While a strident Jose Biaz screamed "liar" and "junk science" the prosecution wove a logical framework to sustain a charge of either First Degree Murder or, under the Felony Murder Doctrine, a potential death penalty result under the category of Aggravated Child Abuse.
The case embodied a clear and precise link that Casey Anthony during a 31-day period partied in carefree fashion while using a steady pattern of deception with her family and law enforcement as her daughter lay in a field just a short distance from the home where she lived with her family. When Caylee was found the deceased had duct tape on her mouth. It was proven that the Anthony family had that same brand of duct tape in the house.
During that same time frame a Google search analysis uncovered 84 searches on the family computer for chloroform and neck-breaking, two known means of inflicting death. The searches occurred when Casey's mother was at work and it was established that George Anthony, Casey's father, did not use that computer. Hence the party conducting the search by process of elimination had to be Casey.
Since applying duct tape and chloroforming constitute a convenient way to kill a child and such tape was found on the deceased's body, which had been abandoned a short distance from the Anthony home, a First Degree Murder conviction was appropriate under the law. If the jury needed to review prosecution evidence to assist in deciding its ultimate verdict then it was duty bound to ask to see it, study it, then come to a conclusion.
Instead a rush to judgment resulted while the jurors and alternates who have thus far spoken out, along with the accompanying mantra from Jose Biaz, Cheney Mason, Mark Geragos and some others from the defense counsel fraternity continue to shout "It takes proving beyond a reasonable doubt!" to convict, one important principle should be remembered.
The term is reasonable doubt, with the accent on reason. Certain defense counsel repeat the refrain from the above paragraph over and over as a mantra. This is done to achieve courtroom advantage, planting the same sentence over and over into the public's mind.
Perhaps this is what the jury bought into. Perhaps this was the basis for its ultimate decision that has so many Americans outraged.
Reasonable doubt has been stated and restated in such a way as to ultimately emerge in many minds amid steady mantra repetition as a concept more closely embodying guilt beyond any shadow of a doubt.
A man interviewed Wednesday outside the Orange County Courthouse expressed this view by stating, "It has now reached the point where to convict somebody it seems like you've got to videotape the person committing the crime."
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