Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[AlabamAlum]

Spacer,

For me, the layperson, what is the standard? With a lack of direct physical evidence - when there is no gun with fingerprints, no video surveillance tape, and no handwritten confession - is the key for the accused to just to deny, deny, deny?

Means: snapping the neck of an adult isn't that difficult - if you know what you're doing and your victim is asleep or unable to fight back, the cervical spine of an adult can be broken without great strength - so, the neck of a two year-old would be easy. Likewise, suffocating or drowning a 2-year-old would be easy.

Motive: Much like South Carolina's Susan Smith, I would argue that she didn't want to be a mom because it was getting in the way of her partying and potential romantic hook-ups.

Opportunity: The baby was living in her house.


So, in sum:

1. Internet searches for chloroform; neck breaking.

2. Baby missing for 31 days and no report made. When questioned, Casey said, “The nanny took her.” She later admitted that she had lied and wanted to “keep her job at Universal Studios” (which was also a lie – she did not have a job at Universal).

3. She was reportedly not upset or distraught during the time her baby was "missing". Instead, she partied, went shopping, and got a tattoo that said, "Bella Vita" (the good life) and moved in with her boyfriend:




4. The smell of human decay was so strong in Anthony’s car, that the grandmother said that she had to use ‘Clorox wipes and Febreze on Caylee’s favorite doll to get the smell off’ – this favorite doll was found in Casey’s car, along with strands of the baby’s hair in the trunk with more ‘rot’ smell.



5. Casey Anthony had abandoned the car with the rot smell where the doll was found. Casey was not a woman of great financial means. She did not have money to abandon a car she could not afford to replace (which was a newer model Pontiac ). Also left in the car was a pair of Casey’s shoes and pair of boots.



6. Sometime after the baby went “missing,” Casey asked to borrow a shovel from a neighbor. It was still in her house when police searched.

7. This photo was taken at a “Hot Body” contest Casey entered after her baby went “missing”:

[AlabamAlum]

Anyway, like I said, if the prosecution had told me what I posted above, I would have found her guilty for at least manslaughter.

Apparently, the jury was deadlocked at 6-6 at first.

Juror number three's comments:

Tuchman commented, “You told me that the original vote for the aggravated manslaughter was 6-6... which side of the six were you on?”

She responded, “...manslaughter.”

Tuchman then inquired, “So originally you thought that she was guilty of manslaughter or could be guilty of manslaughter?”

Ford answered, “Could be... I wanted to investigate it further to see if it fit, based on the evidence that we were given.”

Tuchman asked her what convinced her to switch her vote to not guilty.

“I think everyone will tell you the same thing. It's just lack of hard evidence."


Continue reading on Examiner.com Casey Anthony juror 3 says she switched vote from manslaughter to not guilty - National Crime | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/crime-in-nation ... z1S5RyjkWQ

[BigRedMan]

I like our jury system on most occasions, however they dropped the ball on this one. The prosecutor is also to blame trying to get first degree murder with death penalty.

75% jury, 25% prosecutor

Hopefully this bitch and anyone involved with killing this child or covering it up will get hit by a bus.

[It's me Karen]

I like our jury system on most occasions, however they dropped the ball on this one. The prosecutor is also to blame trying to get first degree murder with death penalty.

75% jury, 25% prosecutor

Hopefully this bitch and anyone involved with killing this child or covering it up will get hit by a bus.

I believe in what goes around comes around. That woman will have no life. She will be treated as a pariah worse than OJ. She wanted to be judged by her peers, well, then every day peers will treat her like a murderer. May she be unable to look at herself in a mirror.

[AlabamAlum]

Actually, the prosecutor put up numerous potential charges (Florida allows that). IIRC, the jury had 6 potential charges presented to them and they could have chose one, two, or all.

[AlabamAlum]

Heard one lawyer on TV say that this is becoming more common with juries. That because of shows like CSI, Bones, and the like, a jury now expects a technical and high level forensic "checkmate!" to be handed out by the prosecution.

I don't know if that's the case, but what he said was interesting. I suppose we could do a retrospective in a few years and see if we are now getting a higher percentage of acquittals absent the 'smoking, fingerprinted gun' than we used to.

Regardless, I support our legal system and realize that no process with humans will produce perfect results.

[Hacksaw]

All you need is one woman on a jury and it's a total crapshoot.

There, I said it.

[Dr. Nostron]

heh

[innocentbystander]

All you need is one woman on a jury and it's a total crapshoot.

There, I said it.

In 1920, the argument against giving women the right to vote in all 48 states (as Hawaii and Alaska weren't in yet) by Constitutional Amendment, was predicated on the belief that women were (by the nature of their gender) too emotional to think think objectively. In other words, too many women would vote by making decisions with their heart and not their head. You could expand this emotions driven logic by saying the same thing about putting women on a jury for a capital murder case.

Alas, in 1920 our Senators and Congressmen concluded that even if this emotions driven logic was true, that didn't matter. Voting based on what is in your heart (and not in your head) may not make objective sense, but is was perfectly Democratic.

By the by, Ann Coulter has repeatedly claimed that if women could not have voted, following Woodrow Wilson the only GOP Presidential candidate who would have lost in the 20th century would have been Barry Goldwater.

[Owlman]

The weather man is right 'bout half the time too....

That's 50%. In this case, they were right 100%.

[Owlman]

[quote="AlabamAlum"]Spacer,

For me, the layperson, what is the standard? With a lack of direct physical evidence - when there is no gun with fingerprints, no video surveillance tape, and no handwritten confession - is the key for the accused to just to deny, deny, deny?

Means: snapping the neck of an adult isn't that difficult - if you know what you're doing and your victim is asleep or unable to fight back, the cervical spine of an adult can be broken without great strength - so, the neck of a two year-old would be easy. Likewise, suffocating or drowning a 2-year-old would be easy.

Motive: Much like South Carolina's Susan Smith, I would argue that she didn't want to be a mom because it was getting in the way of her partying and potential romantic hook-ups.

Opportunity: The baby was living in her house.


In this case, the problem was several fold. One, the prosecutors overcharged (I discussed this with one of my crim law professor colleagues who talked to many on the defense bar). Also, it was mostly circumstantial evidence. The mother testified that she used the computer at the house and that she was looking up chlorophyl and got to chloroform. It wasn't clear that Casey was the last person to see Caylee. It could have been the Grandparents. It's he said/she said. They say she picked up Caylee and they never saw her again. But Casey arrived soon after at the boyfriend without Caylee, which is not uncommon. He thought she was just staying with the GP.
Drowning could have been a possibility, but the autopsy didn't really show. It was a mostly circumstantial case involving he said/she said with a very obviously dysfunctional family.

I still think she did it, but I understand the verdict.

[Owlman]

And I agree that it would have been a different verdict probably if it were a man based on the presumptions that are afforded to and/or against women and men

[AlabamAlum]

Yes, the parents would have been suspect -enough to give me reasonable doubt that Casey may not have done it- had it not for Casey's actions.

Abandoning a newer car (that ran), not reporting the baby missing for a month and then lying to authorities about who took her, the partying, shopping, tattoo, shovel, leaving her home to move in with the boyfriend, and the smell of rot in the abandoned car removed the crazy parents as suspects and put it back on her.

Although, I would have been okay with all three of them going to jail (for the good of society).

[innocentbystander]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... ns/241959/

I've tried to roughly prioritize spending as I think is politically palatable to both tea partiers and others: the debt payments first, followed by military payrolls and family housing, VA benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. After that, we hit the red bloc: funding for military operations. Somewhere in there, the money runs out. Anyone in line after that doesn't get paid.

The problem is, prioritizing strictly the way this chart does won't work. Are you really going to just stop funding current military operations on August 3rd? You're going to leave a bunch of guys sitting in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya with tanks and automatic weapons and no way to get them home?

Going to empty the prisons? How many guards do you think turn up for work when you stop paying them?

How about border control? I don't think it's going to be popular with the GOP base when you cease border enforcement and invite anyone who wants to to stroll across our unmanned border checkpoints. However much you hate the ATF and the DEA, they are a small fraction of this sort of spending at the federal level.

If we cut all funding for "general government", who is going to collect the revenues that you need to pay for all the social security checks and Medicare payments you plan to move out?

How long are landlords going to let tenants ride when Section 8 checks don't arrive? Going to let kids sleep on the streets?

Is your kid planning to take out a student loan for college this fall? Not any more, they're not.

As any unemployed recent law school graduate with $150,000 of student loan debt will tell you, there shouldn't be any government funded student loans. If there weren't students loans, pell grants, and other government money for needy students, then maybe Boston College would be $13,000/year instead of $54,000 a year?

There should be NO public housing for single parents as this only further encourages more single parents. And I can go buy a gun and sit on the Arizona border with my father-in-law if my government refuses to secure it. Hell they don't secure it now, what-the-fuck is the difference?

I already let my in-laws live with me rent free. They don't need their SSI checks to live. I suppose if on August 3rd, my parents no longer get their SSI checks, they can move in rent-free too....

...we can make room.

There. I am willing to make all those sacrifices Megan. If I can make those sacrifices, then anyone in my generation can. The time is now to draw the line in the sand. It's over. Don't raise the Debt Ceiling. I will vote out of office anyone that I can that agrees to raise it.

[Professor Tiger]

Personally, I am ready to leave the debt ceiling as is.

Yes, we all hear the caterwauling about the end of the world if they don't raise it. But those who are doing the caterwauling are also the ones with the most to lose if we don't raise the debt ceiling - mostly Wall Street-types who, oh by the way, are making a LOT of money these days while the rest of the country is suffering. The investment bankers will eat.

Moreover, all the catastrophizing about not raising the debt ceiling is exactly the same thing you hear from a spendaholic who has already maxed out five credit cards, and now their application for a sixth is being rejected: 'YOU CAN'T DENY ME A SIXTH CREDIT CARD!!! I'M COUNTING ON IT TO SCHEDULE A CRUISE, A BMW AND A BOOB JOB!!! MY WORLD WILL COME TO AN END!!!"

At the end of the day, normal people have to live within their means. So should the federal government. Yes, it will be painful, but this kind of pain is corrective, necessary and ultimately, healthy.

Finally, if we keep overspending and overborrowing, then we will become Greece in a few years. Except there will be no EU sugar daddy around to bail us out. If there is going to be pain, then we might as well deal with the pain right here, right now, and not wait until it is foisted upon our children and grandchildren.

[innocentbystander]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/27 ... ue-de-rugy

The question, then, is one of tradeoffs between a debt crisis today and a debt crisis tomorrow. I tend to think that it would be better to address our spending problem today rather than push it down the road for our children to deal with. I also tend to think that by not addressing the problem now we are making things worse. Others, however, seem to believe that if we avoid the crisis today, there will be enough political momentum to get our financial house in order in the near future before it is too late. I seriously doubt that.

[10ac]

I said she would be found not guilty just like the "experts".

[Professor Tiger]

NRO should at least footnote me.

[Professor Tiger]

How the debt ceiling negotiations are going about now:

[Owlman]

Raise the debt ceiling (I personally don't think it's something that should even be voted on based on the 14th Amendment). Pay your bills. Address the cuts where it is supposed to be addressed, in the budget that they will have to pass in the next 3 to 6 months. Fight for all the cuts, taxes whatever then. Seems reasonable, except that the Bush tax cuts at some point automatically expire and in the budget battle, this may shift the negotiating power.

Reckless taking the risk of trashing the economy, rising interest rates etc just because it MIGHT not happen (despite the view of most economist).