I imagine that this weekend the Casey Anthony jurors badly needed to talk to somebody. Since they’re forbidden to do so, the religious individuals among them probably prayed a lot and the others started talking to themselves in the privacy of their hotel rooms.

At some point in a trial, I believe all jurors must be hit with reality. In most trials, that probably occurs during the defense case when they realize how flimsy the defense is. But not in this case. I bet that realization hit the jurors this weekend. At least it did for me.

In the Casey Anthony trial, defense attorney Jose Baez took a risk and provided an opening argument that the defendant had concealed the accidental death of her child and then lied to investigators because of a mental disorder caused by her father’s sexual abuse. It sounds plausible to me, even now. I believe that tactic made it possible for jurors to mentally counter-argue along with Baez during the prosecution’s case—until this weekend.

Being able to see the flaws in a State’s case is very reassuring to a  jury, who would usually prefer not to vote guilty in a serious felony trial. Most jurors understand that the State’s powers are almost limitless, and jury trials are among the few situations in which citizens are empowered to dispense justice.

I was a juror in such a case: the defendant was charged with sexual assault and kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl. From the very beginning I was frightened by these charges. I assumed the State must have solid evidence, but I hoped the defense would put up a good fight showing that the crime had not, in fact, been rape and kidnapping.

The defense attorney’s opening statement, like Jose Baez’s, claimed that something a bit less heinous had occurred: he said the defendant had gotten drunk celebrating an important life event, had spotted a girl who looked older than 13 whom he wanted to grab and kiss, and had pulled her aside, off a sidewalk, in broad daylight. It sounded plausible. It gave me hope I might be able to vote guilty to the lesser charges, but not the kidnapping charge.

It was a three-day trial. I went home the first night very unhappy to have been forced to serve on a criminal jury in the infamous Cook County Courthouse, once the busiest criminal courthouse in America. But by the second night, after I had heard most of the State’s case, I was what you might call “highly conflicted,” and I needed to talk to somebody about it.

Since I couldn’t tell my husband anything, I just cried. It was pretty clear by then that I was going to be put in a position of voting guilty on the sexual assault charges and—worst of all—I was going to have to vote not guilty on the kidnapping charges, which I believed meant I would need to have the courage of my convictions and be the lone holdout.

The second day of the trial was a turning point. The little girl testified, and even a year and a half after the incident she barely looked thirteen. The defense’s opening argument was obviously flawed.

On Saturday morning I listened to Anthony trial testimony live on my CNN iPhone app while I took care of chores. I had been disturbed by Medical Examiner Dr. G’s testimony on Friday (and not for the reasons you might suppose; I wondered why Baez had failed to ask her more questions about the meaning of “homicide” as a “manner of death”).  That was not the turning point in my thinking about the appropriate penalty for Casey Anthony’s crimes.

At that point, on Friday afternoon, I still thought Baez had a chance of convincing the jury during the defense case that Caylee Anthony drowned in the family pool, that George Anthony was responsible for the duct tape found on the remains, and that a utility meter reader had somehow obtained the remains and eventually dumped them in a wooded area near the Anthony home in order to claim a reward.

But everything had changed for me by Saturday morning when the criminalists testified about collecting evidence from the Anthony home in December, 2008. A photograph of heart-shaped stickers was introduced into evidence, stickers shaped like the heart-shaped imprint on the duct tape.

Before that, a forensic entomologist Dr. Neal Haskell had testified about the flies found in the white “trash” bag, in the trunk of the car, and associated with the remains in the woods. While I think his work may have been a bit flawed (opening a few doors for the defense to contradict it), one thing he said made sense to me, namely, that the remains had to have been in the woods for many weeks, if not months. In other words, if a meter reader did leave the remains in the woods, he had to have done so many weeks, if not months, before December 11, 2008.

I don’t believe that any juror at this point can imagine a narrative in which Casey Anthony isn’t responsible for disposing of her daughter’s remains callously. The jurors this weekend had to have been wanting desperately to talk to somebody and praying they weren’t going to have to convict her of capital murder.

I can, however, envision a narrative in which Casey Anthony disposed of the body in this way in order to shift the blame for what happened to her child (even accidental death) to the phantom nanny, “Zanny.” Technically, I suppose, this would be the crime of lying to investigators (with which she is charged).

Unfortunately, I don’t think the punishment for that charge is adequate for a person who lies about a complete stranger and does so with the intention of sending her to Death Row for kidnapping and child-murder. And I must admit that I now feel as if the only reason Casey would have concocted a lie about murder is that she was trying to avoid being found guilty of murder herself—not merely being afraid of neglect charges.

False accusations are a horror. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is a sin: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (I should point out that lying per se is not a sin. What’s a sin is calumny, lying in order to libel an innocent person.)

For the remainder of the State’s case in the Casey Anthony trial, I suspect there will be few jurors who are willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. When the defense case begins, Jose Baez will be in an untenable position, even worse than his current position. He will need to address his client’s staging of a brutal murder and blaming someone else—before he tries to rehabilitate her in the jury’s eyes, as the victim of a heinous crime, not the perpetrator. Maybe he’ll even need to get his client to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth at last.

But I am not a lawyer.