The Jurors’ New Clothes
Editor’s Note: In view of the ACLU and AU (Americans United For Separation Of Church And State) ,this article is relevant to what AGAPE stands for. With God out of the marketplace, the government, the courtroom, and society in general we are going to see more and more of this sort of injustice. Look what the courts decided about abortion, gay marriage, DADT. The lines blur between right and wrong, sin and righteousness, justice and injustice.
When will it stop? When will we wake up?
By the way, God gave us emotion. Righteous Anger is one of them. If we used His wisdom, went to Him for every decision, He will guide us in all truth.
Back To You, Ed!
American Thinker
July 9, 2011
The Jurors’ New Clothes
By Pete Machera
If an individual is given a position of authority based on some quality other than merit, that individual will tend to wield power in an arbitrary and damaging way. Take twelve random people and expect them to make a sound judgment in a case that has garnered as much attention as any since O.J., and apparently, they won’t do it. While admittedly speculative, there are several possibilities as to why the Casey Anthony jury ruled as they did.
The jury was warned by the defense counsel not to make a decision based on emotion — the emotion of anger would presumably have biased the jury towards a guilty verdict. Accordingly, in the minds of the jury, finding Casey Anthony not-guilty amounted to making an unemotional, and therefore intelligent decision. “Everybody agreed if we were going fully on feelings and emotions, she was done…I wish we had more evidence to put her away. I truly do,” said one juror anonymously (http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/08/casey-anthony-release-now-july-17th-and-another-juror-speaks-out/). Because they went in the direction opposite their gut-feeling, opposite to their emotions (even opposite common sense, I would argue), the jurors felt secure they were making a technical, legally correct decision.
What the jurors failed to realize is that a decision can be both emotionally satisfying and rational. Feelings can cloud one’s judgment at times, but feelings and facts are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes rational faculties lag behind an emotional response, but that does not mean that one will contradict the other.
There is a fraudulent intellectualism in dissent; or being a contrarian just for the sake of disagreeing. Reaching a counterintuitive decision on this case gives one the false guise of legal deep consideration — the masses cannot understand the subtlety of your thought process. This was the posture of many of the talking heads (more on them below) who went on TV and mystifyingly declared the evidence flimsy. These declarations defied common sense, and the jurors’ thought processes will also be revealed as transparently misguided. I believe that as the jurors open themselves up to media scrutiny, the emperor will have no clothes, and no brain either.
Cheney Mason, defense attorney for Ms. Anthony, lectured the media on their supposedly biased and reckless coverage of the trial: “I hope this is a lesson to those of you having indulged in media assassination for three years.” Exactly what would that lesson have been? That it is surprisingly easy to get away with murder? Rather, people such as Mason would have you believe that this case is like a parable; the lesson we should learn is to withhold judgment, because, of course, it’s bad to judge people. He went on to impugn “incompetent talking heads.” I would submit that the major incompetence was on the part of the jury. The media shouldn’t be blamed for reporting on a case that the American people were interested in, and providing legal analysis for an audience otherwise unschooled in such matters. As Bernie Goldberg observed on The O’Reilly Factor on Tuesday, “the problem is with the jury. Not so much with the talking heads. The problem is that the jury, as I say, didn’t have a modicum of common sense.”
Talking heads have taken a lot of heat in the wake of this fiasco, undeservedly so. The existence of 24-7 cable news has been denounced to the point where the denouncement itself has become cliché. But having constant argumentation about political and social issues day and night isn’t necessarily a harmful thing to society. I watch a fair amount of cable news; and along with the consumption of other media sources, I feel none the worse for it. If you’re not interested, don’t tune in. The conventional wisdom is that the “talking heads” have been exposed as pernicious and myopic because they persecuted Casey Anthony and convicted her before she had a fair trial; however, this line of thinking presupposes that the jury’s decision was logical, or just. Yes, technically their decision is a product of our justice system; but was it just, in the pure sense of the word?
Those who, for whatever reason, resented lawyers going on TV and weighing in on the case in a way that implicated Casey Anthony as the murderer now think they have a chance to say “I told you so.” They have no right to such gloating or chastising. Because the jury said there was not enough evidence, does that mean there wasn’t? If the jury said the sky wasn’t blue, would that make it so? And should those who claimed the sky was blue on Fox News now apologize?
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I have a real problem with the fixation of such a large portion of our population on this trial.
Could the media’s fixation be a “smoke screen” to cover things like Obama’s accepting of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mess in Libya, the debt of this country, ad infinitum ?
I think that Obama has put smoke screens up all along…even before he was in the White House. It is not this trial that is a fixation. At least not for me. I believe it is an example of the decaying of our society. As the letter to the editor stated today,our society seems to give more credence and advantage to the perp than ever before. How can a jury of 12 people all be on that same page? You know they were able to all get together every night. They were all able to talk. They were all able to visit with their families on Sundays. It just seems that we are without God. You, of all people, must see above most. The disrespect of law enforcement. Of law and order in general.
It also seems that even though we have been talking about the Muslim influence for almost a year(that is how long I have been talking about it on AGAPE but much longer in other blogs), people say, “So what?” I mean I know that Ed talked about it. We talk about the influences on Obama. Louis Farrakhan. William Ayers. I have photo upon photo. I have written stories on Obama’s Muslim connection. We are very cutting edge on here. But it seems that people don’t care.
I am amazed at how confused people seem when they write in blogs. Not you, Trapper. But confusion is of the devil. Everyone seems to be walking and talking in a fog and think that they are making sense. I wanted to cap off the Casey Anthony story with this article because of the bizarre outcome. The good guys were made out to be the bad guys.
Scripture is coming alive, that is for sure. I wonder why the letters to the editor on Times Records News were disabled? Probably about the gay-lesbian conversation, didn’t get involved in that one.
To answer your comment, I think that Casey Anthony is a scary symbol of what our society has become. She will probably be a millionaire before too long.
No, Casey Anthony will continue to sink lower and lower into depression and self denial and will most likely take her own life, when she can no longer live with what she has done.
The best case scenario is that she truly finds the Lord and confesses her sin and crime. Because even if she does, she cannot be sentenced but it would give closure to Caylee and maybe peace to the many that grew to love that little girl.
And I really thought that OJ Simpson would have not been able to sleep at night for the horrendous things he did. But life went on, he still played golf, still gained fame and money up until his sinful nature caught up with him.
And then there is Faryion Wardrip. Killed at least 5 women brutally. He bragged about finding the Lord. His pastor testified for him but why is he fighting so hard to get off death row?
Even the federal judge Stickney said this in 2008
“… (Wardrip) would not have been sentenced to death had his defense counsel presented any evidence about his nearly spotless (prison) record and his commendable behavior during his prior eleven-year incarceration.”
Commendable behavior? That is what this judge said about Casey Anthony. Her good behavior is getting her out when she should serve at least another year. In fact, it is my belief that she is already out, stolen away in the dead of night.
Waldrip is one I wish you had not brought up. I helped Archer Co. work the Toni Gibbs case and am still haunted by it, in fact the only Murder case I am not haunted by is that of Sharon Hudnell, I know that her killer received the justice of God, exactly one year from the day we buried her.
Wouldn’t offend you for the world…should have known you worked a murder case or two. I really wanted to believe that Waldrip found his peace in God, but it was only jailhouse religion, fake and phony. Been on death row for what? 12 years now?
I guess I don’t know about the Hudnell case, will look that up.
I will pray sweet dreams over you, Trapper. And God’s peace. Thank you , as always, for your great service to our community.
go back and check my TRN post of July 6 at 10:03am, in answer to flimingo.
I made a post in “Drought plan likely if lack of rain:” to make it easy for you