I paid the slightest attention to the Casey Anthony murder trial in Florida. Evidently, now, if you look up “dysfunctional family” on Wikipedia, the Anthony family photo pops up – what a mess. I was aware the case had gone to the jury, but yesterday I checked my Facebook and saw anguished cries of pain at the injustice in Florida. I checked Fox News and sure enough, Casey Anthony beat the rap. She is legally not guilty of killing her child.
Evidently, twelve jurors sat through hours and hours of testimony. They were not allowed to watch the breathless 24/7 coverage of this trial and every aspect of it. They did not get to hear Nancy Grace screech her pronouncements of guilt or hear the legal experts opine.
They just sat and listened to the evidence. They considered the evidence and they rendered a verdict.
And then the 300 million or so legal experts went to work decrying the verdict. As I said, my Facebook feed started having posts like this (no grammatical corrections – it would take too much time!):
as far as im concerned everyone of the jurors should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, I hope they lose sleep and aree unable to look at themselves in the mirror without regret. Apparently its ok to murder an innocent beautiful 2 year old in this country. Our “justice” system is such a joke sometimes. Ugh
i am livid and i am trying to remember all those silly things we tell our children about injustices, but i just can’t believe it!! i just can’t.
One good thing, this will haunt her forever and her life may not be in prision, but will be miserably outside. I think the American people will see to that.. Everybody knows that face.
there is a serious problem with the jury!!!!!
dont worry some crazy psycho will prob beat that hooker down or she will be shunned by society for a very long time. just like oj simpson
Sometimes, evil wins.
Of course, the true experts, celebrities (because if you are a celebrity in America, what you say really matters, right?) chimed in on twitter:
Kim Kardashian: WHAT!!!!???!!!! CASEY ANTHONY FOUND NOT GUILTY!!!! I am speechless!!!” (15 ! in one tweet – wow).
I love response of one smart-aleck – “Yeah, like your father and OJ.”
Jill Zarin: I can NOT believe Casey Anthony was found NOT GUILTY! What..the glove didn’t fit? The is terrible. I am SHOCKED.
The “glove didn’t fit” thing got real popular.
Jason Biggs: I guess the glove didn’t fit.
Kim Zolciak: WOW
Points for being succinct.
Ricki Lake: I’m disgusted! #notguilty? Oh come on.
Well, Ricki used to have a talk show, so she is a genuine expert, right?
Aubrey O’Day: They said she’s Not Guilty guys. The jury was her maker & that’s the law. I don’t know,my heart hurts. I don’t feel like justice was served.
Now, I have no idea whether Casey Anthony actually killed her daughter. If you asked me to give my opinion, I would certainly say yes. But I’m not a legal expert. And neither are any of my Facebook friends. Some of the celebrities may have played lawyers on TV, but they are not true experts.
Twelve people sat and listened to the testimony. Day after day. They were not asked to deliver an opinion on whether Casey Anthony killed her daughter. They were asked to answer the question, “Has the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Casey Anthony killed her daughter?”
But 300 million people who did not listen to the testimony and did not join in the discussion believe they know better what the verdict should have been. Does this say something about our culture today? We watch 24/7 news coverage and consider ourselves experts on world affairs. “Hey, I watched an hour of coverage on Fox News last week and she is GUILTY!”
Do we sometimes do that with blogging? When Kevin Ezell announces some new plans at NAMB, all of us become experts. “That will never work.” “Ezell should know better.” You know what, maybe he does! Maybe he has information I don’t have that have helped him arrive at the place he is at. “Why did they pick Eliff? He’s too old. It will never work!” Are we sure? I wasn’t part of the deliberations or discussions. I have opinions and I have insights. I have the right to share them. But I should also realize that while I have some OPINIONS about NAMB, I am not an expert. I have some VIEWPOINTS on the IMB, but I am not an expert.
Maybe I should do a little research before I criticize Ed Stetzer’s factual reports. Novel concept, eh?
I am not arguing that only the experts should have opinions. But I am arguing that those of us who have opinions ought to have the humility to realize that we are not experts. We are not the jury. We have not been part of the deliberations. Perhaps, we truly do only know in part.
I seems that you wish to somehow elevate yourself above the mindless masses. This seems to be a theme of your comments and tweets since I’ve recently started paying attention to them. It’s as if there is some need on your part to be “cool”–to say “edgy” things in order to perhaps attract those hip, modern folks to the Gospel. Remember your tweet about how bikers are better tippers than Christians? I like this blog, but your attitude comes across as elitism.
As far as the Anthony case goes, it seems rather silly of you to take issue with the rage against the verdict. After all, it’s indisputable fact that this “mother” knew her child was missing for a month, did not alert authorities, and when finally confronted lied through her teeth. What kind of mother does that? The kind that kills her own offspring.
Dave, I do think that many times there is group think that is contrary to the Word. And I only write a post if I think of something that I think no one else has said, or hasn’t said clearly enough.
Are you suggesting I should only post that which everyone believes? Am I not supposed to give a perspective slightly different than what others give? Why write if I’m just going to say what everyone else has said?
And I guess I’m a little taken aback by the “cool” thing. I’m just about the farthest thing from cool, edgy, hip or modern. I wish my kids would read this. They would bust a gasket laughing to think that someone accused their old man of trying to be hip.
Oh by the way, Dad, you left your roller blades in my car …and your fanny pack.
Seriously, though, I don’t see anything “edgy” about observing that Christians are stingy tippers. I worked in food service a long time. I’ve listened to a lot of servers talk on their breaks. I think you’re reading ‘elitism’ into ‘thoughtfulness.’
And by [you] I mean OP Dave, not Yankee Dave.
Dave (not Miller),
So you can’t point to any evidence of Casey Anthony’s involvement in a homicide. But you feel rage about the verdict.
Keep in mind that Casey wasn’t on trial for being a bitch. That was proven way beyond a reasonable doubt.
For some reason, many Americans are suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of reasonable doubt. I suggest:
It would appear that the reasonableness of “reasonable doubt” is in the eye of the beholder and is directly related to how close of a relationship one has with the accused.
This is exactly what happened in the Michael Jackson trial. The evidence was just not there. But we knew he was guilty. Why? Because he looked creepy.
The 12 dumbest people in the world (evidently) are the ones who heard all the evidence. Perhaps we should just do away with the whole trial/jury system and just do an internet poll.
And Dave, yes, trying to inject a little sense into a feeding frenzy is both edgy and cool. It’s too bad your baseball sense lags so far behind.
At the risk of trying to sound cool again…you got the point. Everyone acts like the jury are idiots and that if they simple had a little sense, they would have convicted.
But they listened to testimony.
They were in the deliberations.
They rendered a verdict.
My point was not so much about Casey Anthony, though, as it was about the fact that we stand at a distance and act like we are experts who know everything.
notice how I ignored the crack about the Yankees.
I’ve always heard we would rather let TEN guilty men go free than put ONE innocent man in jail, but right now that number seems a bit arbitrary. How about FIVE to ONE?
Bravo. That is a brilliant comment. If you tweeted that, I’d retweet it! (Cause I’m cool that way).
I really don’t by understand how anyone is shocked at this verdict, whether or not we think she’s guilty, the prosecution did a lousy job. I told my wife days before the verdict that they would either find her guilty of a lesser charge or not guilty. The fact was that there was a reasonable doubt because the prosecution didn’t tie up the loose ends. Do I think Casey Anthony is guilty? Yes, but I didn’t sit through six weeks of testimony like the jury did, I’m glad in America that a person is innocent until proven guilty. If we let the court of public opinion (with media bias of course) rule, then a lot of innocent people would swing.
Well, shucks… let me chime in. I watched every minute of the trial. I thought my DVR would surely run out of hours.
I’d have hung the jury, because that young woman acted in despicable ways and her daughter didn’t end up in a swamp because she was a concerned mother acting her child’s best interests while she joined the hot-body contest.
But I am reminded, that my sense of justice is often not the same as our Savior’s. The real truth is that God will judge Casey Anthony and she will receive from God what He desires, not what we desire. Few people who live by lying, manipulation and deceit change their ways without the power of Jesus in their life. Just like O.J., bad behavior always catches up with people who never take stock of their own lives.
We might also want to consider that some of the great men and women of faith in the scriptures, had great and egregious faults.
There is nothing that God does not see. I leave Casey Anthony to Him.
Did they actually televise the whole thing? Wow.
Interesting observation – not scientific, just a thought. Women seem far more scandalized about this than men – as a whole.
She’ll get busted in a couple of years trying to steal back her sports memorabilia…
Seriously though, I’m reading comment after comment of people claiming over and over again that God will do to X to Casey when its time.
Seriously, what if she’s just guilty of being a liar and a horrible mother?
We’re putting our bias into claiming that God will do X when X is what we want to do ourselves.
What if she’s just guilty of being a horrible, selfish mother?
“”What if . . .?””
What if she actually killed her child? Don’t forget, she was not found innocent of the crime she was charged with.
She was just found “not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” and there is reasonable doubt as to whether any juror in such a case could comprehend the legal sense of that term.
The little girl is indeed dead and the one Casey tried to pin it on at first, was a complete fabrication. So, there is more than just “lying for lying sake,” there is lying for cover-up sake. That points to guilt clear and simple.
But guillty to what degree . . . time will tell.
I think the jurors did as good as any human beings could have done and I hope they do not suffer anquish over their decision.
David,
Everybody knows… about nothing.
Good post!
“Perhaps, we truly do only know in part.”
” . . . . wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light
what is hidden in darkness . . . ”
(from 1 Cor. 4:5)
The ‘Gospel’ of the Beatitudes’ brings some comfort to us now:
Well, if our whole nation’s tremendous sense of mourning
at the power of evil at work in the killing of a small child
is an indication,
maybe we as a people are more ‘blessed’ than we realized in this country.
In the Beatitudes, we are told that those who mourn all of the tremendous might of evil throughout the world will be comforted:
To such mourners the Lord Jesus carries the comfort of the heavenly kingdom, “the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25)
In trust and with the patience of faith, we wait upon the day when in the heavenly Kingdom of Our Lord, no little ones will be harmed by evil:
. . . . “He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes,
nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears.
4 But He shall judge the poor with justice, and shall reprove with equity the meek of the earth: and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His Mouth, and with the Breath of His Lips He shall slay the wicked.
5 And justice shall be the girdle of his loins: and faith the girdle of his reins.
6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them.
7 The calf and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall rest together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 And the sucking child shall play on other hole of the asp: and the weaned child shall thrust his hand into the den of the basilisk.
9 They shall not hurt, nor shall they kill in all my holy mountain, for the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea.”
(from Isaiah 11)
I’m concerned about the tone of condemnation from many Christians on this verdict. We know justice and should stand for justice, but only as those who were spared justice at the cross. Jesus’ death wasn’t more necessary for Casey Anthony’s sin than mine.
Up to this point I have ignored your incendiary remarks, your repetitive cliches, and your absolute lack of any common sense … about the Yankees. It is another sign of God’s humor in that he has given you so much wisdom and yet allows you to stumble through this life as a Yankee fan. Maybe it is his way of keeping you humble as most of realize your fallibility every time you pontificate on anything pinstriped.
However, in regards to the article, keep it coming. As you noted in one of your comments this is a classic example of group think. I taught tonight out of 1 Samuel 4 and the arrogance of the children of Israel in demanding the Ark of the Covenant for their battle against the Philistines. I told my wife at lunch that an appropriate Facebook status would be: I am so glad that so many people believe God is the ultimate Judge – now if they just would let Him be what they declare Him to be.
You might want to reverse your remarks about the jury as they are starting to speak out. Juror No. 6 is holding out for a payout before dishing the behind the scenes dirt. Justice was not served and this sociopath will end up making a killing off of her dead daughter.
Read and weep.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=14005609
I’m not sure what this link is intended to show. The jury reached a unanimous decision that there was not sufficient evidence to convict. There is nothing on the site that says different. Reasonable doubt. It is how our system is intended to work. The onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt, not on the accused to prove innocence. The prosecution didn’t.
Someone at church said that listening to Nancy Grace for legal knowledge is like going to Ronald McDonald for fine dining tips. Thot that was pretty funny.
That’s a great one.
I tried assiduously not to know anything about the Casey Anthony trial, and failed. I would have had to turn off all media, including computer – that is a great idea but I didn’t do it.
What this post made me think – again – is that Jesus spoke His Father’s words and did His Father’s will without exception. I wonder if one of the hardest things was NOT speaking to every single issue of the day, or every situation and every questioner He encountered…. very difficult! I appreciate the posts here because they deal with Christian issues both deep and practical. Today I will practice having no opinion on anything having to do with the Casey Anthony trial!
“Leave it to the experts!”
Great argument against trial by jury.
Chief Katie has every credential that the jurors had. Our judicial system is crafted specifically to keep these decisions out of the hands of the experts.
I actually was arguing that the “experts” here were the people who sat in the jury box and listened to testimony (and only to the testimony).
I’m not sure where you are coming from on this one, bart, but I argued exactly the opposite of what you seem to be saying.
Not sure if you actually read the article, Bart, but my point is that we sometimes assume that with partial knowledge we have all knowledge.
Pretty much every sentence in your comment is contrary to what I was saying in my post.
But Chief Katie says that she watched the entire trial. She heard all of the testimony. She’s as qualified as the jury was.
We shouldn’t be angry about the verdict, because perfect justice never comes in this world. But there’s no reason why people aren’t qualified to question the validity of a jury’s verdict. They don’t know anything that we don’t know. Nothing. It was a public trial.
I think that the popularity of CSI and NCIS and Law & Order (particularly the CSIs) have brought people to the place that they think every guilty verdict should be built upon DNA evidence or some other laboratory-conjured proof. And yet our standards of guilt in our justice system pre-date all of that. It seems clear from post-deliberation interviews that the jury was unwilling to convict without conclusive scientific declarations about the cause of death. That’s not the system of justice that we’ve had since the founding of our nation.
But, setting all of that aside, I’m thankful for the jurors and open to their side of the story. But one can, at the same time, respect BOTH the rights of the jurors AND the intelligence and rights of the populace of this nation to disagree with their verdict.
I don’t want to make this about Katie – because I respect her judgment more than about 95% of people who comment here.
So, let’s make it about “Mrs. Doe.” Mrs. Doe watches every second of coverage. But I’m guessing she also listens to fingernail-on-chalkboard screechings of Nancy Grace, and other coverage. What little coverage I watched (and it may have amounted to 1/2 hour – perhaps a whole hour cumulative) was uniform in its condemnation of Casey Anthony.
Jurors (ideally) heard none of that. Only the testimony, statements and the judge’s instructions.
Yes, we are free to disagree. But my point is that those of us with partial knowledge should not really act as if we have all knowledge. Sometimes, someone else knows more than we do.
I will give a for instance. When I heard what SWBTS was doing to Tarrant Association, I thought it was heinous and wrong. Haven’t heard an update on that. But what I heard caused me to lose respect for Paige Patterson and made me wonder how he could do such a thing.
From the information I have, it seems unconscionable.
You are, I believe, a trustee. Chances are that you have more information than I do. You probably understand the full story there more than I do.
That doesn’t mean that I am not entitled to my opinion. It means that I should give my opinion “based on the knowledge I have” and recognize that maybe there is information I don’t have.
Dave,
Thanks… that is high praise coming from you. I’m humbled.
I watched the entire trial. But it is also true that there were times when the Jury was out of the court room and I heard other argument from the lawyers. I learned that Jose Baez played fast and loose with the law many, many times and he was allowed to make heinous accusations against people with absolutely no proof whatsover. I must say, that I was angry about that.
Our media loves to turn every story into a media frenzy. Remember what Nancy Grace did to the LaCrosse players? Shameful behavior on her part. As much as we say that what we see in entertainment is of the lowest form of morality, the truth is we seem to get sucked into it. Who cannot understand that a mother who lied about the whereabouts of her 2 year old daughter for over a month is morally bankrupt and maybe even a sociopath? It’s unthinkable to a mother, and yes, fathers too. But I think you were on to something when you pointed out that women seem to maybe have more interest in this kind of story.
I also think that Bart is probably right about the CSI effect. There was not a scintilla of evidence that Casey Anthony actually killed her child. However, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming. If her child had died as the result of a swimming pool accident, who would work so hard to turn it into a murder? To what end? Would a selfish young woman spend almost three years in jail to cover up an accident?
Whatever happened, Casey Anthony was responsible. She was the child’s mother and everything pointed to her being complicit in a crime.
I have wished that the Prosecution had charged her with child abuse/neglect without tying it to an act of murder. But they chose not to.
There is a precious little girl resting in the arms of Jesus now. All I can do as a Christian woman is to pray for Casey, hoping that she will look for love in the “right” place for probably the first time in her life.
Personally, I admit to feeling a certain amount of shame for having invested so much time in a pursuit that did nothing to further the Kingdom. I don’t know what it is about us as people that seems to compel us to watch the train wreck. Total depravity – Aye!
Times like this, I realize how little wisdom I have.
Everyone knew those lacrosse players were guilty.
So, yes, I can disagree with the findings of the jury, but I should be careful about issuing the blanket condemnation of their intelligence and integrity (which I have seen on the comments and tweets I mentioned above).
Nobody here was there for absolutely 100% of the trial. Not one here sat through the jury selection process. Not one person sat through the entire trial watching just the courthouse feed and then isolated themselves from news commentary and secondary opinions like the jury and their alternates had to do at night and on the weekends. Not one person here sat in the room and deliberated with the jurors for eleven hours over two days.
Not one person is qualified to render a verdict like the jury…
That’s why I’m glad we don’t operate our courts under premises of how we feel or “know in our hearts” like so many are doing right now.
You weren’t there, you didn’t suffer and sacrifice like the jury did, you didn’t have to take the oath the jurors had to take, and you weren’t there living alongside the jurors for weeks. None of us were there.
Dave –
I have to disagree with the premise of your argument; namely that there can or will be an “expert” on any given subject.
I understand your argument that those of us (well, all of us who are breathing) with an opinion on a given subject should be humble enough to acknowledge that we never have all the facts. However, that doesn’t mean that someone proclaimed as an “expert” should hold greater sway.
The fallacy of “the expert” is that, considering the Apostle Paul himself said in scripture that “we know in part and prophecy in part,” the scriptures themselves mitigate against any level of spiritual “expertness, including application of principals. This is the root (I believe) of most argument or disagreements over the “how” and “why” questions in the SBC. One group or another claims evidence, “expert testimony” (i.e. the career missionary or pastor or ministry who did things a certain way), statistics, baptism records, etc; anything to bolster their position. I believe it is arrogance bordering on blasphemy when we try to claim things based on stats or experts: i.e. we should always continue VBS because 21% of kids make professions of faith; 30% of people on the SS role attend and give, so we should sign up as many as possible to statistically increase attendance and giving. I don’t believe the Holy Spirit can be cornered or honored by statistics. But he can be ignored with them.
Experience is a great teacher and should be a guide to those who are not in the know. However, to claim “expert” status in spiritual matters I think is a bit far fetched and the opposite of humility. None of us will ever “get it” completely this side of Glory and we should remember that. In fact, those with the most experience should be the most humble, not experts: 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt 20:26-28, ESV)
There must be a failure in my communication here. I tried to make a simple point. So many are acting as if they are in a better place to judge than the people who sat in the jury box.
I love, in sporting events, when the people I am sitting next to on Row 47 can see the call so much better than the referee who is standing right there.
We are developing an arrogance of imagined expertise.
I was NOT opining on the case, nor am I saying that Casey is innocent.
I was not saying the jury was right.
I was trying to make a point – that we should be careful to give judgments with only a portion of the facts.
“We are developing an arrogance of imagined expertise. ”
Yes, that’s IT !
We are developing an arrogance of imagined expertise.
I agree. I didn’t follow the trial. I had completely forgotten about this until the deliberations began. I concluded you were arguing to your final sentence: that we should be careful to give judgments with only a portion of the facts.
When you brought it around to the SBC, I took it to mean that there are experts out there and they should be given more respect than the average person. That I why I objected to the premise that there could be experts in spiritual or ministry matters.
I believe that there are some basic principals of honesty and money management (transparency) that are needed for our agencies, but the “how” and “where” are completely open ended. I believe obedience in making disciples is more important than the methodology (obviously avoiding heresies like easy believe-ism or false Gospels).
I’m sort of trying to strike a balance. In blogging, we state our opinions and lash out as if we have expert knowledge.
I am certainly not arguing that we should just shut up and trust the experts. But on the other hand, i would say we should be a little careful about acting as if we know everything.
It is clear that either I implied or most have inferred far more than I meant to say.
This trial was just another Roman circus.
You know, Augustine wrote over a billion pages in his lifetime – wouldn’t time be better spent reading something like that instead of following this pabulum?
“This trial was just another Roman circus.”
What does that mean?
“Augustine wrote over a billion pages in his lifetime ”
That’s an average of just over 1500 pages an hour for his entire life.
I was just thinking that in the Bible (OT) the only evidence that counted was “two eye witnesses.” No circumstantial evidence. No CSI evidence.
I think our system comes close to that standard. The burden is put on the prosecutor. It’s called a “burden” for good reason. As disgusting as Casey Anthony is, and she is guilty beyond any doubt but we just don’t know guilty of what, it is better that ten guilty defendants go free than one innocent defendant go to jail (or worse).
It’s not a perfect system, but it is the best in the world.
It’s pretty good. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the best in the world since we have one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world. That’s probably not the fault of our jury system. However, juries could exercise nullification in a good many cases…but that’s for another day.
This is the sad result of couch potato lawyer wannabes who think they know better than the jury:
http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/10/7055601-the-miserable-postscript-for-a-casey-anthony-juror
That is sad. People who arrogantly assume they know better than the jury feel justified in taking out their bitterness on the people who rendered the verdict.