Not guilty because it adds drama to the case and they can make more money off it, possibly even make a movie or TV show.

She isn't totally walking away free,she's been convicted of four counts of lying to investigators and she may very well spend 4 years in jail,not much but atleast it's something



ummm you know lifetime could have still make a move of the week even if she had been found gulity

I just can't fricking believe this. First, what would possess someone to do something like this (and I don't care if someone says she's clinically insane. That doesn't excuse what we all know she did). Second, I may not know a whole lot about the case, but after reading the article on Reuters and watching about 30 minutes of the segment about the case on 48 Hours Mystery or whatever it was, I cannot believe she is walking. Accidental? Right, that's why you-know-what was found in the woods and evidence of it was in the trunk of her car. How is that not concrete enough for a conviction? I don't care if you can't put her at the scene; if that's keeping the evidence from being seen as concrete and instead circumstantial, how in the world is there not overwhelming circumstantial evidence to convict her? Isn't it the jury's decision anyway? I mean, I know the jury is supposed to follow the evidence presented and not be biased, but when everything points to her committing the crime and the persecution just sucks... what were they thinking? I'm not bashing the US justice system here because it is the best and fairest known system in the world, generally speaking, and I would not want to live somewhere where people aren't even given a fair trial but, come on, this is insane. I blame the whole thing on the persecution. I saw clips of their presentation of the evidence against her. Seriously, get your $&^! together before a case like this. I think they all need to go back to law school. How stupid can you be? Where is the appeal? This is almost as bad as the O.J. case where he got off scott-free because a cop screwed up and put evidence somewhere that he shouldn't have. Plain ridiculous.

Agreed on both counts.

I will say that it's interesting to me how many people "KNOW" she did it. Do you? Do you really? How? What proof do you have that wasn't present in the case? How have you been convinced completely beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it, and it wasn't an accident, or it wasn't her father, or any other of a number of reasons that she might not have? Nothing linked her to the scene of the crime, and there wasn't even a cause of death. That's HUGE. If she were found guilty she probably would have gotten the death penalty, and there isn't even a determined cause of death. Would you really be willing to send a woman to her death with the large number of unanswered questions on the table?

The fact is, not a single person here KNOWS what she did or didn't do, or can prove anything either way beyond a reasonable doubt, which is what our law requires. People just get far too emotionally involved in these stories and listen to the sensationalizing from the media and get convinced that they know more than everyone who is intimately familiar with the case and have been hearing it practically non-stop for 6 weeks.

This was a victory for the US legal system. It proves that in the face of a very emotional and very controversial case, cooler heads will prevail and deal justice instead of giving out a sentence just to slake the desire for "justice" that everyone has. I honestly believe that any one of us, if we were sequestered for the 6 weeks of this trial and only heard what was said in the courtroom and not any of the media reporting, would have come to the same conclusion as the jury. At least I hope so.

I wouldn't go that far.

Based on what I saw, there is plenty, plenty of Reasonable Doubt when it came to 1st Degree Murder. However, since the defense was practically admitting to child neglect, that she was found innocent of that is baffling.

The Defense made a mockery of the case. I'm sorry, but if your defense resorts to throwing out previously unheard of sexual abuse accusations as the reason for lying to the police, you are one step below the Chewbacca Defense.

I am willing to see the possibility of an accident happening, and this young girl panicing. Obviously, the defense convinced the jury of this. Remember, the murder evidence was extremely circumstantial.

I may be guilty of being overly-emotional on this one, but usually court cases don't aggravate me like this (except for the time we [the US] tried that 9/11 mastermind in civilian court, but that's a whole other story...). I understand the system, and I understand that there has to be no doubt to convict someone but, like I said, come on. When your persecution flounders around like a fish out of water while trying (and failing) to present evidence and gets picked apart by the vultures of the defense, I don't think that's a "fair" trial. Just because the persecution sucked and the defense had a better lawyer, she gets off? That's not "fair" at all. No, there may not have been undeniable evidence connecting her to the scene of the crime, but again I ask, if it was truly an "accidental drowning," what was the body doing dumped in the woods with duct tape wrapped on its skull? Why was there DNA from the girl, along with residue of bleach and ammonia, or whatever the cleaners were, in the trunk of the car? What the heck was up with the Google searches and the internet history on her computer? None of these things were explained completely, if at all. How can you tell me that this isn't suspicious enough for at least a decent stint in prison? Don't get me wrong, I don't think the death penalty would have been necessarily right here (or in many other circumstances) if she was found guilty, so I guess that's kind of a good thing that she wasn't sentenced, but I just can't wrap my head around what happened.

I'm still waiting for an appeal.

I was unaware of the appeal situation, so thank you for setting that straight. However, in regards to your CSI/juror comment, I found it rather condescending and do not particularly appreciate it; I never said I would have been an impartial juror (because you're right, I wouldn't be), I realize that this isn't a TV drama where the bad guy always gets caught, and I know that my opinion and beliefs are not necessarily the same as they are for others. I may have strong feelings about this particular case, but you can't tell me that you're not surprised and maybe even upset, to an extent, about the ruling.

As far as the evidence goes, nobody (in this thread in particular) has directly addressed the questions I keep posing as of yet (see my last post); they either simply allude to these things as simply being circumstantial, or avoid the questions altogether. While these things might just be highly circumstantial, it is incredibly difficult to believe that she didn't play some part in this whole thing, even if she wasn't actually the killer... especially after seeing that god-awful smirk on her face when she heard the verdict "not guilty." I realize that anyone in their right mind would be happy about not being found guilty of murder, but that was not a happy smile; that was a depraved smirk.

Thank you for the clarification. I rescind my remarks about your comment being condescending; I misinterpreted your comment, causing me to take it as a personal criticism. My apologies.

I guess I can also agree with your second point. I suppose that you could argue there wasn't enough concrete evidence for Murder 1 (which the defense did), and I agree with you about the child neglect thing. I still think she still should have been guilty of, if not Murder 1, at least a lesser degree of murder. I feel like only 4 years in prison for this woman for lying to the authorities is not enough. I'm not saying death penalty or life without parole here, but more than 4 years.

Shes not doing any more time even...4 years down to nada, there giving her credit for her 3ish years served...and shes being let go a week from today..next sunday. Compleate Bull.

Thanks, Daniel. I understand the angry and frustrated emotions expressed by others on here, though. It may certainly feel as though justice wasn't served. Maybe it wasn't, who knows? Thats the point, we don't know for sure. As a juror on a trial involving the death penalty, I'd sure want to be. Even in the trial I served where we knew beyond all doubt that the defendant was guilty, we had 2 jurors who could not agree with the rest of us on the death penalty sentence. We all argued our points on the sentencing (we reached a guilty verdict in 30 min) for what seemed forever, and it was plain that those 2 weren't going to budge. It ended up being a hung jury on the sentencing and the defendant got life. Did the 10 of us understand why those 2 felt that way? Not really... it seemed pretty cut and dried to the rest of us. But... I'm glad they stuck to their guns, for their own sake. They won't go through the rest of their lives wondering if they did the right thing by caving into the majority.

Be careful judging those people if you haven't been in their position, or don't have intimate knowledge on how the judicial system works. It very well may be that you are 100% correct that she is guilty of murder and that this case fell through a loophole of our judicial system. I'd still rather have the loophole here than on the other side, where innocent people paid for crimes they didn't commit with their lives.