(Bolded by me)
Tomkat, I have a feeling you are speaking about the jurors in the Anthony case, but every jury is criticized when the outcome is not what some expected. The case of LG would be no exception.
This is something the majority of the public seems to be confused on and if I could go on a nationwide tour to educate the masses, I surely would. Let me clear this up.
Jurors have written instructions to follow on each crime the defendant is accused of. (They can't just sit there like they do in the movies and criticize hair color, style of dress, basic shifty eyes, dislike that someone used the "f" word to their mother, then decide they don't like the person, and convict them. People...that is not how it works. Some need to turn off reality TV and get familiar with their own justice system.)
I'm going to put this in very elementary terms, simplified. (Some of you know this, some of you don't.)
People are upset with jurors in many cases. This wasn't the first, won't be the last, but jurors are NOT to blame. They have to follow the rules given to them, and in the Anthony case, that's what they did. (The State Bar of Florida wrote the rules, fyi.) The public apparently wanted the jurors to NOT follow the law or the rules they were given in deciding this case.
What rules, you ask? Well, here's an example:
CMA was accused of Murder in First Degree, Aggravated Child Abuse, Aggravated Manslaughter, and 4 counts of Providing False Information to a LE Officer.
The jury has a list of these crimes and has to decide what they feel the State has proven to help them answer the questions.
They use their list of questions to guide them.
To prove the crime of First Degree Premeditated Murder, the State must prove the following 3 elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
1. Caylee Marie Anthony is dead.
2. The death was caused by the criminal act of Casey Marie Anthony.
3. There was a premeditated killing of Caylee Marie Anthony.
The jurors did not know/could not be sure of how Caylee died, so they could not answer YES to #'s 2 or 3. FIRST DEGREE MURDER (premeditated) WAS NO LONGER AN OPTION.
To prove the crime of First Degree Felony Murder, the State must prove the following 3 elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
1. Caylee Marie Anthony is dead.
2. The death occurred as a consequence of and while Casey Marie Anthony was engaged in the commission of Aggravated Child Abuse
OR
The death occurred as a consequence of and while CMA was attempting to commit Aggravated Child Abuse.
3. Casey Marie Anthony was actually the person who killed Caylee Marie Anthony. The jurors did not know/could not be sure of how Caylee died, so they could not answer YES to #'s 2 or 3. FIRST DEGREE MURDER (felony) WAS NO LONGER AN OPTION.
and so on....down the list of other crimes she was accused of.
The jury had no idea how Caylee died, so when they were going down the list of answering their questions, their hands were tied by simply NOT KNOWING how the child died. They could not speculate. They could not be willy nilly. They had to use the evidence provided to them and there was nothing that showed them beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty.
That is how the jurors arrived at their verdict. That one little tricky thing, called HOW DID SHE DIE, kept them from being able to convict on anything to do with murder because they obviously had no clue.
So, as it relates to this case, the ability to know how a person died will most likely be very necessary in the jury process of deciding who caused it, so the police better lock this one down tight before giving their case to the State to prosecute. If they cannot prove enough to rule out any other person in any other way, beyond any reasonable doubt, whomever is eventually accused would walk.
