Not Guilty - 10 Reasons Why Casey Anthony Won

The Casey Anthony not guilty verdicts were a shock to many people. For some, like talking heads Nancy Grace and Jeanine Pirro, they still refuse to believe it. One quick excuse is to say that the jury is a bunch of idiots. But that doesn't usually happen. Most jurors take their job very seriously, especially in a death penalty case. Also, as an alternate juror already spoke about, the things that viewers think are important, don't necessarily impress the jury.

The bottom line is this. The jury found her not guilty on the serious counts and they did it in less that 12 hours. This indicates that they were pretty united in their verdict from the outset. It seems unlikely that they would spend several weeks sequestered and then just blow off their responsibility at the end of the trial.

So, if the jury did the job we asked them to, what caused the not guilty verdicts? Sticking our head and the sand and saying that there was no way they could find Casey not guilty is just stupid. The not guilty verdict is what happened and we might be better served trying to understand why it happened. I offer 10 reasons why the jury might have found Casey Anthony not guilty.

1. The Prosecution Overcharged - The prosecutors made this a death penalty case, but they had some missing evidence like cause of death, time of death, motive, who did it. When you asked a jury to potentially end someone's life, you better have the evidence to back it up. Many agree that, for whatever reason, the evidence wasn't there.

2. The Jury Wasn't Biased - The jurors may have taken their oath to base their verdict on the evidence seriously. Most of the TV reporting was heavily biased in favor of the prosecution. If the viewers look at just the evidence, they might have see things differently.

3. Everybody Lied - One of the hallmarks of this case is that everybody lied. Casey lied (and was convicted on four counts). Her mother lied as evidenced in the rebuttal case about the web searches. Her father lied at some point at least - he smelled trash the car, but later on it changed to a dead body smell. One of those statements is a lie. The body finder had the skull roll out of a bag, but then later it was stuck in the mud. Did the defense and prosecutors lie? I know what I think. So how can the jury rely on any evidence if almost all of the key players are lying? Maybe they didn't believe anything they said.

4. Bogus Evidence - After two forensic pathologists could not determine the cause of death, the prosecutors find an anthropologist that says the death was caused by duct tape. This undermines their own witnesses, but the prosecutors staked their claim on this. Then on the chloroform search. The prosecutors said it was searched for 84 times, but their initial test said one time! And the 84 times might be a lie. For both instances, a jury member might wonder why, if the prosecutor's case is so strong, is he lying to me?

5. Unsubstantiated Motive - The motive presented by the prosecution was that Casey wanted to kill her daughter so she could go out and party. There is only one thing wrong with this. There was no evidence presented. All witnesses said that Casey was a great mother. Nobody, I mean nobody, said anything different. They relied on the partying after death to say that Casey was a bad mother, but it didn't match the rest of the evidence.

6. Spite Instead of Evidence - The prosecution and its witnesses used spite to make their case instead of evidence. Dr. G, the medical examiner, said she couldn't determine cause of death, but was sure it was a homicide because who would throw their daughter in the dump like trash? This is anger, not science. If Dr. G wants to hate on Casey Anthony, fine, but maybe the jury didn't give that much credence.

7. The Duct Tape Theory - In perhaps the most ridiculous exposition of the trial, Prosecutor Ashton described the duct tape as (paraphrase) "... one piece for the mouth, one piece for the nose, and one piece for the gap. You must have three." WTHF? He said it like he was quoting from the "Duct Tape Murder Manual." This was just all made up in his own head. I can see why no juror would believe this, or believe anything he said after making this assertion.

8. If Each Piece is Bad, the Whole Thing is Bad - A lot of evidence was presented and the defense did a good job of casting doubt on each piece. A talking head said that it was a mistake for the jury because they needed to look at the evidence as a whole and not piece by piece. But in the this case the evidences wasn't very strong. It's like the prosecution said 1+1 = 3, red is blue, fat is thin, and short is tall. And when the defense debunked each item, the prosecution wanted to say "But you have to look at the evidence as a group." That didn't seem to work.

9. You Figure it Out - In an amazing summation, Prosecutor Ashton laid out his case, but then said if the jurors came up with another theory, they were welcome to use that. They jurors may not have felt obliged to figure out the case for the prosecution and may have thought that it was the prosecution's job to present the case not for the jurors to fill in the blanks for the missing evidence.

10. DA Behavior - One final straw might have been the behavior of Mr. Ashton during the closing arguments. On numerous occasions he was shaking his head "no" and the crowning moment was his laughter when he was called out by Mr. Baez. This led to objections, removing the jury, admonishments by the judge, etc. This may have been a master stroke by Mr. Baez. I am sure the jury felt this trial, where they were potentially being asked to administer the death penalty, was anything but a laughing matter. The fact that Mr. Ashton thought it was funny was really disrespectful not only to the proceedings, but specifically to the jury.

These are just 10 items and I could go on. Is Casey Anthony guilty of something? That's what a lot of people believe. But is there a good reason for the jury to find her not guilty? I'd say there at least 10 reasons to think so.