She lost the OJ Simpson trial, so of course she has an interest in making it seem like the prosecution’s job in the Simpson trial was harder than the prosecution’s job in the Casey Anthony one. Nevertheless, she makes some good points.

Still, I’ve yet to read a satisfying analysis (there’s gotta be plenty out there, but wading into this coverage isn’t pleasant) about the media circus creating and abetting injustice; it’s an American thing to do, to have cameras in courtrooms, and it’s wrong. I wonder how many jurors go for the unexpected verdict simply and subconsciously because an unexpected ending is more exciting to imagine being transmitted to the world than an expected ending.

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...

19 replies on “OJ Simpson Prosecutor on the Casey Anthony Trial: This Verdict Was “Far More Shocking””

  1. The real importance of this case is…uh…uh…there is no importance to this case. At all.

    OK, if you really want to know: Americans have a boner for pretty li’l white girls that have horrible things happen to them. It turns them on. If the girl wasn’t white, no one would know her name.

    If you’re asking why people care about crap like this, you are answering your own question. There is no satisfying analysis; the very fact of analysis is profoundly unsatisfying. It’s like asking why there’s mud on your shoes.

  2. A guilty person going free is more likely the fault of the prosecution than the jury. It’s not, “did they do it, it’s “Did they commit each and every element of the charges against them”.

  3. facebook mom’s outrage about this is gonna be a thing.

    like about almost insidious as an Old Navy ad.

    mark these words. then poof, next scandal.

  6. @1 I’m with FNARF. I don’t know why this is front page news here in WA!

    But having read about it from an interest in trial strategy and trying to figure out the hype, there was a lot for the defense to work with on the reasonable doubt side, so much that I’m confused that anyone with knowledge of the real life criminal trials and the facts of this case would have believed this was or should have been a slam dunk for conviction. The OJ Simpson case facts were altogether different and it is a poor comparison. That trial had some interesting moments and the process did illuminate aspects of our society that merited examination. The most dramatic part of the OJ case for me was how the poor evidence securing procedure used by the detectives on the scene made the racist history of the investigators relevant as a question at trial, or rather the skilled defense team made it relevant. But the sloppy field work of the police and the racist history of the police wouldn’t have been useful fodder for the defense if they both hadn’t been present. Most criminal defendants don’t have the monetary resources to present these kinds of dynamics in a useful way.
    In trying to figure out why the media hyped this, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a political aspect suggesting we will be seeing a lot more women thrown into the street for public stoning in the near future. The corporate patriarchy is going to need diversions and sacrifices while they go about dismantling the social safety net.

  7. P.S. No surprise Marcia Clark would come out for slam dunk conviction here. It is pretty clear from her article that she believes the “probably did it” standard we all use in our daily lives is equal to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard our laws apply when taking away freedom is at stake.

    Oh man, imagine how many racist police she helped perjure themselves while she was an LA County prosecutor! She was so used to sloppy racist police going unchallenged that she didn’t even notice the weaknesses in her OJ case until it was too late.

  9. If any of you followed true crime — in books and on shows such as 48 hours — as I do, you would know that post 2000, OJ would have most likely been convicted. That is because since then circumstantial evidence plus motive can be used for a conviction. There are many cases with no DNA, no murder weapon found even, which produce guilty verdicts if intent, opportunity and motive can be found.

    In the Casey Anthony trial, none of these were present, nor were there any pertinent witnesses, or evidence. A plausible scenario for the murder was not created.

    Who? What? When? How? Why?

    Of these only the first, Who, is known.

    We don’t actually know What happened, what even killed little Caylee and no exact timeline was laid out.

    We don’t know When anything really happened. There were no incriminating cell phone records. No witnesses of note for seeing the body being moved. Nobody coming forward with stories about screaming during the presumed killing…and so on.

    How is also a mystery. How did she presumably kill Caylee. What was the weapon? How did she do these things and feel no remorse?

    Why is the great biggie. The prosecution tried to present an image of a girl who loved to party and supposedly did not want a kid hanging around. But, for two years, she partied hard, had a group of single friends and was able to do so without interruption because her parents watched the kid and were happy to do so. There was no record of violence from Casey on Caylee. All the witnesses reported nothing but loving statements from Casey. She never said that she wished she didn’t have a kid.

    Right now, it seems more likely there was some accident, maybe from someone’s instantaneous fit of anger, or maybe just from not keeping an eye on Caylee, and then panic set in based on what people thought the police might think, and some sort of comedy of horrors ensued. We just don’t know…and no one painted a better picture.

  10. Anyone who has an “opinion” on this case of no national import, and people who’s uniformed opinion is based on what the media has covered and people who’s uninformed opinion did not sit in the court room every day during the trial or sat in the jury box are people who’s opinions are worth about as much as a pile of shit.

    Not only that, commentators who have taken it upon themselves to voice their own “opinions” based on second or third hand knowledge of this case should to the rest of us a favor, take a gun to your head and pull the trigger until you are no longer capable of doing so.

  11. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al. still walk the Earth as free people. Don’t bother me with this tabloid television shit about ‘justice’. Fuck all you TV zombies.

  14. I’ve sat on juries, and the mere fact that 12 people agreed unanimously that the prosectuion hadn’t proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” should make clear to anyone that the prosecution just didn’t have a tight case for the charges (with the death penalty in play). In my experience jurors take their responsibility very seriously, and when the death penalty is in play even more so. And getting 12 people to agree on anything is EXTREMELY hard.

    Had the prosecution had ANY direct evidence or if they had brought lesser charges, a conviction might have been more likely.

  15. I really didn’t follow this case, so I can’t comment on the specifics of it. But I can say one thing from my recent stint as a jury foreman.

    They drilled into us repeatedly that we had to base our decision purely on what we were told, and that it had to be based on “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And that was in a case with a far, far less serious situation than this case.

    In our situation, there were some truly gaping holes in the case – things like telling us that the suspect was standing next to a car with the stolen property in it but not telling us whose car it was, and asking us to believe that the cops let the guy take his coat off, climb over the car, and start running away before they started chasing him, and more.

    As a jury, we were divided on whether the defendant was guilty, but were unanimous on the fact that the prosecution’s case was full of holes, the defense lawyer was incompetent, and that they were all treating us like idiots.

    So while a number of us truly believed he was guilty, we all agreed there was a very real reasonable doubt.

  16. Apparently the little girl’s body was so decomposed when found that they could not say with any certainty that the cause of death was homicide. Given that, it seems reasonable that jurors could feel the prosecution didn’t meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt test. If it could have been determined that the cause of death was a homicide, then it seems much more likely a guilty verdict may have been reached since everything about this mother’s behavior seemed to postively scream “I’m finally free of my kid and now I want to PARTY!!!“

  17. “I wonder how many jurors go for the unexpected verdict simply and subconsciously because an unexpected ending is more exciting to imagine being transmitted to the world than an expected ending.”

    I saw an in-depth interview with one of the jurors, who was very bright, very articulate and very cognizant of the gravity of the case. To demean jurors by saying they often just go for the unexpected verdict is a real cheap shot and doesn’t square at all with my experience.

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