On July 5, 2011 the verdict read not guilty and outcries were heard all around the world. Casey Anthony, a 25-year-old woman was found not guilty on charges of first-degree murder of her two-year-old daughter Caylee Anthony. The big question is did the jury get it right or was the jury wrong and an alleged murderer walks free?
“The court system here in America is not correct every single time. Sometimes, the verdict is correct and the bad guy is sent to prison with justice being served. Other times a free and innocent person is locked away for life having done nothing wrong. In this case, a ‘guilty’ woman is not going to receive the punishment she should,” said Blake Tracy an SLCC student who has followed the trail since it began a month ag
What does this particular trial do to the American view of the court system? As the news of the not guilty verdict hit the mainstream media, almost immediately the shock and disbelief of the public was heard
KSL TV Facebook page posted the news around noon and within the hour the page was overloaded with people’s disagreeing comments. One viewer posted, “Casey Anthony is guilty and always will be. It is terrible to see that her daughter received no justice.” Another post read, “Why have the court system if it doesn’t even work?” CNN reported this trial as the ‘world-wide soap opera,’ giving the media a lot of blame for all the viewer emotion involved with this trial
An informal poll of 30 SLCC students who knew about the trial were asked if they thought Casey Anthony was guilty? 24 students said yes she is guilty while six students said no, the jury got it right. With so many people disagreeing about the verdict, a lot questions are now aimed at the jury.
With America’s court system seeing hundreds of court cases each year for murder trials, juries are deciding the outcome for all of these trials.
Ordinary people are randomly selected from a registered voters list from the city in which they live in to be on the jury. The jury is who decides the fate of the person on trial based on the evidence provided. It is made up of only a dozen people who come from all different backgrounds and upbringings.
“To be on the jury of the Casey Anthony trial would have been extremely hard for me personally. I have a two-year-old son and he is all I would think about, so I don’t know what I would do about hiding my emotions,” Tracy said.
With all the attention given to this trial and with a lot of people voicing their disagreement and feelings about the outcome, are people now going to question the court system even more?
“I think that the court system is fine. I mean there is nothing that suggests that something wrong was done by the jury. The jury was presented with all the evidence in the trial and they made their decision, which as a mother of two, I am sure was a long and hard process,” Jamie Richards said, a local resident who has also followed the Anthony trial.
She went on to say that if we were to try and change the court system, we might end up putting more innocent people in jail.
All in all, no one will truly ever know what happened to Caylee Anthony. But one thing is for certain, Casey Anthony was put through a fair court system that has worked for over one hundred years, and was found not guilty.
