Anthony jurors did their duty
Casey Anthony, center, is overcome with emotion following her acquittal of murder charges in Orlando, Fla. (July 5, 2011). Credit: AP
The 12 Florida jurors who determined there wasn't enough evidence to convict Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter also delivered a very reassuring verdict Tuesday about our justice system.
It still works.
Despite the spectators screaming for blood on the courthouse steps and the hanging judges on television, the jury that spent five weeks listening to all the testimony and legal standards required for conviction took little more than 10 hours to acquit a very unlikeable defendant.
Stripped of the histrionics, it's not surprising the jury decided there wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a case where the prosecution asked for the death penalty but couldn't provide a cause of death for Caylee Anthony or a compelling motive as to why her mother would do it.
Certainly there was plenty of lying about what happened to the toddler, who had been missing for six months before her body was found in a ditch near her grandparents' home. The jurors convicted her mother of four counts of making false statements to the police about the 2008 disappearance of Caylee.
A rush to judgment in the media-driven spectacle is not surprising; it happens again and again in the cases that capture the public's imagination. This time, however, strong suspicions didn't carry the day. For many the doubts will long linger on the moral issue of whether Casey Anthony is innocent, but in legal terms, justice was done.
