evidence to prove that she actually did it. The irony is that the defense didn't have any evidence to say that she didn't do it despite her having circumstantial evidence piled up against her.

My mom actually explained why the jury did what they did: The judge explains that they have to have no doubt about their verdict (she told me the exact words, but I forgot them), and the defense attorney did his job and made them doubt that she was guilty. And since they weren't sure, they did what they had to. Or something like that; I forgot half of what she said. Yeppers. :yanni:

^ That's basically what it comes down to, yep. As long as there's any doubt on the matter, as long as people can't say with strong certainty that yes Casey Anthony was the individual who killed her daughter, then they really should choose Not Guilty. Because the automatic, legal assumption is innocence.

I... am actually not sure how this sort of thing is normally handled. But the trial was about Casey Anthony. The defense had a lot of "Well, we're not saying [so-and-so] was responsible buuuuut..." but they never implicated anyone. The evidence that could point toward other people was also circumstantial and was probably not enough to fully accuse anyone else. However, I don't believe they would be able to accuse someone in the middle of a trial like that. A trial is supposed to focus on the involved party, case, and charges only as far as I'm aware. (Ace Attorney is special on this front...)

They *did*, however, raise enough doubt and points regarding other people in that household for continued investigation. We might end up seeing more come out of this later.

I would like to see perhaps a new lead or so...this whole case is almost a big gray splotch

Phoenix Wright's description of how the Jury should function is retarded. The Jury "don't use their intuition", the Jury, as the Judge said in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, use their common-sense to render a verdict. Legally speaking (again), they did the correct thing, and that was find her "not guilty".

Also, this isn't Ace Attorney, this is the real world. If a trial is Accuser Vs. Accused, then the issue is to find the Accused not guilty, not find the true culprit and pin him down.