Jeff Ashton: Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony

[Mr. A]

Before I begin, I would like to preface my review with a very important quote by the Ayn Rand Institute on Ayn Rand in regards to capital punishment, as my review is about a Capital Case, State of Florida v. Casey Anthony:
“She thought it was morally just, but legally dangerous—because of the possibility of jury errors which could not be rectified after the death of the innocent man. She had no position on whether there should be a death penalty or not.”

That said:
Having just read over the weekend Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony by Jeff Ashton, I can review it using only one word: INSULTING
And then spend my entire review supporting that. And will.
First the title itself. It’s inherent in it - “Imperfect Justice”
Moving on.
In the last part of his Prologue, he writes about how during the reading of the verdict, when the jury was not going to find her guilty on any count:

Wow.
I could feel myself mouthing the word of disbelief, physically moving my lips and saying it, but not out loud. I stifled the urge to shake my head, even though that was what my body wanted to do. I did not want to demonstrate either approval or disapproval to the jury. To me, one of the most sacred rules of attorney decorum is that you never demonstrate approval or disapproval of a jury’s verdict.

(p 4-5 Prologue)
Well, it came out in this book alright, at least to me. But it takes 250 pages to return to the verdict again nearing the last part of the book, and when we do, a “disapproval” of the jury’s verdict would be a gross understatement after I show what he actually mouths about the jury.
Let me begin with this passage first, that just didn’t sit well with me, then I’ll start to get things really going with his comments:

The prosecution team hoped that by hearing about the progression and tweaking of her lies, the discovery of Caylee’s body, and the connection of that crime scene with the Anthonys’ home, the jurors could interpret the defense’s opening, filled with unsupportable allegations, as just another of Casey’s lies. But of course that would require some intellectual effort and some actual thought on the part of the jurors.

(p. 254)
That last line was what didn’t sit well with me.

The jury is instructed that what the attorneys say is not evidence. Their job is to express some skepticism toward both sides and say ‘Okay, now prove it.’ We knew we could prove Linda’s claims in opening, and we knew Baez couldn’t prove most of his. We could only hope the jury would do its job.

(p. 254)
This is striking to me in two ways. We know the verdict, so that implies that the jury did NOT do it’s job and that the prosecution actually could prove Linda’s claims as if that‘s some kind of definite fact. And btw, I could care less what the defense was, as the burden of proof rests upon THEM, the prosecution, need I remind anyone of onus probandi? So I am not even going to address the defense, only the prosecution in this, my focus is solely upon the prosecution in my review of this book, just want to be clear about that. I’m not discrediting what they said about the defense, I’m simply not focusing at all on it. And that’s that. I refuse to budge his burden in any way shape or form by deflecting anything towards Casey’s defense, as such.
Also what he said about Juror #3 (Jennifer Ford) early in the book didn’t settle well with me, as I have praised her up and down for what she said in her interview I saw online a while ago. Anyways. I will return to her later in my review, as he returns to her later in his book.
That all said, here we go.
In regards to Casey’s father at the stand his says:

He was not bright enough to read what was happening.”

p.261

I just wanted to slap him, and this wasn’t even the end of it.

p.261
So much for any decorum now. Now onto the jury and what he really thinks about them in the Epilogue, and mind you someone by the name of Lisa Pulitzer coauthored this book with him:

In listening to the anger and the frustration that people have displayed, it’s been hard for me not to chime in in agreement, bit I also know that these decisions and the forces that create them never have any easy answers. People around the country who passionately believe Casey was guilty still struggle with just how this woman was able to get away with it. It’s frustration I share, and there’s nothing to alleviate that

He says that as if he is asserting that there was actually something she was getting away with… what? Murder? Accidental death? What?

Simply put, I think Jose Baez won in spite of himself.

HE had nothing to win, he “won” because of your own default, unable to convince the jury of the very filicide you were accusing Casey of commiting. The burden is all yours to bear in that respect. ALL yours.

Of course, if Baez’s defense didn’t lead to the verdict, then what did? In the months since the verdict was handed down, I’ve asked myself that question about once an hour. There are no easy answers, but in hindsight, my belief if that the evidence as well as the makeup of the jury played a large rule in how this decision was shaped.

You mean, the lack of evidence on your part…

Furthermore, we’d always known that there were a couple of spots in the evidence that were problematic for us. Chief among them was not having a cause of death

I can see why that would be problematic for you…

but also we on the prosecution team could never effectively say exactly how Casey went from a search for chloroform in March to killing Caylee in June. We had our theories, of course, there was never anything that we could say definitely and prove in court.

Oh, well, that’s kinda important, now isn’t it? You couldn’t prove it, yet before you said you could prove Linda’s opening? Hmmm…

there was no way for us to suddenly some up with a cause of death or prove that the events between March and June led to Casey killing her daughter

Hey, you said it, not me. No way to bear the burden of proof needed for Murder One then.

What I find truly baffling though is that somehow they did not see the proof enough to convict her of a lesser murder charge or even manslaughter.

Proof? What proof?
His disapproval of the jury expressed yet again:

This verdict, however, was not the work of a jury who didn’t believe she deserved to be punished at all. To me the biggest legacy of this decision is not that Casey wasn’t convicted of first-degree murder, but that she got away scot-free.

Still implying there was something she got away with, and insulting the jury’s decision.

Our case was not a slam dunk; we knew that from the start.

Right, glad you knew that, and now you are showing, poor sportsmanship over the ‘game’. In his prologue, he spoke fondly of your love of the gamesmanship (p.3), so this is him just being a sore loser about it, or what?
Then what was further insulting his what he said the jury “presumably felt” which angers me tremendously, but what does even more in the next breath he says “we have no right to condemn them” then in the next breath:

Throughout the weeks of the trial, I kept thinking that justice for Caylee would be sufficient to make the jury work harder and care enough to really think through what was reasonable.

Implying that they didn’t work hard enough, care enough, or think through what was reasonable enough.

From the instant we showed the photo of Caylee’s remains with the duct tape and were met with no discernible emotion from the jury, I knew that it would be a struggle to make them care. Maybe there is something we could have done to make them care more or motivated then to think a bit harder about the evidence that we did have, but if there is I can’t think of it. We just couldn’t make them care more.

Perhaps they were just not letting their emotions, or feelings get in the way of facts, evidence, in the case? As many outside the courtroom, were? (there was mass hatred of Casey, etc)

There have been many cases in the past where juries have convicted people of murder based on less evidence, cases where the exact cause of death was unknown, or even cases where the body was never found.

That’s not an argument.

My worst fears from jury selection manifested themselves in the verdict. This jury needed someone to tell them exactly how Caylee died.

How dare they.

Piecing it together from circumstantial evidence was not good enough for them. They wanted the answers on a silver platter, but we didn’t have the evidence to serve it that way. It’s not just the verdict that tells me this, but also the manner in which it was reached. The fact that they didn’t request any materials to review. The fact that they didn’t have any questions for the judge.

That’s not an argument.

 

[Mr. A]

Part 2

If the statements that the foreman of the jury made to the media are true, ten of these twelve jurors felt that ninety minutes of deliberation was sufficient to fully weigh, consider, and reject four weeks’ worth of testimony that we on the prosecution used to establish that this was first-degree murder. The rest of the thirteen hours of deliberation had been spent trying to convince the two holdout jurors of the decision.

You state that as if this is some kind of argument against their decision.
Before I mentioned Juror #3, Jennifer Ford, well, he mentions her again here, everyone I recommend listening to her interview about the trial, then you might be able to see, as I do, just how INSULTING he is towards her judgment as well as the rest of the jury:

Juror Jennifer Ford, the only juror to identify herself,

There is good reason to not identify themselves, as the death threats came in, etc,

later said in an interview that ‘no one showed them how Caylee died.’ My question would be: ‘How hard in those ninety minutes did you look for it?’

How insulting. He goes on:

The jurors had to put the pieces together and apply some common sense to the notion of how people do and don’t act. This jury was not willing to do that, so in a sense we lost before we started.

Put in the proper sense, you lost before you started, because you were not able to establish the how, when, where, why in the death of little Caylee, as Jennifer mentions some in the interview.

I do think the outcome was influenced by the publicity and the difficulties it created for us in jury selection that I talked about before. I remember a conversation I had when we were debating whether to try and pick a jury here in Orlando and I said ‘You might be able to get a jury here, but you’re not gonna like what you end up with.’ I guess what applied to Orlando applied to Pinellas County as well. Maybe we should have gone farther away. Maybe to the moon.

Maybe you should go there now, after this book. Exile you there, sentence YOU there, then maybe you can get a real feel of the alienation, rejection, isolation the jury and especially Casey feel, because of how many people in the country, much like you (but varying in degree), think and FEEL and say in regards to them:

Looking to the future, the trick for me, as well as for anyone else who finds themselves angry and frustrated, is how do we let go? How do those of us who haven’t forgotten Caylee in our hearts move on? Forgive? Not possible. Forget? No way.

Maybe your Epilogue was cathartic enough for you and now you can leave the jury and Casey the alone.
Leave them the **** alone. That’s how you let go of them.
I want to mention two sentences that actually stood out to me positively in this entire book, if it was him that even wrote these lines, but anyways:

No, I’d wanted the case because I thought it was worth fighting for. I was going to go out either way, and I can’t think of a better way to go out, than fighting for little Caylee Marie Anthony.

We may never know what happened to little Caylee, and I just hope, she didn’t either.
Only one other thing I would like to mention. There is a line here that I wonder why was it even included, it’s, to me, is an insult to the psychologists that evaluated Casey:

To this point, we have still been given nothing to indicate that Casey suffered from any mental illness or personality disorders, other than appearing a bit of a psychopathic narcissist (just my opinion - not a professional diagnosis)

Thus this speaks to me: Just tryin’ to smear her, paint my own portrait of her like I have been doing, and insult all those who do not see her as I do.
In his acknowledgements at the very end of the book he says among all those he is acknowledging:

To Lisa Pulitzer, thanks for helping me tell this story and making me sound halfway intelligent.

Wow.
What did you sound like before then?
To Lisa Pulitzer, what all else did he really say about how he thought and felt about the jury‘s verdict, about Casey, et al. before it‘s publication? Anything?
　

 

[Mr. A]

Here is said interview with Juror #3, Jennifer Ford on YouTube:

Jennifer Ford Casey Anthony Juror #3 Interview - YouTube