Chopping Block

I shouldn’t read CNN.com. It’s my version of a soap opera. Apparently I don’t think my own life of tripping over tea parties and wiping up disgusting things is exciting enough. So I borrow trouble. The news is trouble. It either leaves me empty and desperately sad, as in the case of the father who fell to his death at a Texas Rangers game last week while his son watched (I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this one) or it leaves me furious, as in the case of poor Juror #12 in the Casey Anthony trial.

It’s a mistake to talk about the Casey Anthony trial. I know it is. People are hot as fire over this. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is right. Except the jurors. And according to most people, they are as dumb as bricks or as evil as Jezebel. Mostly they are dumb as bricks. I don’t think that. I think they followed the rules of our court system.

They listened to the information. It looked bad for Casey Anthony. I mean, come ON, she waited 31 days to report her daughter as a missing person? Partying like it’s 1999. Stinky trunk. Oddly content behavior. No mention to anyone of her fears or worries.

Do I think she did it? Yep.

Do I know for sure? Nope.

She knows. God knows. I’m not sure anyone else does.

The jury couldn’t prove a cause of death in the child. If you can’t prove cause of death, it’s pretty difficult to paint a clear image of a crime scene and place a person there as the murderer. And they couldn’t find any real DNA to prove Anthony was there.

So the jury listened to every last detail. And they probably wanted to believe she did it and put her away for the stupid looks on her face. But at the end of the road, they weren’t sure. Because the American justice system that we’re so proud of says that if there’s a reasonable doubt, you have to acquit. And no proof of how this child died leaves a decent gap for a reasonable doubt to walk through.

But that’s not good enough for America. No, they have to take their opinions and write them down in death threats and send them to Juror #12, a 60 year old wife, mother, and grandmother who never wanted to be on a murder trial jury. She just wants to go back to her job at Publix. But she can’t do that now, because it isn’t safe to. So she has gone into hiding with her husband, stating that she’d rather go to jail than be on a jury like this one again. In ways, she is in jail. She can’t go home. She can’t live her life.

We like our freedoms. And, by Sister Sassyfras, we’re entitled to them all. Those freedoms are protected by a justice system, among many other things. This jury gave up weeks of their lives to sit and listen and discern the facts of this case. When they didn’t return the verdict that we were certain was the right one, a whole bunch of people began making death threats.  That makes  a heap of sense, doesn’t it?

That’s not the justice system. That’s a lynch mob.

To Juror #12, on behalf of America, I am very sorry.