1,721,071 research outputs found
Verdict Reasonable at Casey Anthony Trial
No full textThe Casey Anthony trial verdict was reasonable if the jury did not believe she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To prevent the wrongful conviction of innocents, a preponderance of the evidence standard is not used in criminal trials
Constructing whiteness : identity and imagery in the legal battle of State of Florida v. Casey Anthony
Full text linkvii, 127 leaves ; 29 cm.Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-127).I use the articulations of whiteness narrated by the prosecution and defence, in the high-profile, capital murder trial of Casey Anthony, as the focal point from which to begin my analysis, by looking at how both victim and perpetrator statuses were ascribed to (the body of) Casey Anthony.
In particular, I use the courtroom constructions of Casey Anthony to examine how the defendant was framed through discourses of whiteness and femaleness/femininity. These discourses were themselves subject to different interpretations and functions by both counsels in the two prominent texts describing the Anthony case: Presumed Guilty – Casey Anthony: The Inside Story by Jose Baez and Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony by Jeff Ashton. Through close readings of these texts, which together form the data set for this thesis, I assess how one narrative upholds an assumed, hegemonic social norm concerning the un-criminalised status of white womanhood, while the other narrative serves to destabilise that norm by “trashing” Casey Anthony’s white, feminine identity
Casey Anthony and the Social Media Trial
Full text linkIn 2008, 22-year-old Casey Anthony was charged with first degree murder of her toddler, Caylee Anthony. Press coverage and social media discussion of the case sparked nationwide attention. Though Anthony’s trial began in 2011, media platforms offered interpretations of the evidence and accounts of Anthony’s life before the crime as early as 2008—making an exceptional quantity of information accessible to the public before jury selection began. Anthony’s trial calls the court system’s capacity to effectively sequestrate juries into question, as media reports are largely protected under the first amendment and difficult to keep accountable. The Casey Anthony trial was among the first court cases tried by social media in the court of public opinion. Contrary to the decision made by the selected jury, the court of public opinion found Anthony guilty of murdering her daughter and enforced social and economic punishments separate from the court system as such. In the age of the social media trial, a person’s right to a fair trial and reasonable punishment comes in direct conflict with the media’s right to free expression and the general public’s right to consume news sources of their choosing. The inability of the Florida courts to truly sequester a jury in the social media era inadvertently results in the prioritization of one inherent right over another, solidifying social media users’ right to post at will. Anthony may have been acquitted in the courtroom, but in the outside world she suffered social punishments that clash with her court-ordained status as an innocent woman
Letters to Casey Anthony, a woman accused of murder
No full textThis chapter is based on an analysis of letters sent by members of the public to Casey Anthony, while she was awaiting trial for the capital murder of her daughter, Caylee. Caylee Anthony went missing in Orlando, Florida, in 2008, which Casey did not report to the police. After Casey’s mother had reported her granddaughter’s disappearance several weeks later, Casey was charged with her murder. Caylee’s body was not discovered until two months after this. The case was very high profile and received intense media coverage, including via social media. In June 2010, Florida’s state attorney’s office released letters that had been sent to Casey while she was in jail. She was tried and acquitted of Caylee’s murder and manslaughter in 2011. This chapter focuses on the letters sent to Casey by people who did not know her personally. It explores how they negotiated what they already knew of her and her case from media sources in relation to their own experiences and biography, in order to relate to Casey. In doing so, it analyses how correspondents variously drew on, utilised, reshaped and rejected discourses of femininity that circulate in legal and media constructions of high profile cases of women accused of murder. The chapter also examines how correspondents’ identification with, or rejection of, Casey Anthony and elements of her story was part of the process of their own identity construction</p
UND Law Professor Responds to Casey Anthony Verdict
No full textUND Law Professor Responds to Casey Anthony Verdict
The legal system in the United States is often thought of as a model for developing nations around the world. At the heart of this system are myriad protections put in place to shield average citizens from potential abuse at the hands of prosecutors or government officials. Foremost of these is the jury—a sworn body of citizens convened to render an impartial verdict. And while the purpose of a jury is generally understood, we often struggle to balance our respect for the system with an acceptance of its outcomes.
The greatest challenge to this notion in a generation came in the recent verdict in the trial of Casey Anthony, a Florida woman accused of killing her daughter, Caylee Anthony. The trial received almost round-the-clock coverage beginning in 2008 and was immediately sensationalized, mostly by HLN (formerly known as Headline News) and hosts of its leading programs like Jane Velez-Mitchell and Nancy Grace, among others, and on other networks. The case became “one of the biggest ratings draws in recent memory,” according to the New York Post.
“If you watched [HLN] exclusively then you’re definitely going to have a skewed perspective,” says Gregory Gordon, a former federal prosecutor and Associate Professor in UND’s School of Law. “I had some issues with Nancy Grace… she’s certainly free to comment on the case. What bothers me is that she attempts to legitimize her commentary as a “legal expert”–in many ways she’s more of a victim’s advocate.”
Grace has led the charge to impugn Anthony in the press. Most notably, she received criticism over her decision to refer to Anthony as Tot Mom, saying it was shorthand for the compressed information area at the bottom of the television screen. Critics see it as a way to remind viewers of the victim, thereby reinforcing an emotional appeal while heaping conjecture and revelation on Anthony.
Gordon explains that advocacy is very different from analysis, and while it may support a particular narrative, or further a meme in the ongoing coverage, it is not the most helpful way to arrive at the truth. “If one portrays oneself as a legal expert, then I think one has a duty to look at the bigger picture. I think [Grace] tends to focus on the things that interest her… in a way that’s more from an advocate’s perspective than from the perspective of an expert who’s providing a balanced analysis.”
The Casey Anthony Case was particularly complicated for a number of reasons. Caylee’s death occurred in 2008, but it is not clear exactly when she died—sometime between June 16 and July 18 of that year. For 31 days, Casey Anthony did not report the child as missing. Making matters worse, Anthony repeatedly lied to investigators, parents and friends, charges for which she would ultimately be convicted. In September 2008, Anthony was offered limited immunity, which she refused. In April, 2009, prosecutors announced they intended to seek the death penalty.
According to Gordon, seeking the death penalty as a charging strategy may have worked against the prosecution. “You’re asking for the ultimate penalty. You’re asking for someone’s life…. If this had been charged more appropriately, you might have seen a different result.”
In the end, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict on the three most serious charges, including first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and manslaughter of a child. Anthony was convicted of giving false information to law enforcement in reference to a missing person, with a maximum possible sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Immediately after the verdict was rendered, many were left feeling that Casey Anthony had gotten away with murder. ...The devil is dancing tonight, said Grace.
Days after the verdict, members of the defense team, Casey and her parents, and even the jurors began receiving death threats. What happened?
Focusing our anger on the jury is the wrong response, says Gordon. “The jury didn’t find that [Anthony] was innocent. It found that she wasn’t guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the jury… and the public were left with questions…. The important thing is the jury took its job very seriously.”
Response to the verdict has brought out the worst in some. On July 8, 2011, just days after the verdict, and while Anthony was still in jail, Sammay Blackwell of Choteau, Okla., was attacked merely for resembling Anthony. Her attacker rammed her car several times in the parking lot of a convenience store after accusing Blackwell of “killing babies.”
This polarizing has extended from HLN, all the way to Wikipedia, which in its discussion pages reveals a struggle with a title for the article, with Wikipedians split between “The Death of Caylee Anthony,” a title that would seem to reference the victim, and “The Casey Anthony Trial.”
While people have a right to be angry with the verdict, taking out their anger on jurors is counterproductive and could be, in fact, harmful if it translates into changes to the system. “We owe a certain amount of our liberty to the burden of proof the prosecutors will be held to,” says Gordon, “…that way we can’t all be called in and accused of a crime and unjustly convicted. I regret, in this particular case, a little girl lost her life and we as a public don’t know what happened.”
But who’s to blame for the perception that it was the jury that was in error and not the prosecution who actually had the burden of proof?
“My sense is [the media coverage has] polarized public opinion,” says Gordon. “There’s a sense of outrage because people think the verdict was not the right verdict.” The sense that the jury in the case did not return the “right verdict” presupposes that a correct verdict would have been guilty on first degree murder charges—an outcome many in the media had predicted.
Whether the case elicits as much attention as Casey Anthony\u27s, or O.J. Simpson\u27s, it is best to remember that it is the independence of the system we cherish, not necessarily each and every verdict it renders. As Gordon says, the alternative would be much more dangerous to each and every one of us. Juries are seen as a buffer between the state… and an overzealous prosecutor, a complacent judge… an especially important buffer between the citizen who’s hauled into court to answer criminal charges and the machinery of the criminal justice system being pitted against that lone individual.”
Craig Garaas-Johnson News and Features Edito
An examination of college students\u27 beliefs and attitudes surrounding the Casey Anthony Case
No full textPretrial publicity is a problem that can affect the fair outcome of a trial, a right that is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Research has indicated that potential jurors who are exposed to negative pretrial publicity are more likely to render \u27guilty\u27 verdicts (Ruva and McEvoy, 2008). The current study will entail an analysis of pretrial publicity and a case study of attitudes and beliefs surrounding the Casey Anthony trial. Participants included 309 undergraduates at the University of Central Florida. Results indicated that the majority of participants already hold negative biases and non-deliberate exposure influenced negative attitudes and beliefs
UGA experts available to offer commentary on the Casey Anthony trial and verdict
No full textThe following faculty experts from the University of Georgia are available to discuss a wide range of issues related to the Casey Anthony trial and verdict. Their contact information is included for your convenience. Please feel free to contact UGA News Service at 706/542-8083 or [email protected] should you need additional assistance.
Ronald L. Carlson Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law Emeritus University of Georgia School of Law Email: [email protected] Phone: 715/376-4531 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Carlson can offer commentary on the Casey Anthony case in general, as well as on the following topics: The CSI effect and how this could have impacted the jurors\u27 willingness to convict Lessons from the case: asking for the death penalty may have been too much with no eye witness and no confession Reactions by the defendant and her parents after the verdict was delivered What now? Is there still the possibility that Casey will have to serve some jail time?
A member of the Georgia Law faculty since 1984, Carlson specializes in the areas of evidence, trial practice and criminal procedure. He has written numerous books and articles in prominent law reviews on these topics and also has litigated numerous trial and appellate cases, including arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Additional information on Carlson is available at www.law.uga.edu/profile/ronald-l-carlson.
Barry Hollander Associate Professor of Journalism University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication Phone: 706/201-5799 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Hollander can offer commentary on the Casey Anthony case and how the media can sway public opinion in such high-profile cases. Hollander studies the political effects of new media and has published extensively on the ways people use talk radio, the Internet and the mainstream press. He worked as a journalist at daily newspapers in Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, earning awards for spot news coverage and investigative reporting.
His popular blog, What People Know, is a discussion of social and political knowledge, how people learn (or don\u27t learn), the role of media and why it all matters. Read it at www.whatpeopleknow.blogspot.com/
Additional information on Hollander is available at www.journalism.uga.edu/hollande
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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