[Cerek]

Originally Posted by John D Harris I watched some of the Horse and pony show, the thing that struck me after listening to several members of the Jury speak out about the verdict, was their complete lack of understanding the English language. They seemed to think "Reasonable" is the same thing as "Any" Those are two completely seperate words with completely seperate meanings. You can have lots and lots of doubts about her guilt and none of those doubts be reasonable. One could doubt she killed her child because space aliens took her, but that doubt isn't reasonable. But alas the Jury has spoken.

I agree, in one respect. Even though the evidence was all circumstantial, when you look at it all together, the only reasonable explanation for everything is that Casey killed her daughter. The fact that she lied constantly and clung to those lies until there was absolutely no way to deny them anymore also speaks to her credibility, as does her willingness to throw her dad and family under the bus to save her own skin.

As for the accidental drowning theory, I still say the one comment from the prosecution covers that very well; "Nobody tries to make an accidental death look like a murder."

Of course, we don't know what type of restrictions the jury was placed under to render a guilty verdict. The one time I actually sat on a jury, it was a case of a local guy with a LOT of money and political clout getting in a fist fight with a blue collar worker after a loooong history of harassing the worker. There was a bill expand part of a local town's city limits. The rich guy (with the clout) did not want the expansion. When it looked like the voters would vote in the annex anyway, he decided the next strategy was to simply get the town worker responsible for laying the water pipe to the new area fired. So he went after this guy with everything he had. He finally went so far as to drive to the guys home on a Sunday afternoon and take pictures of him using "town equipment" for personal use. The worker finally had enough and it ended in a big fist fight with him and his wife sending the rich guy and HIS wife to the hospital after beating the ever-lovin tar out of them.

During the deliberation, MOST of the jury wanted to clear the worker and his wife of ALL charges and give the rich guy NO damages, but the letter of the law required that the worker WAS guilty since he threw the first punch. However, we all agreed the rich guy did DESERVE the ass-whuppin he got, so we cleared the wife of all charges, charged the worker with only one count of assault (which we were required to do) and awarded the rich guy NO DAMAGES.

My concern was that their attorney would file an appeal if we didn't charge the guy with the one count of assault and the next jury might not be as sympathetic. So we finally agreed that one count against the worker would be the least damaging result and prevent the possibility of the case coming to court again.