The CSI Effect and the Casey Anthony Trial

Direct evidence is when you walk into the kitchen and find your 5 yo sitting on the floor with the cookie jar between his legs and his hand is in it. Circumstantial evidence is when the same five year old has cookie crumbs all around him and his face and mouth are also covered in cookie crumbs and the cookie jar is empty. Both have the same weight in court as the other.

'CSI Effect' made difference in Anthony trial
Well, this is an example of the "CSI Effect" if ever we saw one.

Members of the jury in the Casey Anthony case obviously watch too much TV and expected everything to be neatly wrapped up into a nice forensics bow at the end of an hour.

Just like on the popular (and wildly inaccurate) crime drama "CSI," the jurors expected crime scene investigators to come up with a smoking gun in the form of DNA and solve the case in time for the 11 o'clock news.

Circumstantial evidence, regardless of how ample and how stunningly powerful, is denigrated by modern courtroom observers. The very term "circumstantial evidence" has somehow become a pejorative, as if to say if that's all you have, you have no case.

Many people have asked why this case of a pretty young mother facing charges of killing her beautiful baby daughter so she could be free of the burdens of parenthood became the trial of the century, while the case here locally of Stacey Barker, a pretty young mother facing charges of killing her beautiful baby daughter so she could be free of the burdens of parenthood received only scant coverage on the Nancy Grace television show and then was dropped and forgotten.

The difference between Casey and Stacey is simple: One did a better job of hiding the body.

Stacey Barker concocted a story about a sexual assault and child abduction, but she dumped her baby Emma's body just off the freeway in Sylmar, where it was easily found. No time for national interest to build as the search goes on day after day for the missing baby.

Forensics are easy when you find the body in hours rather than months. The cause of death was smothering and the case became a slam dunk. Twenty-five to life. Next case.

Of course, Casey Anthony's baby was missing for 31 days before anyone other than Casey Anthony knew it. So that was the bizarre twist that first attracted the national media, and then interest grew as the search went on and news came out about the imaginary nanny and other imaginary figures she concocted to cover her tracks.

Six months in the swamp eliminated much of the forensic evidence. We all love science, but how is it that two scientists, depending on which side is paying them, can come up with diametrically opposed scientific conclusions in so many of these court cases?

Another problem with this case, as with many others these days, is the judge allowed the defense attorneys to go off on totally meaningless tangents to distract the jury rather than sticking to the facts. Forget all the other nonsense. Caylee Anthony was found dead with duct tape from the Anthony home around her face. Casey Anthony was the last person to see her. She lied about the baby being missing for 31 days and went out partying and got a "beautiful life" tattoo. People said her car smelled like a dead body. She did searches for chloroform and neck-breaking. She asked to borrow the neighbor's shovel.

No one has ever tried to make an accident for which there would no criminal charges look like a first-degree murder for which they could be executed. Martians did not kill the baby. Colombian drug lords did not kill the baby. Zanny the Nanny, owing to the fact that she does not exist, did not kill the baby. Therefore, there's only one conclusion.

It should have been a two-day trial.

You will recall in the O.J. Simpson case, they took nine months on silly tangents designed to distract the jury, such as the aforementioned Colombian drug lords and whether a detective ever used a racial slur. Nothing to do with the facts of the case.

Now, as we speak, there's a trial going on in Chatsworth for a kid charged with shooting an eighth-grade classmate in the back of the head and killing him during a computer lab. There are all these arguments about the victim being gay and the shooter being a Nazi and the defense bringing up witnesses who say the shooter played with black kids on the playground. What does that have to do with anything?

Did he kill that poor boy with two shots to the back of the head or didn't he? Everybody acknowledges that he did. Case closed. I don't much care who he played with during recess.