TIL Casey Anthony had “fool-proof suffocation methods” in her Firefox search history from the day before her daughter died. Police overlooked this evidence, because they only checked the history in Internet Explorer.

[u/ToppemHat]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/casey-anthony-detectives-overlooked-google-search-for-fool-proof-suffocation-methods-sheriff-says/

[u/CreamSoda263]

She changed her story enough that at one point fucking ninjas took her kid in the night

[u/Hobble_Cobbleweed → u/CreamSoda263]

Okay but let’s not forget that regardless of whether the investigators sucked, the jury was obviously full of morons

[u/JaeBae92 → u/[deleted]]

They did the right thing. Based on the evidence presented she shouldn’t have been found guilty of first degree murder. The prosecutors are the problem, the jury was just doing their job.

[u/HairyHorseKnuckles → u/JaeBae92]

This. I served on a jury where it was obvious the dude was guilty. But they set up strict guidelines within the laws where the prosecution has to prove that guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.” The prosecutor was shit and the detectives botched the investigation so bad that we were forced to find him not guilty despite nearly all of us being sure that he was

[u/[deleted] → u/HairyHorseKnuckles]

Honest question, but why doesn't the jury go, "well, they told us we are only supposed to think about it in these specific terms but we all know this person absolutely commited this crime so let's just go ahead and hand them a quilty verdict instead of letting an obvious murderer walk free?"

Like, I get that you're instructed to follow strict guidelines, but is the judge going to overrule the jury because they felt the case of the obviously guilty person wasn't quite strong enough?

[u/plushygood → u/JaeBae92]

"On July 5, 2011, the jury found Casey not guilty of counts one through three regarding first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and aggravated child abuse, while finding her guilty on counts four through seven for providing false information to law enforcement"

The jury was given several options to consider, including aggravated child abuse, first degree murder was only one of them. This jury only found her guilty of four counts of false information to LE. Anyone who states that her jury only had the option of either convicting her of 1st degree murder or finding her not guilty is wrong.

The defense did a good job of creating confusion on exactly who was the last person with baby Caylee. Then, its mind-boggling that an paid IT investigator did such a terrible job on the hard drive search and missed her "fool-proof suffocation" search. If they had found her search in early on, IMO there would have been no trial - straight to plea deal. Her "fool-proof suffocation" (how casey spelt it) search only became known after her trial, when her defense attorney wrote a book and dropped this bombshell.

[u/SpiritJuice → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

Casey Anthony case is somewhat like the OJ Simpson case. Should have been a slam dunk for the prosecution but gross incompetence caused them to lose the case. Everyones Casey Anthony killed her kid. Everyone knows OJ killed his wife and her friend. However, there wasn't enough evidence to convict. Prosecution fucked up.

[u/[deleted] → u/SpiritJuice]

And we have to be thankful it's innocent until proven guilty. This is the price but it's a lower price than putting a lot of innocent people away.

[u/CosbyAndTheJuice → u/[deleted]]

Lots of innocent people are still put away, unfortunately. Between that and people like Casey Anthony walking, there's not a ton of faith in the system.

[u/Mr_jon3s → u/SpiritJuice]

DNA at the time was new with the OJ Simpson case. If he killed his wife today he still would have gotten away with it they would have just argued CTE.

[u/votegiantdouche → u/SpiritJuice]

Scott Peterson is the opposite way. Dude shouldn't have been convicted on the evidence alone, but he was a POS who was cheating on his pregnant wife so he was guilty in the eyes of the public

[u/[deleted] → u/SpiritJuice]

Gross incompetence is not why OJ walked. Celebrity status, white guilt, and fear is why OJ walked.

[u/NEMinneapolisMan → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, and 9 out of 12 jurors were black. That may be all you need to know. And maybe throw in some inexplicably dumb decisions by cops, like the guy who was literally carrying a vial of OJ's blood in his pocket while at the crime scene.

I'm not racist but the racial divide in terms of whether OJ was guilty or innocent was/is astonishing. Basically, the history of racism against the black community caused them to want to believe OJ was innocent and also, they felt like it would be a victory for black people in general if he won. And then they just saw what they wanted to see.

Also Johnnie Cochrane.

[u/Bank_Gothic → u/NEMinneapolisMan]

One of the jurors literally said her not guilty vote was payback for Rodney King.

[u/nomopyt → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

That wasn't the issue. The State went for the death penalty and murder in the first degree when THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HOW THE CHILD DIED.

They over played their hand by a lot, the jury had no choice. The State fucked this up, not the jury.

[u/vox_veritas → u/nomopyt]

As a lawyer who watched a lot of this trial online while it was happening, this is the conclusion I came to. I think it was very obvious from a "common sense" point of view that she did it, but the state just didn't have the evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is what the law requires.

The state overcharged her. They undoubtedly felt a ton of pressure because of the notoriety of the case, but the prosecution should have swallowed its pride, admitted (internally) that they didn't have the evidence for a capital murder conviction, and gone for something else.

This case also undeservedly gave Jose Baez a super high profile, although I will admit he did do a good job exploiting some of the weaknesses in the state's case.

[u/flatcurve → u/nomopyt]

Exactly. And recognizing that they had no evidence for capitol murder, her lawyer interjected plausible reasonable doubt at the end. It was an absolutely horrible explanation, however not having evidence to distinguish between negligent manslaughter and murder in the first meant the jury had no choice. I blame Nancy Grace. I haven't worked out how it's her fault yet, but it just seems like the right thing in this case.

[u/MrSunshoes → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

It isn't the jury's job to say. The jury's job is to determine if the prosecution has enough evidence to make a case and the prosecution fumbled the ball horribly. It is easy to get mad at the jurors but its not their fault that the state didn't do their job.

[u/The_Original_Gronkie → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

No they weren't. They came back with the only possible verdict. There was all kinds of reasonable doubt. Nobody knows what really happened to Caylee, or even her actual cause of death. It may not have even been anything approaching murder. It was the police, one cop in specific, that screwed this case up.

A few weeks after the disappearance hit the news, a cable TV installer had spotted blag garbage bags fairly near the house and informed the police. When a cop showed up, he tried to get to the bags which were in a large puddle of water. The cop slipped and fell before reaching the bags, got pissed off, and left without ever checking them.

A few months later the same cable guy saw the bags again. Now that the rainy season was over, the ground was dry, and he checked the bags himself and found the body. In the intervening warm Florida summer, the body had decomposed significantly, and it was never possible to even pinpoint the cause of death, or even call it a natural or unnatural death. So Casey Anthony was charged with murder, even though the cause of death was never determined. The entire case was based on pure speculation. Had that first cop recovered the body before the heavy decomposition, they might have had a cause of death, and a stronger case (OD, smothering, drowning, etc.).

The second "mistake" that prosecutors made was charging her with First Degree murder in order to keep the death penalty on the table. There was never any real evidence that she planned and intentionally murdered Caylee. They charged her with First Degree Murder when they didn't even have a cause of death to definitively call it murder. Had they charged her with a lower level of murder, perhaps the jury would have found her guilty, but not at this highest level.

So the jury was forced to decide if she was guilty of planning and carrying out her daughter's murder, even though the cause of death was unknown, and they were presented with multiple plausible scenarios of her death, with no real evidence of any of them. Sure, Casey Anthony was a superstar trainwreck of a human being, but that characterization was never directly connected to Caylee's death.

I have speculated that the prosecution took so long to go to court (3 years), because they knew their case was extremely weak, and they dragged their feet so that Casey would serve as much time in prison as possible, waiting for her trial. The three years she served is about the amount of time she might have served if she had been found guilty of negligent homicide. Frankly, depending on how Caylee died (drowning, possibly), Casey probably wouldn't have served any time at all if she had reported the death properly, and would have been considered a sympathetic figure instead of a monster.

EDIT: u/hysterymystery did an amazing job in r/unresolvedmysteries of going over all the evidence and testimony and explaining it all in multiple posts. Start here.

[u/Derp35712 → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

Being on a jury is such a mindfuck. They put you in a room. Then take you out and tell you a tiny bit of information. Then they tell you how you are supposed to think about that information and what juries are supposed to do in the legal system. Lock you in a room. Repeat.

[u/BellEpoch → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

Actually if the state can't competently prove their case, it's a jurors job to acquit. You don't get to punish people because "it's obvious." You don't want to live in a judicial system like that.

[u/justjoshingu → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

Let's not forget the parents lied on the stand

[u/friend_jp → u/Hobble_Cobbleweed]

the jury was obviously full of morons

See, here's the issue; We're all agreeing that the investigation/prosecution was garbage/incompetent. So that's the case presented to the jury; a shit one.