As I understand it, a woman in Oklahoma had her life threatened not because she murdered her own child, but because some else (allegedly) did. She had the great misfortune of looking like Casey Anthony, and if you don’t know who she is, then you’ve been living under a rock; I couldn’t even go on vacation without seeing it on the news. What is it about this particular woman and this particular case that had people so riled up?
People have been comparing Casey Anthony to O.J. Simpson who (allegedly) killed two people. I remember distinctly when he was acquitted. I was in school when they announced the verdict, and we were all in the main building watching it on tv. Because I was young, it didn’t really bother me or affect me because I was deeply self-centered at the time, as most teenagers are. What is clearest in my memory is a fellow student, a young man a year or two older than me, walking down the crowded hall as we all filed back to class singing, “The Juice is Loose!”
I don’t remember clearly if people threatened Simpson’s life after he was acquitted, but Anthony wasn’t even out of jail when people started began threatening her. Are people really so quick to throw their own lives away to get what they perceive to be justice for someone else? The little girl wasn’t their little girl, so why are they so quick to seek justice for her?
I suspect that much of the threats are simply words, with no real threat of intention behind them. It is terribly frustrating to empathize with a little girl who never even had the chance to live a good life and to see a mother who appears to want only the freedom of having no strings attached to her apron. That much empathy demands that something be done, but it appears that our justice system has failed us and our emotive need to see this precious child avenged. For most people, simply being heard is enough; they only want someone to hear and understand their frustration as they vent it in chorus and in unison.
That is not to say that Anthony’s life is not in danger because there are those people who would like nothing more than see justice—vigilante justice. I have loved Batman for as long as I can remember, but even I do not believe in vigilante justice. There is no longer any Wild West, and I do not see the reason to bring back a form of justice that ends up turning on itself. We have government to protect the weak from the strong, and very often, those in power will do whatever it takes to keep that power for themselves, and carrying out vigilante justice is an awesome power. We have a series of checks and balances in our government to prevent any one branch or any one person from gaining too much power. Vigilante mobs do not.
I believe that in this very difficult case, people should focus not on the part of our justice system that doesn’t work, but on the part that does. I do not believe we should sacrifice innocent people to death row just to get at the few that are able to slip through. “Better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Here is today’s Fight Question:
Should the news have funded Casey Anthony’s defense? Is ABC news actually responsible for this miscarriage of justice? Is her acquittal a miscarriage of justice?
Yay for Casey Anthony! She had the opportunity to cash in on the high-profile nature of her case, and she did it. If anything, this shows me that "miscarriages of justice" occure when the accused are not matched in funding with the People. The people, you and I, as it happens also fund the prosecutor's case. It is only when the case is high-profile that the DA feels the political pressure to get a conviction- even if it means the defendant gets rail-roaded. http://www.cryforjusticewestmemphis3.org/ When properly motivated, prosecutors will go to any length to convict, even if it means pawning the family jewels. The funding of Casey's defense evened the playing field, and if it did anything it made the trial more fair. As to whether her aquittal was a miscarriage of justice- I've never met the girl. She seems nice enough to me.
ReplyDelete