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Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case
Hugh Pickens writes "The Orlando Sentinel reports that a google search was made for the term 'foolproof suffocation' on the Anthony family's computer the day Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen alive by her family — a search that did not surface at Casey Anthony's trial for first degree murder. In the notorious 31 days which followed, Casey Anthony repeatedly lied about her and her daughter's whereabouts and at Anthony's trial, her defense attorney argued that her daughter drowned accidentally in the family's pool. Anthony was acquitted on all major charges in her daughter's death, including murder. Though computer searches were a key issue at Anthony's murder trial, the term 'foolproof suffocation' never came up. 'Our investigation reveals the person most likely at the computer was Casey Anthony,' says investigative reporter Tony Pipitone. Lead sheriff's Investigator Yuri Melich sent prosecutors a spreadsheet that contained less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day and included only Internet data from the computer's Internet Explorer browser – one Casey Anthony apparently stopped using months earlier — and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for 'foolproof suffocation.' Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said in a statement to WKMG that it's 'a shame we didn't have it. (It would have) put the accidental death claim in serious question.'"
In this case the prosecutors and justice system were incompetent to prove this person was the killer.
In other cases they're incompetent to tell that the prosecutors and justice system have failed to prove the person was the killer.
When we execute convicted people there is no chance to catch the errors that are executing people who are not guilty. Not guilty people are killed because the system isn't adequate to execute only the guilty.
We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.
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make install -not war
Bitches be crazy ?
Bad example, but still proves the point. This datum of a search would not be enough to shift someone from not guilty by reason that I am not sure to absolutely guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. This WOULD be worth something in a Wrongful Death lawsuit, where the standard is merely the preponderence of evidence, but no one has standing.
What is the /. interest in this story? It already kinda disgusting how these local crime stories dominate the national media, but now that the case is over with double-jeopardy attached, it appears on /. just because a search term was involved? Big whoop.
She may actually be guilty.
No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?
There is no statement about the innocence of the person.
Yes, there is. A person is presumed innocent until the jury finds a guilty verdict, an acquittal is simply a confirmation of this assumption.
Your guilt or innocence is a matter of fact, not opinion. You either killed someone or you didn't. No arbitrary number of people sitting on a stand can change reality.
Keep in mind that the jury does not find anyone innocent. They get to say guilty or not guilty; there is no innocent. Not guilty does not mean innocent.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
She may actually be guilty.
No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?
Acquittal != innocence.
Similarly, conviction != guilt.
The goal of the system is to approximate accuracy, with a strong bias towards acquittal where the situation is in doubt. Hopefully, you can assume that a conviction is a very strong indicator of guilt, but you can't assume that an acquittal indicates innocence.
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She's innocent - just like OJ.
There's something that a lot of people in this thread seem to be missing. You, as many people here, are equating guilt and innocence with "something which did or did not happen" and this is not the way the system works. Guilt and innocence are not provable facts in the rigorous sense and, as such, are not facts at all in the way that a person commonly thinks of that term.
The jurors' official roles in court are as the "finders of fact." The system operates under the necessary assumption that the jurors are correct when they find someone to be not guilty, not because the jurors are always right but because operating under this assumption is the only way to hold a real trial where an accused person who hasn't committed a crime can walk away at the end.
The important thing here is that this does not end in the courtroom, the assumption of innocence is a sadly neglected obligation that the population holds as well. Our justice system relies on the idea that a person can be tried and found not guilty and be unharmed by the process. This can only happen if that person's friends and neighbors hold to the presumption of innocence just as the court does. Unfortunately the media circumvents this, and for that reason reporting on pending court cases is banned or partially banned in many countries.
Tut-tut. The law says she wasn't found guilty. The law can't say whether or not she really is guilty. I assume you haven't taken any statistics courses.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Back before cars had emission controls there was a class of people known as "shadetree mechanics" that could actually fix a car without knowing much about what they were doing. No formal or even informal training, but they got by because of simplicity of the engines at the time. I know of someone in the computer forensics business that rails against "shadetree forensics" because it will be the downfall of computer forensic examination as a whole.
Someone I know in the FBI has rather strong words about pushbutton forensics where if you click the right button you get an answer. Maybe not the right answer, but something to put in a report. In some ways, computer forensics tools are moving in that direction with more and more automation and less and less understanding. When it takes several weeks of intensive training to understand a tool it does in some ways open the doors to this sort of use.
What we have here is very simply a case of pushbutton forensics. The examiner failed to conduct a proper examination of the computer and was misled by getting some easy results. These easy results were put in a report and passed on. Nobody ever questioned the examiner about what he or she might have missed - like the simple and obvious question of "What about alternative browsers?"
This is altogether too common today. Yes, there is a lot of training out there for people and there are various certifications, but none of it means the person doing the examination is actually performing an examinations or just pushing buttons to see what pops out. No, the certifications are not a joke and it takes a lot of effort to get certified. Unfortunately, there is little followup once someone is certified it is just assumed that they know what they are doing and how to perform a correct examination.
In defense of examiners I must say they all have huge backlogs and the pressure to deliver a report quickly is incredible. But that doesn't excuse being sloppy and at its core pushbutton forensics is just being sloppy.
feeling
You are assuming something for which there is little evidence.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Meanwhile, the US having more people in jail than any other means any errors of conviction without guilt are exaggerated.
No, it means we criminalize a bunch of stuff that shouldn't be criminalized.
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In many species, including chimpanzees, when a male takes over leadership, it is common for him to kill infants because they are not his.
What is irrational about killing someone else's unborn baby, and the traitorous mother bearing it, and leaving your own 4 year old child alive? It may be insane, it's certainly not very nice, but I don't see anything irrational about it, if the stabber is thinking only of propagating his own seed.
Just because behavior violates every norm of civilization doesn't make it irrational.
If someone is insane and thinks everyone is spying on him, it may be entirely rational to kill a bunch of them.
If someone thinks a comet is an alien spaceship come to take away true believers, it may be entirely rational to kill oneself as an act of volunteering to travel with the aliens.
Infuriate left and right