Do prosecutors try too hard in high-profile cases?
I wonder if the Casey Anthony verdict would have been different if the prosecutors hadn’t made it a death penalty case — because of the effect the ultimate punishment had on Casey’s mother.
Mom was cooperative with the police at first, and seemed to believe that her daughter killed Caley. But how can a mother help put her own daughter to death?
In a surprise twist at trial, Mom took the blame for some of the most incriminating evidence in the case. A bunch of Internet searches had been run on Casey’s home computer, looking into killing with chloroform. Mom testified that she – not Casey – was the one who ran those searches, because her dogs were eating the yard plants and Mom was concerned about them ingesting chlorophyl. So Mom looked it up on the home computer.
Over eighty times.
While Mom was at work.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. That testimony was clearly a mother’s last ditch attempt to save her daughter’s life.
I wonder if Mom would’ve testified to such an obvious lie if her daughter’s life wasn’t on the line. I think prosecutors pushed her toward that testimony by threatening Casey with the penalty of death.
Personally, I don’t believe in capital punishment for many reasons (the subject of another post). But even pro-death-penalty prosecutors would be wise to consider the psychological effect that the prospect of the electric chair will have on jurors and witnesses alike.
Eddie says
11 July, 2011 at 9:49 pmMaybe it’s time we eliminated jury trials all together. Six weeks is a long time for your average citizen to sit and listen attentively to testimony. I have testified at many homicide trials, and more often than not I have observed jurors sleeping. How can you sit and listen to six weeks worth of testimony, and deliberate for only 10 hours. Whether you are in agreement with the verdict or not, it seems that 10 hours was not much of an effort on the part of the jurors.
Allison Leotta says
11 July, 2011 at 10:38 pmSome countries have professional jurors, and seem no worse for the wear. But here in America, we’d need a constitutional amendment.
John raab says
14 July, 2011 at 3:28 pmI didn’t have a chance to watch all the evidence, but from what I heard I can’t understand how 12 people can be so wrong. I thought we had taken a step forward from OJ in 1995, when everything points to the correct person, but the jury see something else. Now we have a little girl that is gone and no body takes responsibility for this crime. It is a shame.
Allison Leotta says
28 July, 2011 at 1:32 pmHi John,
Thanks for checking in. Yes, it is incredibly sad. But I hope all is well with you and Shannon. Looking forward to the next issue of Suspense Magazine!
Bob Gatecourt says
22 July, 2011 at 1:44 pmImagine the Future Legal Career of Casey Anthony:
http://abovethelaw.com/2011/07/imagining-the-future-legal-career-of-casey-anthony/
Scott Butki says
28 July, 2011 at 4:22 amFor what it’s worth the expert witness whose comments/ reports sparked the idea she looked at something 80 times said he wanted to go back and tell the jury he’d made an error – that it was just one time – but that his plan was nixed.
kinda weird.
what would you do, allison, if you had a prosecution witness who realized his data was faulty and wanted to rectify that?
details here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/casey-anthony-witness-says-testimony-wrong_n_903690.html
Allison Leotta says
28 July, 2011 at 1:19 pmHi Scott, Thanks for checking out my blog! Interesting point. I think the expert’s change of heart, in the middle of trial, is strange. Experts are supposed to have done all their work, and formulated their opinion, long before trial starts. In fact, when using an expert witness, the prosecution must turn over his qualifications, methods, and conclusions weeks before the trial. If I were the prosecutor, I’d be wondering why this expert suddenly changed his opinion at the 11th hour. Could he have a financial motive for the change? I’d ask other computer experts to opine. If other experts said that his original testimony was right, I might be suspicious of his change of heart, and not want him on the stand again. But if other experts backed up his new theory, there’d be a better case for amending his testimony. Prosecutors have a duty to be fair, and the last thing you want is to have false testimony on the record. I wonder what was going on behind the scenes. How are things at NewsVine?