The 500 Pound Gorilla in the Room

I have had some interesting exchanges with people over the last few days since the Casey Anthony case ended in acquittal.  Most people were appalled at this apparent miscarriage of justice.  Some people were vehement in their defense of the jurors.  Two of the jurors themselves (one an alternate) have made the point that they did not find her, “innocent” they just didn’t have enough evidence to find her guilty.  Good sense tells me to just let this simmering pot cool down and move on to something else.  But then I would have to keep stepping around that smelly, hairy 500 pound gorilla in the room. 

            If you have ever had a teen-ager in your house, sooner or later you have found a pack of cigarettes hidden in their much cluttered closet.  When you confront them with the evidence they will tell you that it belongs to a friend who left them there (hid them there, forgot them there…the list goes on).  While that is certainly possible, you will be much better off telling your child why they should not—must not—smoke.   The point is, every parent knows the difference between the words “probable” and “possible.”  If the dog’s paws are muddy, he is covered in dirt and there is a fresh dug hole in the yard, the smart money says that Runamok has dug the hole.  Is it possible that a meteor struck the spot and created the crater?  Yes.  Is it probable?  No. 

            Think of Occam’s (or Ockham’s) razor, a philosophical argument, which, in its distilled for says: when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is better.  We have a two year old child who is dead and whose body is buried in a remote location.  We have a mother who tells no one of her child’s disappearance for a month.  We have forensic evidence to link a body to the trunk of the mother’s car.  What explains all of this, save guilt?  But the jurors seemed to want a television to pan to the events, removing all doubt.  And here is the problem.  Life is not an episode of C.S.I. or Law and Order.  We never get to see the crime being committed or the guilty parties confess.  We are expected to use our intelligence and logic to connect the dots.  When you are on a jury, you are asked to determine guilt based on, “reasonable doubt” not absence of doubt. 

            For some reason, this jury decided it was easier to say, “We weren’t there, we didn’t see it, so it didn’t happen.”  I believe this jury was swayed by too much television and not enough intelligence.  I believe that there was a predisposition on the part of these jurors to be suspicious of law enforcement and authority.  I believe that there was at least one, “alpha dog” on this jury who kept harping about no one knowing for sure what happened.  I believe that all of these things put together made these jurors choose to ignore that a child was killed, and the mother was disinterested in the death being investigated.  Then these same jurors blame it on prosecutors who didn’t lay the crime out before them like panels in a comic strip.  They chose to assume no responsibility for intelligent thought.

            I believe in our system of innocence until proven guilty.  But quite frankly, if I were ever put on trial, I would want a judge to determine the outcome if I was innocent, and a jury if I was guilty.