I am so proud of the jury in the Anthony trial.
I avoided watching the entire trial because I saw it as emotional theater and instead waited until the closing remarks from both sides, which I watched in it's entirety. My conclusion at the end of that process was that the state's case was based on pure circumstantial evidence and speculation and that they had not proven her guilt.
The outrage from the many people who had already convicted her in their minds was astounding.
I didn't watch the trial either until the end.
The media, the so-called legal experts, and the mob they worked up into a frenzy should be ashamed of themselves.
Among the worst of them was Marsha Clark (prosecutor of the OJ trial), who said in an interview "What's wrong with circumstantial evidence if it all adds up?"
Adds up to what? A wrongful conviction? The perversion of the law?
The contempt she and others have toward the jury (and the rule of law) betrays something much deeper about the elitism of the "professional class." They resent that ordinary people ultimately have more power to decide questions of truth and justice, life and death, than they do. I believe they see a jury that faithfully follows the law as an affront to their prestige and privilege.
This reminds me. Remember when I mentioned Gore Vidal's book "Julian" in previous comments? I learned about Julian when I googled to find the origin of the "presumption of innocence." Turns out it was the Roman Emperor Julian who said "Better to let 10 guilty men go free than to wrongfully convict one innocent person."
I'm glad to see this age old concept still prevails in our courts (at least some of the time). I consider it one of the bedrocks of civilization. And it doesn't take a law degree to know it.
That's the whole point isn't it?
Yes, of course it is. But it takes determination to avoid the sway of the mob and the emotion that drives it.
I watched a movie called The Conviction about the prosecution of a woman accused of being a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. She was convicted and sentenced to hang by a military tribunal rather than being tried and judged by a jury of her peers because of political expediency.
She was innocent, but never mind.
There were close echoes to the present day tribunals for so-called terrorists. We haven't come very far really.
There was a line in the movie that I thought stated the process precisely:
"In war the first thing to fall is the law."
That is what we must somehow find the determination to resist.
I saw something about that not long ago. Don't remember if it was called "Conviction." But it was chilling. So was the whole post 9.11 temper in this country. Only this time it wasn't one woman who was hanging from a rope, nor just one man like Saddam, but a whole country was scapegoated.
The prosecutor/TV pundits should be prosecuted for stirring up mob hysteria. Isn't there an FCC law against that?
If there is, Glenn Beck would have been sentenced to life in prison by now.