In Casey Anthony’s case, the law worked

After Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee this week, a disturbing spectacle unfolded outside the Florida courthouse where the trial took place. The crowd outside, convinced that Anthony should have been convicted, began chanting “Appeal! Appeal!” The spontaneous demonstration revealed how little many Americans know about the justice system.

The 5th Amendment guarantees that defendants can’t face “double jeopardy,” which means the government can’t prosecute a person a second time for the same crime if the jury returns a verdict. Only if the jury doesn’t reach a decision can prosecutors elect to retry the case.

If the demonstrators outside the courthouse were angry about the verdict, they should have blamed the prosecution, because its approach was probably responsible for Anthony’s acquittal.

First, prosecutors overcharged the case. What they knew is that Caylee’s mother didn’t report the child missing for a month, and that when she did, she told lies. By the time the body was found, it was too badly decomposed to provide clear evidence of the cause of death. Yet prosecutors chose to bring a charge of first-degree murder and ask for the death penalty. Why did they take this route? They tried to gain a tactical advantage, and it backfired.

By making this a death penalty case, prosecutors knew they were far more likely to end up with jurors predisposed to favoring the prosecution. Potential jurors in a capital case must, under oath, state that they don’t oppose the death penalty and that they could impose it if the case warranted it. What the prosecution failed to take into account was that in death penalty cases, jurors, perhaps unconsciously, require a higher standard of proof. This is just common sense when such an irrevocable punishment is involved.

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Had the case been properly charged, there could have been plea discussions and the possibility of a guilty plea to a lesser, but still serious, felony. By charging a capital murder, the chances of a plea were nonexistent.

Next, the prosecution overtried the case. Criminal cases require strategy, and prosecutors should attempt to prove only what can be proved. In this case, prosecutors wanted to dot every “i” and cross every “t,” which led them to introduce questionable science that served to weaken their case. For example, they claimed that an air sample taken from Anthony’s car showed evidence that a decomposing body had been in the trunk, a claim based on a largely unproven kind of testing never before allowed in a U.S. trial. The prosecution’s desire to answer every question in the end gave the defense ammunition to poke holes in the forensic aspects of the case.

Why then, is the public so outraged about the verdict? Part of the blame must fall on the media. This case got a lot of armchair quarterbacking from self-appointed experts, many of whom have never tried a murder case. By offering punditry rather than serious analysis and reporting, the media turned the trial into entertainment.

In court, jurors are admonished by the judge at every recess not to discuss the case or form any opinions until the case is given to them for deliberations. Of course, there is no such limitation on the public. Fortunately, the Anthony jury was sequestered and, thus, not unduly influenced by the media commentators. The jurors were limited to admissible evidence, as determined by the judge, in making their decision. The media had no such restriction.

After the verdict, the state attorney noted that this was a difficult case to prove. He was correct.

Casey Anthony was not found innocent; she was simply not found guilty of murder because the prosecution did not prove each and every element of the charges they brought against her beyond a reasonable doubt.

There are other countries that have different standards of proof, and in some of them, Anthony probably would have been found guilty and executed. I doubt if any American would want to live under that kind of justice system.

Robert L. Shapiro, a Los Angeles attorney, was part of O.J. Simpson’s defense team.