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.'"

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't she just put the kid up for adoption?

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitches be crazy ?

Re:First

[somersault]

Ah yes, the feeling of being a murderer is obviously a lot easier to live with than giving a childless couple a chance at happiness.

Re:First

[meta-monkey]

Exactly. People like to play Jr. Detective and assign rational motives to people's action, and frequently it just won't work. I remember watching a round table news discussion show, and they were talking about a murder in which a pregnant woman opened the door to her home and she and the unborn baby were stabbed to death, but her 4-ish year old child who was right there was left unharmed. The estranged husband was the prime suspect, and one commentator said "ah, yes, stands to reason, since why else leave the other child alone?" And the other commentator said the thing I thought, "how can you assign rational motives to someone who stabs a pregnant to lady death?"

Re:First

[rtfa-troll]

feeling

You are assuming something for which there is little evidence.

Re:First

[hairyfeet]

Its because so few have had to deal with the truly batshit and frankly don't LIKE the thought that death can come for no damned reason from somebody you have never done a damned thing to that its easier for them to try to come up with "motives" that frankly often may only exist in the mind of the killer, hell if there ever was one.

Spending most of my life near the strip known as "the meth highway" and hanging out on the wrong side of the tracks i can tell you there ARE plenty of truly batshit crazy people out there, hell many of them manage to even hold jobs and live like normal people...until they snap like a twig. Down the street was an old home that had been in the family 5 generations, its gone now because the grandson killed everybody in the house and torched the place...why? Nobody knows, even he don't know, all he said at his trial is "somebody there must have made me mad or something". Hell he wasn't even on drugs at the time so he can't be written off as having a freak out, he just went total batshit one day.

So maybe she had a reason, maybe she didn't, hell maybe grandpa did it and the daughter covered it up, who the fuck knows, that is why she got not guilty. Watching the trial it was obvious there was reason to believe it could be EITHER the mom (didn't want the kid) or grandpa (molestation) and the cops simply couldn't ever pin down one way or another who did it beyond a reasonable doubt. But to try to pin complex motives to most of these cases simply won't work, because frankly there are a LOT of truly right on the edge of rubber room batshit crazy people out there and frankly if they go off? The only "motive' might be as simple as "I didn't like his shirt".

Re:First

[Sulphur]

So maybe she had a reason, maybe she didn't, hell maybe grandpa did it and the daughter covered it up, who the fuck knows, that is why she got not guilty. Watching the trial it was obvious there was reason to believe it could be EITHER the mom (didn't want the kid) or grandpa (molestation) and the cops simply couldn't ever pin down one way or another who did it beyond a reasonable doubt. But to try to pin complex motives to most of these cases simply won't work, because frankly there are a LOT of truly right on the edge of rubber room batshit crazy people out there and frankly if they go off? The only "motive' might be as simple as "I didn't like his shirt".

While filming in a prison, Richard Pryor asked a prisoner "Why did you kill all those people."

Answer : "They was at home."

Re:First

[DigiShaman]

Pretty much. Back in the 90s, my then GF and I was driving through a subdivision around 9pm when one of two men got out of his truck and shot at us with a bolt action rifle. The following day, I put a dowel rod through the bullet hole located in the passenger door. Had it gone 6 inches higher, my GF head would have exploded like a pumpkin! Reason? They were high on PCP and thought we were demons or something working for the devil. But yes, death can come without warning. All it takes is to be at the wrong place at the wrong time unfortunately.

Re:First

[meta-monkey]

Only if you want to play semantics about the difference between "rational" and "sane." No one sane stabs a defenseless pregnant woman to death. If we're dealing with insanity, then "because it wasn't my kid" is just as "rational" as "because god told me to." "And why didn't you kill the toddler?" "Because he wore a Piglet shirt. Pooh is The One True God, and Piglet his only begotten son."

Re:First

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:First

[meta-monkey]

Exactly. You can play semantics with "rational" and "sane" (which you're doing) but in the real world there's not much difference between "rationally insane" and "irrationally insane." At the end of the day, a woman is getting stabbed to death, and that's never sane. You can assume rationality, but you're only assuming, as an insane person stabbing a woman "because of paternity" isn't significantly more likely than an insane person stabbing a woman "because Space Jesus."

Re:First

[gweihir]

Sorry, the insecurity may be rational, but attributing any importance to it is not, it is pure animal brain. So even with this, the action does not stem from anything rational.

Brain chemistry is not an excuse. Unless it is extreme, any adult can reasonably be expected to have control of his/her emotions and control extreme impulses. Those that do not learn impulse control may not be directly responsible for what they do, but they are guilty of endangerment by not getting these impulses under control. All those "my brain did it" defenses are pretty meaningless unless some serious abnormality is present. If not, the person in question was just to lazy to do something about it and getting control. (Yes, I think dualism has it right, and that the brain/body is actually only a kind of "carrier system", although with its own impulses and emotions. The mind is responsible for getting control over the whole and otherwise responsible if bad things happen from not having control.)

No Death Penalty

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

is google too hard for you, moron? http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/yes-america-we-have-executed-an-innocent-man/257106/

Re:No Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy to answer. Cases are closed after execution and cannot be opened again, so no person is exonerated after execution.

However, the fact that 130 people have been exonerated while awaiting their death should give you a good estimate.

Re:No Death Penalty

[ShanghaiBill]

Could you please link to a single person who was exonerated after being executed in the U.S. in the last 20 years or so (when DNA evidence became popular)? Thanks!

This is not a fair request. When DNA analysis of evidence first became available, many executed people were posthumously exonerated. This doesn't happen anymore because, obviously, we do the DNA analysis before their conviction. So you are implying that "now the system is perfect and we don't execute innocent people anymore", but I think a better interpretation is that "the system is deeply flawed, and the emergence of DNA evidence just exposed some of those flaws." For most criminal cases DNA evidence plays no role, and there is no reason to believe those people are less likely to be innocent.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Dachannien]

We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.

Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

Re:No Death Penalty

[bugs2squash]

No, we shouldn't kill people because we're perfectly capable of keeping them locked up indefinitely. If we were some tinpot nation with no means to do so then execution or outsourcing the incarceration would be more of a necessity, but we're not, we're the most powerful nation on earth, so there's no need. I personally don't believe in capital punishment as a deterrent (it's not why I choose not to kill people at least) and so that really only leaves revenge. Maybe I'd think about it differently if someone killed my kids, but it does not seem like a good enough reason to keep execution on the books.

Re:No Death Penalty

[SternisheFan]

Actually Life in prison without parole is less costly to taxpayers. Each individual death penalty case automatically gets appealed to the Supreme Court, at a cost of over $2,000,000 per. Here's one link: http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html

And a google page of links: http://www.google.com/search?q=real+cost+of+death+penalty+cases&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=_FeyULTuO7K00AGu-oG4BA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=480&bih=295

Re:No Death Penalty

[flimflammer]

Then allow life prisoners to request execution, rather than automatically execute specific people regardless of our knowing whether they're really innocent or not.

The same should be applied to terminal patients, too. If they want to die rather than suffer a horrible end, they should have the option. We think we can condemn people we think are murderers to death, but we refuse to allow people out of needless torture at the end of their life? What a weird society we've become.

Re:No Death Penalty

[flimflammer]

But that would be taking the argument too far. The world isn't black and white. Death is the ultimate punishment. You can't make up for taking someone's life once they're already dead.

Re:No Death Penalty

[swillden]

You could have just said "No, I can't name a single person who has been wrongfully executed recently."

The statement is meaningless.

Lack of knowledge of error says nothing about lack of error -- it just means we don't know we're screwing up. More precisely, we do know we're screwing up... we just don't know which verdicts are wrong. Perhaps new technologies will edge us a little closer, but it's likely there will always be room for mistakes.

FWIW, I'm not particularly bothered by the death penalty. I think there are people who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation, who should never be allowed to be free, and I don't see the point in paying to keep them locked up for decades, so we might as well kill them. But the existence of errors in the process is inevitable, and the fact that there is no possibility of recourse after execution is a valid point, as is the fact that, at least the way we do it, it's arguably cheaper to lock them up until they die of natural causes than it is to kill them.

Re:No Death Penalty

[BLKMGK]

DNA isn't the be all end all for a conviction either. It's quite possible to find DNA at a crime scene and NOT have it belong to a killer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn

We have to be very careful about being lazy when a new tool is introduced as it very well may NOT prove what we think it does. Investigation still has to be done by investigators that have a clue. Sadly it looks like they used an amateur for this investigation.

Frankly, the fact that they failed to recognize more than one browser was on this machine and in use is criminal in and of itself. Whoever did the forensic examination of this machine was an idiot and ought to be fired! they could easily have imaged the workstation, run the image, and explored it to figure out what was and wasn't in use. This could just as easily have been evidence to exonerate someone that was missed, this is disgusting!

Re:No Death Penalty

[englishstudent]

and why is that exactly?

Re:No Death Penalty

[sco08y]

Depends what state you live in. Lethal injection is very painful.

Still quicker and less painful than 50 years in the pen living with society's worst.

Re:No Death Penalty

[spire3661]

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.' - Marquis de Sade.

Re:No Death Penalty

[spire3661]

So the sanctity of life rests on COST??????? Fuck you.

Re:No Death Penalty

[flimflammer]

No, you're right. But things can be done to help, and they still have their life to live from that moment onward, of which they can work to piece their world back together again. Once you're dead, that's it.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Rhywden]

Right. Let's get rid of those "due process" shenanigans while we're at it. Death penalty is heavily biased anyway, so might as well admit to it and summarily execute people regardless of their actual guilt!

Re:No Death Penalty

[capedgirardeau]

There are plenty of states that have the sentence "life without parole" my state of Michigan being one of them.

It works pretty well. There is no parole, no getting out, end of story.

It is the automatic sentence required by law if one is convicted of pre meditated murder in Michigan, no exceptions.

Re:No Death Penalty

[dasunt]

Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

I'm against it because it gives the state too much power.

I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

Re:No Death Penalty

[a whoabot]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism

Re:No Death Penalty

[dasunt]

Could you please link to a single person who was exonerated after being executed in the U.S. in the last 20 years or so (when DNA evidence became popular)? Thanks!

There's been no exonerations that I recall in the past 20 years. There has been a few executions where (IMO) there's a case for reasonable doubt.

For example, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the deaths of his three children in a fire. The justice system claimed the fire was due to arson. Five years after his execution, a state-ordered investigation concluded that "a finding a arson could not be sustained".

The trial was also notable for using Iron Maiden and Led Zepplin posters as evidence of Cameron's mental state.

I'm not sure if he was innocent or guilty. He appears to have had quite a few run-ins with the law. But the interpretation of the evidence and trial appears deeply flawed, and I am not comfortable executing people based on such evidence.

Maybe you are.

Re:No Death Penalty

[dadelbunts]

Ah yes, because many European countries do it it must be the correct course of action.

Re:No Death Penalty

[MaskedSlacker]

I think there are people who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation, who should never be allowed to be free, and I don't see the point in paying to keep them locked up for decades, so we might as well kill them. But the existence of errors in the process is inevitable, and the fact that there is no possibility of recourse after execution is a valid point, as is the fact that, at least the way we do it, it's arguably cheaper to lock them up until they die of natural causes than it is to kill them.

It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.

Re:No Death Penalty

[bill_mcgonigle]

Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.

You're using imaginary thinking to justify killing people? #nohopeforhumanity

Re:No Death Penalty

[kqs]

That plus the possibility that we might be wrong.

And trials are 100% correct, except for the we're wrong.

If the number of death penalty cases which have been overturned (long after conviction) doesn't bother you, then you have an incredible trust of the government. The problem isn't the number overturned, it's the number which should have been overturned. If we're so often wrong at the initial trial, we're also wrong later.

Re:No Death Penalty

[evil_aaronm]

I have to doubt this. I was present at the euthanasia of two of my family pets - I was holding them when the vet gave them the injection - and they were gone about as quick as they felt the injection. If lethal injection is painful, aside from the insertion of the IV, then they're doing it wrong.

Re:No Death Penalty

[dcherryholmes]

No, but as mature western democracies very similar to our own, I would not just haughtily dismiss out of hand the possibility they may have gotten something right, or better.

Re:No Death Penalty

[GofG]

The Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode on the death penalty showed quite a lot of evidence that the concoction of chemicals used to euthanize pets is significantly less painful than the one used to execute death row inmates. I don't know if it's still true, or if P&T made it up for TV, but I remember being quite impressed with the evidence they had.

Re:No Death Penalty

[SuricouRaven]

But that isn't how the lethal injection works for humans. It's a much lengthier process involving three seperate drugs. It's supposed to be painless, but there's a lot of debate about that - certainly the final drug, potassium chloride, hurts like hell, but by that point the prisoner is supposed to be unconscious. The problem is that the first drug used is the anasthetic, and the second a paralytic: If the anasthetic doesn't work (equipment fault, unusually resistant prisoner, sheer bad luck) then it'd go unnoticed, as the paralysed prisoner would have no means to express the pain. And there would be pain: The reason for that paralytic is that without it, even an unconscious and heavily sedated prisoner would be writheing around just from reflexive responses to pain, much to the distress of the witnesses.

You may wonder why the method you saw on the pets isn't used on humans. That's because it's too unreliable. There's a chance the 'dead' prisoner won't be quite dead. There are completly reliable, painless methods - aspixiation with nitrogen is easy - but there face political opposition. The very fact that they are painless ensures they are resisted by the hardcore pro-death-penalty crowd, who feel that a painless death (Or even worse, aspixiation euphoria) does not serve justice properly.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Bruce Perens]

Lots of civilizations do it. Thus, it must be civilized.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Hentes]

Most European countries don't have a death penalty because the EU explicitly forbids it. Whithout that, the legislation may be more diverse.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Bruce Perens]

Yes? There is absolutely nothing in your definition that precludes the rule of law. And the rule of law is, and can only be, enforced through violence. To cause death is an extreme form of violence, but not the most extreme. To jail a person for their entire life is more extreme.

Oh, yes, we can let them go if we find we were wrong. Just like the way we've recently freed a man who spent his entire adult life in jail and is now ready for the senior home. That's more humane than killing him?

Re:No Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we should just kill them and make sure we don't get a chance to find them innocent.

Your logic is awesome.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Bruce Perens]

Ask an innocent person on death row which one they'd prefer.

I assure you, there are lots of people in prison, and people who have incurable illness, etc., who would take a dignified and painless death over the painful and pointless life they've been forced into. It is unfortunate that our society can not see fit to offer them one.

Re:No Death Penalty

[ShanghaiBill]

We're talking about people who've given up their right to life.

Some of us believe that no one ever gives up that right. Governments should never, ever, be given the authority to kill their citizens.

Re:No Death Penalty

[geoskd]

It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.

It's only cheaper because the death penalty comes with automatic and mandatory appeals, appeals which cost a damn fortune, as the state ends up footing the bill for both sides of the argument. If all life sentences came with automatic appeals of the same scope and nature as the death penalty, then it would be cheaper to execute. The only reason the process is so long, complicated and expensive is that we have chosen to make it that way. Our justice system is badly flawed. There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people. The reality is that our laws are not a deterrent, as they are supposed to be. Its time to give up the ghost and work on something better. Getting tough on crime doesn't have to mean longer sentences, and more severe punishment, it can simply mean taking the time and effort to catch and punish the criminals we allow to get away with the crime every day. Instead of having their department parking their patrol cars in hidey holes and trying to catch people who are speeding, the police departments of our country should be out investigating and solving real property crimes. Instead of making recreational drug use illegal in an ill-advised and idiotic "war on drugs", the pointless drug laws need to be stripped off the books and replaced with laws like the drunk driving laws which are aimed at keeping the public safest without making criminals out of people who would otherwise be upstanding citizens. In short, its time to update our legal system to take advantage of the last 200 years of advances in psychology and criminology, and start addressing the problem instead of fighting the symptoms.

-=Geoskd

Re:No Death Penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

You just summed up everything that is wrong with the (in)justice system in your last paragraph. The conservatives in our society believe that the purpose of a justice system is to extract revenge, not punnishment and certainly not, in the name of all that's holy, rehabilitation for lesser crimes. Forgiveness, despite the tennets of their religion, is simply not their policy, no matter what the crime. Unless, of course, it is committed by one of their leaders.

Funny thing, and I suppose it's just a coincidence, that this mentatlity just happens to feed into the profit motivations of the for-profit prison industry, law enforcement and their hunger for expansion of power, and of course the need for more and more criminal judges, judicial programs and the hoardes of incompetent administrators those entail. I must simply be imagining that the interests of profit and religious conservatives just happen to coincide once again. Funny how that happens. Even when, for lesser crimes and certain kinds of people, rehabilitation and reintroduction to society has proven effective and much, much cheaper than other alternatives, the "small government" conservatives don't want to hear it.

Re:No Death Penalty

[satcomjimmy]

The state should be no more than a representative of the population, if the people in that state believe it is better to put down a rabid dog, or a serial rapist or a murdering mother, than it is not the state asserting power. It is the people stating that they believe there are things and people that are not capable of rehabilitation and not worth keeping alive indefinitely. If you actively catch someone in the act of murder and can justify killing them to save a life, then why is it so reprehensible for a jury to later point out that the same murderer has no right to further life?

Re:No Death Penalty

[nbauman]

"the system is deeply flawed, and the emergence of DNA evidence just exposed some of those flaws." For most criminal cases DNA evidence plays no role, and there is no reason to believe those people are less likely to be innocent.

You are correct.

I heard a panel where Barry C. Scheck and some others from the Innocence Project spoke.

Scheck said that the important lesson of DNA testing was not that a few specific people were innocent, but that it demonstrates the error rate of the criminal justice system. The DNA cases are a sampling.

People were falsely convicted, most often by eyewitness testimony and confessions, and the Innocence Project could prove that they were innocent because they were fortunate enough to be involved in crimes that involved DNA evidence.

This demonstrates how unreliable eyewitness testimony and confessions are.

It also demonstrates that other people must have been convicted falsely by eyewitness testimony and confessions, but have no DNA evidence to exonerate them.

(This was actually demonstrated before DNA testing. Psychologists tested the accuracy of eyewitness testimony decades ago. People have been convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony in circumstances where the eyewitness couldn't possibly have recognized their face -- like being on the other side of the street, watching a crime being committed in dim light. Defense lawyers aren't allowed to have experts testify on the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony.)

Significantly, it also demonstrates how flawed the criminal justice system is.

Some of these people were on death row. The advocates of the death penalty will often claim that we're so thorough and careful to protect the rights of defendants that it's impossible for an innocent person to be convicted. (Supreme Court Justice Scalia seems to have made that argument.) The sampling of cases that can be confirmed with DNA evidence demonstrates that they're wrong.

One good story about eyewitness testimony -- a young man was on trial for rape in New England. His defense lawyer was sitting in court, with a young man in a plaid shirt sitting next to him. He cross-examined the victim, asked her to describe the man who raped her, and then pulled the prosecutor's favorite line -- "Do you see that man in this court?" She pointed to the young man who had been sitting next to him. The lawyer asked the young man to identify himself. It wasn't the defendant. The lawyer had brought a decoy. The case collapsed, and his defendant was acquitted. But the judge sanctioned the lawyer. Apparently, they don't sanction the prosecution for bringing an witness who's so unreliable that she will testify that the wrong person did it. But they do sanction a defense lawyer who demonstrates how unreliable the witness is.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Tagged_84]

And this is why I get so upset when religious idiots question where non-believers get their morals if not from a sky fairy.

Re:No Death Penalty

[MaskedSlacker]

There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes [fbi.gov] are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people

I'm going to have to scream bullshit, though that's a mild exaggeration. You've missed reality by a wide margin though. First, crime is not out of control-- crime is at historic lows. The world is safer now than it has been in decades, for both violent and property crimes. There are not just fewer crimes, but there are also far more people in jail than ever before, both in absolute and per capita terms. In other words, you are less likely to be the victim of a crime and you are more likely to be convicted for committing a crime, than at any time in the last few decades.

Second, there are a long list of other reasons to have punishments for crimes. You're guilty of espousing a false dichotomy so absurd it barely warrants rebuttal. Deterrent, restraint, rehabilitation, quarantine, retribution, fairness, etc. (some of these overlap partially with others, but they are more or less distinct justifications).

Re:No Death Penalty

[Johann Lau]

Legislation IS diverse, you're just making stuff up about it instead of looking at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country#Europe

Belarus is the last remaining country in Europe to practice the death penalty.

Last execution in the UK was in 1964. The last execution on British Overseas Territory occurred in Bermuda in 1977. Abolished for murder in 1969 in Great Britain and 1973 in Northern Ireland. Abolished for all remaining offences (high treason, piracy with violence and offences under military jurisdiction) in UK in 1998.

France: The death penalty was initially abolished by the Directory in 1795 but re-introduced by Napoleon in 1810. It was re-abolished in law in 1981 and by Constitution in 2007.

Spain: Abolished in 1978 by constitution except for military laws during wartime. Abolished from the military penal code in 1995.

Prohibited in West Germany by the Basic Law since 1949. US military authorities carried out an execution on West German territory in 1956. The now defunct GDR abolished the death penalty in 1987.

Italy On 30 November 1786 the Duchy of Tuscany (then independent, now a part of Italy) became the first state in the modern era to completely abolish the death penalty. The short lived Roman Republic of Feb-July 1849 abolished the death penalty before being overthrown by French troops. When the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860 all the constituent states except Tuscany allowed capital punishment until it was abolished from the civil code in 1889 â" although it was maintained under military and colonial law. In 1926 Mussolini reintroduced the death penalty into civil Italian law. It was re-abolished from the civil code except in time of war in 1948 (by the Constitution of the Italian Republic). Capital punishment was finally completely abolished by removing it from the military penal code in 1994. Constitution amended in 2007 to make reintroduction unconstitutional without a further constitutional amendment.

And last, but surely not least:

San Marino: Last Execution: 1468. Capital Punishment was abolished for civil crimes in 1848. The Death penalty was completely abolished for all crimes in 1865.

"the EU" - LOL! Europe motherfucker, do you speak it?

Re:No Death Penalty

[dtmancom]

If you learned one thing from the study of human history, it is that human life is extremely cheap.

Re:No Death Penalty

[LordLimecat]

Whether or not we can keep them locked up indefinately doesnt address whether it is just or not, and as for the notion of deterrent, I would just offer up these thoughts:

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal......
My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert.

But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust.....There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

--CS Lewis, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

Re:No Death Penalty

[BrianH]

I've always thought that this was the simplest solution to it. Keep the death penalty, but remove the power of the judiciary to apply it. A judge can sentence a killer to life in prison, but the killer has the power to decide how long that will be. They can spend the rest of their lives in a cage, or they can request execution if they want the easy way out. If you want to remove the possibility of a decision made under duress, or want to enforce a mandatory minimum punishment, just stipulate that they can't request it for 10 years or so.

Re:No Death Penalty

[Solandri]

I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

People rarely decide things based on a single factor. When you characterize their decisions in terms of that single factor, you usually arrive at an incorrect assessment of their motivations. Unfortunately, it's become popular to pick the one factor which makes people with opposing viewpoints look the worst, and then boldly claim that that's their sole motivation. Great for getting cheap acknowledgement from those with similar viewpoints to yours, very bad for creating rational debate about an issue.

For the death penalty, people who support it are generally strongly in favor of individual responsibility. You should reap the rewards of the good you do, bear the consequences of the bad. More succinctly, the priority they assign to punishment for bad deeds is higher than the priority they assign to preservation of life. Deliberately depriving another fellow human being of their life without justification is the ultimate bad, and so being deprived of yours seems an equitable punishment (this is simplified, as obviously degree of mitigating factors can play into it - e.g. abused wife kills husband).

That the government is acting as the agent for the penalty is inconsequential. Most of them would probably vote to acquit a posse who lynched a murderer if they were sitting on the jury. Now, if these people believed government should be so limited it doesn't have the right to punish a convicted criminal, then you'd be correct that they're being hypocrites. But they universally believe government does have that right, so the only variable is degree of punishment. Limitations of government powers simply isn't a factor on this issue for them.

And FWIW, I agree with the reasoning of those for the death penalty. But I oppose it because I don't think our legal systems are sophisticated enough to mete it out in a just manner. There are an uncomfortable number of people on death row whose cases have reasonable doubt in my mind. We have to keep in mind that people and our systems are not perfect, and will inevitably sometimes fail. If it fails and you jail someone, hopefully at some point the person can be released. But if it fails and you execute someone, you can't bring them back from the dead.

Are we still dragging this out?

[davydagger]

She was found innocent, and a bunch of big media dipshits, and powerful figures are still trying to lynch her. Why? She's poor, and in all this rubble, they want one big poor villian to crucify, so they can shift the focus away.

Part of the assault on her character includes the fact that case was concieved out of rape, something that would have every major neo-liberal "feminist" group up in arms if it was someone the system was protecting.

I'll tell you something else. I'll contrast this to another femme fatale who got out of prison around the same time. "Amanda Knox"

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-edition/2011/10/21/seattle-pr-firm-reveals-efforts-to.html?page=all

Looks like the media industry wasted no time revealing if you got money to spend on a PR campaign they could fix your broken character flaws and get murder raps thrown out.

if its any more proof of just how biased the system is, and the system is run by hoardes of PR/advertising goons and lawyers, who seem to want nothing more than to shake you down for verbal and character protection money.

Of course the real enemies of this system are those who can't raise enough money to pay for their services.

Its sick, its real sick.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[Zouden]

It doesn't matter if the media has decided she's guilty. She may actually be guilty. What makes you so certain that she's not?

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[guises]

She may actually be guilty.

No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[swillden]

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.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

She's innocent - just like OJ.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[sco08y]

She was found innocent

No, she was found not guilty and acquitted. There is a rather large difference. In the United States, the is a presumption of innocence which means that in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt the person is acquitted of the charge. There is no statement about the innocence of the person.

No statement, except for the original presumption of innocence. We are all, for instance, affirmatively innocent of every conceivable crime that we haven't been tried for.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[BLKMGK]

What's so hard to understand about new evidence surfacing that throws doubt on her innocence? A forensic examiner apparently only pulled the browsing history for IE and failed to recognize that a second browser was installed. The browsing history for that browser has now been examined and on the day that this child disappeared there were searches regarding methods for killing someone. Why is importance of THAT so hard to understand?

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[guises]

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.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[Samantha Wright]

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.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[blade8086]

As someone who watches entirely too much Fox News, and completely misses the point by shoehorning my political ideology onto every single current event, whether it is related or not, I totally and completely agree with you.

Re:Are we still dragging this out?

[swillden]

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.

Shades of OJ

[stevegee58]

"If the search didn't hit, then you must acquit."

So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for that!

[Greyfox]

Maybe she was planning some autoerotic asphyxiation and didn't know how to spell "asphyxiation!" Jeez, you people, always jumping to conclusions!

Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha

[dwye]

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.

Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because apparently using Firefox over Internet Explorer will help you keep your criminal searches hidden. If only Hans Reiser knew this, he could be finishing up ReiserFS5.

Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.?

[JWSmythe]

    No, it's that Slashdot has gone the way of all other mainstream media. If it involves any piece of technology, it falls into that mysterious "tech" category. Oohh, high tech, they used not one but *two* browsers. Someone in the house searched that intertube thing for something. They even used it to send private messages like "what r u up 2?" She must have been conspiring with the illumanti to distract from [some other bigger BS conspiracy]. It's the NWO washing your brain...

    I'm sorry, I can't continue. It's hard to lower myself to that level of stupidity. It hurts.

Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed?

[JWSmythe]

That's one of those questionable items....

I search for a lot of things, because I don't know everything. When we're watching a TV show, I may do a quick search to see how plausible a portrayed scenario is.

Who's to say that someone else in the home did or didn't search for something else. Not everything is a conspiracy, sometimes it's just a coincidence.

Based on what came out about how the whole thing was handled, it doesn't sound like the murder was very organized. I'd find it hard to believe that she did any sort of in-depth research on how to do it, based on the result. We're only getting a snapshot of what was searched for. One item of thousands. If the other surrounding searches were related to suicide, then it portrays a grieving mother (or other family member) looking for a foolproof way to end their own life.

But hey, she was convicted by the media long before it went to trial, why not take everything as proof the courts are wrong.

Re:Clear Cache?

[BLKMGK]

In IE it doesn't clear anything but the cache that YOU can see. There are a number .DAT files (index.dat I think) that store your COMPLETE history. There are tools to recover this data and this is what this idiot used on her computer image. Firefox also has a database of browser history that I'm pretty sure is also NOT cleared just like IE. Chrome I'm least sure of but judging from the fact the other browsers may not clear history I wouldn't bet that it's any better - I'd be interested in hearing from someone that knows.

Also, the "secure" browsing that IE does? It caches things normally and then deletes them when you close the browser. It's far from "secure". In fact I'm not even sure it's a secure delete that's done. FireFox does this better, I assume Chrome does as well since of the three it handles security the best despite being based on WebKit.

"certified" digital forensics expert?

[Python]

I wonder if this another case of certifications being treated as evidence of competence and experience. With the hundreds of infosec certs out there, and law enforcement agencies essentially being too ignorant to know the difference, or even to know if a certification has any value, I wonder if this happened because of incompetence disguised by a certification? Who doesn't know to look at all the browsers installed on the system? Seriously, that's such a boneheaded mistakes its frightening to think it happened.

The follow up to this should be an investigation into the whole certification process for all digital forensics persons working on this case, and if the certification turn out to be a joke, banning them and everyone that has the cert.

Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha

[joe_frisch]

You need to be very careful in using people's searches in court. As an example, I run role-playing games, some of which are set in the modern world. I've searched for all sorts of information on criminal activity.

Re:Her google searches mean nothing

[cdrguru]

Oh boy, how the Internet can get you trouble...

OK, I admit to not being familiar with the term "dolcett fashion" and looked it up. Gah! I do not recommend this course of action.

I believe it would be difficult to categorize a murder as "dolcett fashion" as this truely would be more likely a suicide, perhaps with the assistance of a lot of psychobabble and drugs. Dolcett seems to imply the willing cooperation of the participant.

Again, I do not recommend researching this topic. If you ignore this you will understand this recommendation all too well afterword.

Shadetree forensics

[cdrguru]

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.

All that remains...

[Doctor_Jest]

Is for her to get into an armed robbery attempt to recover her sports memorabilia and she'll be doing time for what she deserves. :) Hope it doesn't take too long, though.

Do NOT press the red button.

[fahrbot-bot]

Damn. Must now resist urge to Google "foolproof suffocation."

Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha

[SuricouRaven]

Really? Do you think it'd be evident to a jury of non-gamers? When the prosecution has only submitted the searches as evidence that support their case, dismissing all the obviously game-related searches as unimportant?

Re:Newsflash... she's innocent.

[rtfa-troll]

So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes?

It's a total fuck up to not notice it, and, in the hands of a skilled interrogator almost certainly enough to get a full and convincing confession. If she actually is innocent, which I personally doubt, it's quite likely that explaining this would have made her give a sufficient explanation that the case would never proceed. If she is guilty then all they had to do was to insert it at the right moment when she's given a completely incompatible explanation of events, question her about it and end up with her confessing in a way that they could prove was true. Having said that; if they can make this kind of mess, they would probably get the interrogation wrong too.