Normally, the news story that captures our attention is the case of the innocent defendent who was wrongly convicted of crimes because of bad evidence or mistaken identity. After umpteen years behind bars the condemned prisoner is set free, after new evidence is uncovered that controverts the trial evidence. This has become commonplace thanks to advancements in DNA analysis. We try not to think about these cases when we trumpet the superiority of the American Justice System.
Lately, there seems to be a common thread in recent high-profile cases where the acquittal verdict was egregiously wrong in the opinion of many armchair analysts and talk show bloviators. The acquittal of Casey Anthony after her recent trial created a furor that has not been seen since the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. Anthony, who has gone into hiding because of death threats, has been called "the most hated woman in America" since everyone thinks she got away with the murder of her daughter, Caylee.
If you followed the trial, you probably came to the same conclusion the rest of us did: Guilty! The evidence was clear: The mother of the missing child never reported the child missing, and in fact was having a high old time, getting tattoos, competing in wet tee shirt contests, and generally acting with callous disregard for the fact that her baby was gone. This was enough to convict her in the court of general opinion. But the verdict was Not Guilty on all counts. Not reporting a missing child does not happen to be against the law.
In Boston last week another locally infamous case ended badly. The defendant was Albert Arroyo, a former fireman who had claimed disability exemption from his job as fire inspector (not a physically demanding job) because of back pain due to an alleged on-the-job injury. This same guy was simultaneously working-out with weights on a daily basis and was even competing in body-building contests. The Boston Globe broke the story last year and published pictures of a distinctly well-muscled guy posing for photos. Clearly a case of fraud. He lawyered-up. The fire department fired him when he refused to come back to work. Then the feds decided to charge him with mail fraud.
When the jury came back with a shocking acquittal, everyone was outraged. How could these dumb jurors not see that he was as guilty as the nose on your face, they shouted. Local Radio talk show bloviators dragged-out the old cases and questioned whether our system of justice works when jurors did not have a clue.
But when you consider the facts of the case, the real problem was that the jurors took their instructions seriously. They matched the evidence against the charges and found that the proof was lacking.
This did not mean that they thought Casey Anthony or Arroyo were innocent. In both cases, several of the jurors who were interviewed later said that they thought the defendant was guilty of a crime, but the prosecutors did not prove that the defendant was guilty of the specific charges. They didn't prove mail fraud, which was the charge in the Arroyo case. They couldn't prove murder in the Casey Anthony trial.
This doesn't indict the jury system, nor does it point to bad juries. I think it points to flawed work by the prosecution lawyers and investigators. In their haste to get favorable publicity, perhaps prosecutors rush to trial without a convincing case. I don't really know the answer, but the point is that we, the public, should withhold our judgement in cases like this and not "punish the messenger" for an unpopular verdict.
1 comment:
Very well thought-out and written. I will only add that, at one time, lynch mobs would be able to achieve "feel-good" justice, usually at the expense of true justice. The lynch mobs have merely moved into the media.
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