The Verdict - Do you agree or disagree? #4

[PeteyGirl]

Or back to...there could have been soooOOOO much of it months ago that it still persisted. High concentration taken with the computer search taken with a child in the care of her mother who went missing (or dead) and whose mother never reported that taken with the mother lying all around about where the child was taken with the mother abandoning the car with the chloroform after telling her friend it smelled like death and putting a bag of trash in the trunk before she abandoned the car taken with blaming other people over three years for kidnapping her child and later murdering her child and taken with a baby turning up thrown away like trash in the same location where she and KioMarie used to bury their small pets, taken with etc, etc, etc, I'm pretty sure it meant there was a large concentration in the trunk because it was involved with Caylee's death.

Askfornina: this is a much better answer to your question

 

[askfornina]

eace: If my response felt bad to you I apologize, you're right, I should have reigned in the snark hoh:

lol, no problems here.

 

[PeteyGirl]

"I don't think you should have to talk about it," she says. "It wasn't my idea. It certainly wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted my freedom. If that is what I had to do, so be it."

respectfully snipped

JF is talking about freedom from the press and paparazzi after the verdict and stated that if giving an interview is what she had to do so be it. She was NOT speaking about reason for the verdict and wanting freedom to go home from sequestration.

I imagine the hounding the jurists got was relentless and would have made me wish I hadn't served on the jury. Being hounded like that would have driven me out of state.

I never bought into the jury "just wanting to go home", I think their relatively quick decision to acquit makes sense in context of how they interpreted the jury instructions. No cause of death? No case (IMO).

Still, JF could have shut the door in every face, pushed END on every phone call. You can't "force" another person to talk three times to the media. Lame excuse, and I sense she regrets what she said for all the negative feedback it's received.

Though I stand fast on the jury having done a poor job, I feel for their humanity and the conditions they've had to live under since the trial. I don't believe they made their decision to be defiant or to go against the grain. It was a serious mistake they made, at least in not finding Casey guilty of neglect. The ramifications of their mistake were enormous. This is, unfortunately, what happens. I've said before I hope the jury members will be able to look back on this and learn something that will benefit them.

 

[MissJames]

Made me think of an interesting "phenomenon". I'll wager the jury believed they understood the instructions perfectly. That's where the problem is.

Haven't you (the generic you ) ever met someone who insisted they understood something inside out and backward when it was clear they did not? Yet they continued to insist?

This was a complex, circumstantial case, complicated of course by media involvement. Complicated further by the given complexity of our legal system.

It would be proper for a jury to remain humble. They are just regular folks assigned by jury duty. For them to deliberate over such a complex case, while properly understanding the jury instructions IN SUCH A SHORT TIME tells me they THOUGHT they understood the instructions, shut the door on further understanding, and made their decision.

The few jurors who've spoken up reveal their lack of understanding in their explanation of how they stuck to the LAW. What "law" that was continues to elude me :crazy:

I agree. They made assumptions about what they could consider and what they were to ignore,instead of following the instructions.
What I still don't get is, how did all 12 of them forget such important parts of the jury instructions that HHJP read to them? :waitasec: And how did they ALL manage to forget the instructions,but apparently remember every other part of the trial? I'm assuming they did,since they didn't ask for a single read back ,or to see a video,or listen to any of the audio. :banghead:

 

[RANCH]

I've said before I hope the jury members will be able to look back on this and learn something that will benefit them.

I believe your being very generous to this jury.Thanks for your post.

 

[MissJames]

I imagine the hounding the jurists got was relentless and would have made me wish I hadn't served on the jury. Being hounded like that would have driven me out of state.

I never bought into the jury "just wanting to go home", I think their relatively quick decision to acquit makes sense in context of how they interpreted the jury instructions. No cause of death? No case (IMO).

Still, JF could have shut the door in every face, pushed END on every phone call. You can't "force" another person to talk three times to the media. Lame excuse, and I sense she regrets what she said for all the negative feedback it's received.

Though I stand fast on the jury having done a poor job, I feel for their humanity and the conditions they've had to live under since the trial. I don't believe they made their decision to be defiant or to go against the grain. It was a serious mistake they made, at least in not finding Casey guilty of neglect. The ramifications of their mistake were enormous. This is, unfortunately, what happens. I've said before I hope the jury members will be able to look back on this and learn something that will benefit them.

No doubt JF did not expect the push back she got from her interviews. She obviously thought she was correct,or she wouldn't have revealed how they came to their decision.
Someone will come forward ,sooner or later ,and explain how the mistakes came to be.
Just imagine you're one of the jurors,you vote guilty,but others convince you you're wrong because you HAVE TO have he cause of death (or when Caylee died ) so you change your vote. Maybe someone convinced you Casey would get the DP if you voted guilty,so you change your vote.
Then you find out that the reasoning that was used to get you to change your vote was against the jury instructions!
Now,to make matters worse,you not only let a killer walk,the public is angry with you .All kinds of accusations are flying around,when all you did was believe the juror(s) who was .........wrong!
Wouldn't you be itching to tell someone (or everyone ) what happened? Wouldn't you want someone to blame ?

One or more of the jurors will talk. This should never happen again.

ETA : I still think each juror was responsible for knowing the instructions .I'm not giving any of them a pass,but I've been in situations where someone can make you feel so stupid ,while they are so smart.

 

[Trapshooter]

All Jennifer Ford had to say to the media was NO!!!!!

 

[RANCH]

All Jennifer Ford had to say to the media was NO!!!!!

I agree.One of these days I'll figure out how to make words that big.

 

[Caligram]

I wonder what the actual number of hours they were in that deliberation room....I am referring to breaks, more breaks, and lunch.
I now believe, as some others suggested, that future jury members should have individual check-off lists of the things they are supposed to consider before they arrive at a verdict. This should be in the form of a contract, and each member is to fill out their own sheet, in their own handwriting, using their own words. Lastly, the juror contract would be signed by the juror.
I now see how easy it is for juries to misunderstand their duties, and regard themselves as the unquestionable irrevocable "deciders" of life and death. Juries are not required to explain or be responsible for their decisions. This may thwart true justice by placing too much power in the hands of some people. We have no way of knowing how truthful they were during jury selection, if they already knew how they were going to vote, whether they had a secret agenda, how much they had followed the case in the media. Do we really know if they had been convicted of a crime, if they had served time. How can we be sure that they had never had a run-in. or harbored deep mistrust or even hatred for any form of LE.
They were "sworn" to tell the truth, but look at FCA and her DT. Truth can depend on which side one really is rooting for, good or evil.
IMO

 

[PeteyGirl]

I believe your being very generous to this jury.Thanks for your post.

I can imagine myself in their shoes, having made serious mistakes in my life. What makes their mistake(s) so bad is that it reverberated around the world, reflects on the US justice system, and let someone off the hook who needs to be on one. Can you imagine what that must feel like?

Even if jurists feel confident in their decision in spite of it all, that's a hard place to be too.

Doesn't absolve them of anything, but it does make them human.

 

[Baznme]

I agree. They made assumptions about what they could consider and what they were to ignore,instead of following the instructions.
What I still don't get is, how did all 12 of them forget such important parts of the jury instructions that HHJP read to them? :waitasec: And how did they ALL manage to forget the instructions,but apparently remember every other part of the trial? I'm assuming they did,since they didn't ask for a single read back ,or to see a video,or listen to any of the audio. :banghead:

BBM - IMO, they didn't forget. They didn't understand the instructions and they KNEW they didn't understand them. On such serious charges to consider, the last thing they should have displayed was arrogance and narrow-mindedness as the first thing they should have done after entering the deliberations was ASK for clarification, but they didn't do that either. So, if you start off on a with an error, you end up with one.

 

[Aedrys]

BBM - IMO, they didn't forget. They didn't understand the instructions and they KNEW they didn't understand them. On such serious charges to consider, the last thing they should have displayed was arrogance and narrow-mindedness as the first thing they should have done after entering the deliberations was ASK for clarification, but they didn't do that either. So, if you start off on a with an error, you end up with one.

I agree. I think they were under the impression, or one them made the others believe that convicting her of any of the charges (besides the lying charges) would result in them having to be there for three more weeks or a month. They didn't understand that some of those charges would not qualify for DP, and therefore, sentencing wouldn't keep them much longer. Who knows, maybe they didn't want to have anything to do with any sentencing at all, much less a mitigation phase for DP sentencing.

Of course, they weren't supposed to be considering sentencing in the first place during these deliberations, which ticks me off to no end, but you have twelve people, cooped up for over a month and wanting to get out of this trial they didn't want to be a part of in the first place. I also think a lot of them didn't want to kill Casey either. So I think the discussion became how can we get out of this and get on with our lives, with the DP used as the Ace card to convince those who were wavering or not with the rest of the group to change their minds and acquit.

 

[logicalgirl]

I agree.One of these days I'll figure out how to make words that big.

Ranch - in case you are serious - when you do a quote, along the top, first bar below the word message, moving from left to right is an A, then the word "fonts, then the word Sizes with a drop down arrow.

So highlite the word you want larger, pull down the drop down arrow, click on the size you want and shazamm - there it will be.

 

[logicalgirl]

I wonder what the actual number of hours they were in that deliberation room....I am referring to breaks, more breaks, and lunch.
I now believe, as some others suggested, that future jury members should have individual check-off lists of the things they are supposed to consider before they arrive at a verdict. This should be in the form of a contract, and each member is to fill out their own sheet, in their own handwriting, using their own words. Lastly, the juror contract would be signed by the juror.
I now see how easy it is for juries to misunderstand their duties, and regard themselves as the unquestionable irrevocable "deciders" of life and death. Juries are not required to explain or be responsible for their decisions. This may thwart true justice by placing too much power in the hands of some people. We have no way of knowing how truthful they were during jury selection, if they already knew how they were going to vote, whether they had a secret agenda, how much they had followed the case in the media. Do we really know if they had been convicted of a crime, if they had served time. How can we be sure that they had never had a run-in. or harbored deep mistrust or even hatred for any form of LE.
They were "sworn" to tell the truth, but look at FCA and her DT. Truth can depend on which side one really is rooting for, good or evil.
IMO

Well, I understand they deliberated for 10 hours over a day and a half. So my guess with time off for lunches and breaks was that they deliberated for a grand total of 5 hours.

Unfreaking believable!

 

[Kavya01]

I said it before and I will say it again:
If ANY employee in ANY position in ANY function in any place of business in this country had done their duties as p***-poor as this jury did theirs, they'd be out on their backsides faster than you can say "see ya' ,wouldn't wanna be ya'!"

These twelve committed to doing theirs. They should have owned up to fatigue and confusion and boredom and incompetence BEFORE going into deliberation.

Shame on them forever.
Also, no matter how fond I have become of HHJP, his management skills in managing this jury were sub-par. I do not care if it was because of budget constraints, plant constraints, or outside media pressures. He should have guarded the process better and recognized the group processes going on in that bunch.

I never have understood the utility of the "Jury of your peers" system, ( from the Netherlands originally though now in US) but I understand it even less now.

 

[EPfan]

How about a search on the computer for how+to+make+chloroform? That sound like a pretty good connection?

Like was said by LDB, 84, 84, 84 times? If you could prove someone made chloroform, bought chloroform, or bought the ingredience, then OK. But you can't, or the prosecution would have persued that. The prosecured even told you they didn't know if the chloroform was used, in the closing arguments. I think that was a BIG mistake, because if you (If you were a juror) were trying to use the chloroform in your decision, that gave a enough reasonable doubt right there. You can't say we only hope that chloroform......... That for me, while I was keeping an open mind and believing innocent until proven guilty, blew my mind. I remember thinking all this talk about chlorform, 84 times, and now they say, "We can only Hope."
I think it was pretty clear that chloroform was looked up because of the joke on the boyfriends facebook page. Or shall we say the joke on the facebook page caused reasonable doubt. Just MOO. It wasn't even proven that chloroform was made or used to the beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't focus on something unless you can connect it. That wasn't done by the prosecution. I don't really understand how/why people are holding on to this.

 

[Sustained]

Like was said by LDB, 84, 84, 84 times? If you could prove someone made chloroform, bought chloroform, or bought the ingredience, then OK. But you can't, or the prosecution would have persued that. The prosecured even told you they didn't know if the chloroform was used, in the closing arguments. I think that was a BIG mistake, because if you (If you were a juror) were trying to use the chloroform in your decision, that gave a enough reasonable doubt right there. You can't say we only hope that chloroform......... That for me, while I was keeping an open mind and believing innocent until proven guilty, blew my mind. I remember thinking all this talk about chlorform, 84 times, and now they say, "We can only Hope."

The correct quote was "We can only hope the chloroform was applied to Caylee BEFORE the duct tape". How do you transpose that into the chloroform might not have been used ?

I think it was pretty clear that chloroform was looked up because of the joke on the boyfriends facebook page. Or shall we say the joke on the facebook page caused reasonable doubt. Just MOO. It wasn't even proven that chloroform was made or used to the beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't focus on something unless you can connect it. That wasn't done by the prosecution. I don't really understand how/why people are holding on to this

FCA typed "HOW TO MAKE CHLOROFORM" into the Google search engine. How does a joke about chloroform make someone want to know how to make it ? I could see looking up chloroform in Wikipedia to see what it is, but FCA looked up how to make it ? Plus look up "household weapons", "shovel", etc.

See my comments in blue as to why people are "holding" onto this ....

 

[Interrobang]

It is extremely difficult for me to write what I am about to, because I believe with all of my heart that <modsnip>/<mod snip>/KC/FCA/etc is guilty of something that should have landed her in prison for at least the majority of her life.

The chloroform thing was always so hard for me truly believe. The only thing that made the idea a possibility for me was the number "84." I know that I love my access to the internet and that I will research *anything* that piques my curiousity. The only thing that stops me from googling everything that crosses my mind is the realization that some topics could be misunderstood by the authorities or else straight up crimes.

Sociopathy doesn't mean automatic criminal genius, and I have a very hard time imagining FCA bothering with making chloroform and subjecting herself to the dangers associated with the process. She had duct tape. She didn't need anything else to smother a 2 year old child.

Her father had access to industrial strength automotive cleaning products and I think most of us are absolutely certain that CA cleaned the living daylights out of that car. Chloroform, of course, would very likely be a component of such solutions.

I've said that I feel she is guilty of something serious, but let me also say I don't believe it for a moment that it was an accident. When the prosecution was talking about how Caylee would have most likely been restrained and mentioned that her arms might have been held in place ... I saw FCA clutch at her own wrist. And I fully believe, with absolute certainty, that the look on her face when she did so was the look of someone vividly remembering something to the point of almost reliving it.

I wouldn't have needed the chloroform to have convicted her, had I sat on the jury.

I think it was pretty clear that chloroform was looked up because of the joke on the boyfriends facebook page. Or shall we say the joke on the facebook page caused reasonable doubt. Just MOO. It wasn't even proven that chloroform was made or used to the beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't focus on something unless you can connect it. That wasn't done by the prosecution. I don't really understand how/why people are holding on to this.

 

[Sustained]

It is extremely difficult for me to write what I am about to, because I believe with all of my heart that <mod snip>/KC/FCA/etc is guilty of something that should have landed her in prison for at least the majority of her life.

The chloroform thing was always so hard for me truly believe. The only thing that made the idea a possibility for me was the number "84." I know that I love my access to the internet and that I will research *anything* that piques my curiousity. The only thing that stops me from googling everything that crosses my mind is the realization that some topics could be misunderstood by the authorities or else straight up crimes.

Sociopathy doesn't mean automatic criminal genius, and I have a very hard time imagining FCA bothering with making chloroform and subjecting herself to the dangers associated with the process. She had duct tape. She didn't need anything else to smother a 2 year old child.

Her father had access to industrial strength automotive cleaning products and I think most of us are absolutely certain that CA cleaned the living daylights out of that car. Chloroform, of course, would very likely be a component of such solutions.

I've said that I feel she is guilty of something serious, but let me also say I don't believe it for a moment that it was an accident. When the prosecution was talking about how Caylee would have most likely been restrained and mentioned that her arms might have been held in place ... I saw FCA clutch at her own wrist. And I fully believe, with absolute certainty, that the look on her face when she did so was the look of someone vividly remembering something to the point of almost reliving it.

I wouldn't have needed the chloroform to have convicted her, had I sat on the jury.

I have a harder time believing that FCA would kill Caylee by putting duct tape over the nose and mouth of Caylee with those big brown eyes staring up at her. It's easier for me to believe that the chloroform thing was going on for awhile with FCA experimenting with how much Caylee could tolerate before waking up. IMO, on 6/16 she overdosed her with chloroform, possibly spilling the whole bottle in the trunk as well.

As far as obtaining/making the chloroform, FCA was easily capable of doing either w/o detection. You're correct in that sociopathy does not make criminal genius, but when I examined the levels and depths of her lies, it is blatantly obvious to me that making chloroform is in her wheelhouse.

 

[Interrobang]

I fully appreciate where you are coming from. I have quite possibly spent too much time entertaining "what ifs" in a desperate attempt to understand why this woman is having photo shoots with a Starbucks.

The only thing that you said that I would nitpick at is what you said about FCA caring a bit about what Caylee's eyes looked like. I don't think that she had the psychological capability to be disturbed by such. I still wonder if maybe we gave the woman too much credit because we are looking at the situation from the eyes of actual human beings. I may not be fully convinced about some things, but I am of one: consciences were out of stock the day that FCA was made.

Again, I don't mean to offend anyone. I'm a bit nervous to be playing in this area of the forum because I know a lot of us are still very upset about this.

Thanks for being gentle with the newbie

I have a harder time believing that FCA would kill Caylee by putting duct tape over the nose and mouth of Caylee with those big brown eyes staring up at her. It's easier for me to believe that the chloroform thing was going on for awhile with FCA experimenting with how much Caylee could tolerate before waking up. IMO, on 6/16 she overdosed her with chloroform, possibly spilling the whole bottle in the trunk as well.

As far as obtaining/making the chloroform, FCA was easily capable of doing either w/o detection. You're correct in that sociopathy does not make criminal genius, but when I examined the levels and depths of her lies, it is blatantly obvious to me that making chloroform is in her wheelhouse.