The Hanged Juror

“Nothing will ever be the same again.”

The Hanged Juror — 2012-05-07T12:39:55Z

This is a tautology, of course, since nothing is ever the same, but when spoken by a Socialist politician who admires Marshal Tito (Yugoslavian dictator under the Soviet Union), it sends chills down the spine, does it not?

In the United States the media generally ignore what’s going on in the rest of the world. If an American wants to know what’s happening outside this country, she has to watch BBC World News, and then most of what she learns is how stupid the EU is, not what’s happening around the world. But, of course, I understand why this is: Americans don’t think the rest of the world matters, even Americans who would like to see “One World.”

Sidebar: Have you ever noticed how TV weather maps show storm boundaries sliced off at the Canadian and Mexican borders?

Remember the Bosnian War?

Under President Bill Clinton, NATO intervened in the genocidal war among Balkan nations that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union. At the time, American media was awash in the bloodshed and horror. It inspired me to write a short story, “At the Foot” (now in my historical-mystery short-story collection THE EVIL THAT MEN DO (Light Pages, 2009). When I finally published the story in 2009, I figured it counted as historical, because nobody in America would remember the war.

American memories are very short (and getting shorter, as far as I can determine because high schools don’t teach any history after World War I).

Since the beginning of this century I hadn’t heard a word about Bosnia or Kosovo or Serbia until this weekend when I picked up a copy of The International Herald Tribune as I boarded a plane at Heathrow and found an article by Dan Bilefesky, “Bearing West, Serbia his a bump,” which ends with the chilling quote above from Ivica Dacic, interior minister of Serbia, now running for president. Dacic is a populist and nationalist, which is another way of saying he’s anti-democratic and believes in Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat;” as the lyrics of his theme song says, “All you heroes, get ready for battle.” (In addition to Tito, the article claims that Dacic’s other heroes include Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama!)

A few days ago, in a completely un-American media moment, The Miami Herald published an article by Jonathan S. Landay , “20 Years After War Bosnia Grows More Divided.” Please read it.

Why Should You Care?

Because Serbia is a member of the United Nations, which now seems to dominate American foreign policy. Because Serbia has applied for EU membership. Because the EU is bankrupt. Because the EU is begging us to bail it out. Because American law and government must not adopt the EU or the UN as our model.

Technorati Tags: Serbia,Kosovo,Bosnia,Socialism,Marxism,United Nations,European Union

Litigatophobia—My neologism for fear of lawyers

The Hanged Juror — 2012-02-16T19:13:05Z

According to my Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary, “litigo” is Latin for “to quarrel, dispute, brawl.” Of course, the most disputatious, quarrelsome brawlers in America are lawyers; therefore, IMHO, the fear of lawyers ought to be called “litigatophobia.” I suppose, you might quarrel with me and say the term ought to be “litigatorphobia,” but that might too easily be mistaken for alligator-phobia, and I really think the similarity of lawyers to alligators is much less than to many other non-human creatures I can think of. (Most are reptiles, but not all.)

My Advice: Fear Lawyers

My novel The Juror Hangs is a cautionary tale about jury duty. It is also—I now realize—the world’s first courtroom drama in which the really bad guys are the lawyers.

In one of my favorite cable shows, Ghost Hunters, the “investigators” claim that evil, angry spirits feed off both EMT (electro-magnetic transmissions) and human pain and suffering. I wonder if lawyers feed off EMT, too, because clearly they make their living from human pain and suffering.

Have you ever read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House? It’s a novel about how lawyers quarrel over a will until it’s entirely eaten up by their fees. Until I became involved in probate court myself, it seemed like a sort of cynical joke. No, it’s not a joke.

So, while I have dedicated this blog to warning prospective jurors about the perils of jury duty—and simultaneously defending the jury system against the lawyers who run the courtroom—I’m now adding a theme: beware the perils of probate court.

My Advice: Never Agree to be an Executor

Why should you never agree to be the executor of a will (or “personal rep,” in some states)?

Unless the size of the estate is small, you will be required to work through a lawyer, even when it’s only a matter of posting a bond because the deceased did not die in the state where you reside. The lawyers’ fees for this minimal assistance will be substantial and may have to come out of your own pocket.
The lawyer will require you to sign a contract stating that you are personally, financially responsible for any of the firm’s fees and expenses that exceed the value of the estate.
No matter the value of the estate, anybody in the world can contest the will for any reason they can think of; when that happens you have to work with the probate court through a lawyer.
If a will is contested, it’s likely to be contested by someone you know well or a family member; this instantly destroys your relationship (if any) with that person; the heir or heirs will blame you as much or more than the “quarreler.” In other words, there will never again be any peace in the family, and some of your loved ones will disown you.

So, if granny tells you one day that she has written a new will and named you as the executor:

Ask her to let you read the will, perhaps in the presence of her lawyer, and see who is named as the alternate executor. If it is a responsible person, then find out if it is too late for her to change the name of the executor to that person, so you don’t have to resign in his favor when the time comes.
If granny has named a cad as the alternate executor, then you need to be prepared for what you’re going to do when granny dies. Find out roughly what the estate is worth and likely to be worth when she dies. Learn about estate tax laws. Read up on probate in her state of residence. Determine what your liabilities will be if you become the executor of her will when she dies.
Consider what you would do if you had to resign as executor after her death, and decide whether you might be wise to plan to contest the will so the cad can’t run slipshod over the rest of the family.

Probate court is nothing but an excuse for lawyers to line their pockets for doing nothing. I hear from certain reputable investment firms that revocable trusts can avoid probate altogether. That’s what I’m looking into these days—that is if I survive the stress of handling a will as executor in which I am not even an heir.

Technorati Tags: probate court

The Fate of the Jury—Part III, The OJ Simpson Robbery Trial

The Hanged Juror — 2011-12-16T15:45:53Z

Long ago I promised Mr. Paul Connelly, foreman of the 2008 jury in the trial of O. J. Simpson for robbery and kidnapping, that I would publicly apologize for my ignorant post about him. The time is long past for that, so I not only apologize profusely for mischaracterizing him in this blog but also for taking so long to correct my stupid mistake.

I hope Mr. Connelly knows that Google searches no longer turn up my uninformed post about him (and after I’m sure this blog article is posted, I will unpublish the earlier posts and comments). In fact, Google searches no longer turn up much at all about the O. J. Simpson trial except to list Simpson’s prison address and to state that in 2011 the Nevada Supreme Court denied Simpson’s appeal and all of his reasoning, including his complaint against the jury and jury foreman specifically. In addition, Google has recently redesigned YouTube so that it is impossible to find anything on it other than paid advertising, so none of the videos of the Nevada trial that YouTube once featured so prominently are easy to find.

I hope now Mr. Connelly is able to return to his private life. I know from personal experience how hard that is to do after serving on even an obscure jury. Serving on a jury is traumatic for anyone with integrity, a belief in the American system of justice, and a love of the Bill of Rights.

The Book

Mr. Connelly told me he had written a book about his experiences with O. J. Simpson’s lawyers, the press, and the judges. It still sits in a drawer somewhere, because he was wise enough not to make it public. I believe I told him I had once considered writing a true-crime book about a case involving a woman convicted of murder whom I believe to be innocent. I contacted the attorneys at the Author’s Guild (of which I am a member), and they kindly informed me that I would need not only liability insurance but also to find an attorney who specializes in vetting manuscripts before publication.

Naturally, I decided against writing the true crime book. Since that time, I have also decided not to blog about the case any further, because really I know very little about the people involved. Most of their behavior is more inexplicable than any fictional character I have ever dreamed up. I wish them all well, but it’s best for a juror or other bystander in these matters just to keep quiet and try to go on with their own lives.

The Fate of the O. J. Simpson Foreman

Mr. Connelly posted public comments on this blog. I have researched and confirmed what he told me. Here it is:

After the verdict was in, the foreman, Mr. Connelly, agreed to speak to the media in the courtroom. BIG MISTAKE. The reporters, cameramen, and sound crews were—as usual—unruly.

Mis-speaking to the Media

Someone asked a question about what sentence was appropriate for Simpson.

Mr. Connelly replied: "That is up to the judge and the court to decide. It is not up to this panel of jurors."

The reporter pressed on, saying,"Many people are of the impression that OJ Simpson should have been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison 13 years ago and that surely every one has opinion on this case."

Mr. Connelly mistook the reference of the pronoun “this” as “opinion”, and replied, "and that was my opinion, that it is up to the court and the jury to decide."

I told Mr. Connelly that it was legitimate to interpret his statement to mean that he thought OJ Simpson was guilty and ought to have been sentenced to life (the former English teacher in me speaking, not the former juror). However, I do believe him when he says that was not what he meant. The Nevada Supreme Court also agree that was what he meant.

This is an object lesson for all future jurors: Never speak to the media. Jurors are not trained to address the media. It takes years of formal education to be competent to deal with the media.

False Rumor

The media reported that the foreman, Mr. Connelly, had pressed the jury to continue deliberating late into the night in order to deliver a verdict on the 13th anniversary of Simpson’s famous not-guilty verdict.

Mr. Connelly swears that no one on the jury, not even he, knew that the date was the anniversary. The reason they pressed on was that they had first deliberated over Mr. Simpson and had reached agreement on his guilt, but they had not deliberated on Mr. Stewart. If they had adjourned for the evening, they were worried that the Simpson guilty verdicts would leak out; so rather than risk that they pressed on.

To quote Mr. Connelly’s comments on this blog:

“As for the foreman deciding to press on into the night on the 13th anniversary, not a single juror had a clue as to the significance of the day. Certainly the defense attorneys did, and they could have postponed closing arguments another day. . . . We had no idea that it was the 13th day of the trial; we deliberated 13 hours; and it was the 13th anniversary of his [Simpson’s] famous trial. He also committed the latest crimes on the 13th of September the year prior. My original juror summons number was 32, which is his jersey number, [and] he was also once jailed here in Vegas in cell 32. Is this my fault?”

It’s an interesting observation, don’t you agree? And surely it is no coincidence that “the defense attorneys” later cited Mr. Connelly’s remarks and behavior as grounds for their appeal.

Mr. Connelly also wrote:

“As for no black jurors on this trial: 18 jurors sat through this trial. Juror #13 is an African American male, and juror#17 is an African American female. The judge wanted to do a lottery of sorts to decide the 12 deliberating jurors. This method would have certainly given one of the African American jurors a chance to deliberate. However, the defense lawyers did not want the lottery, as they asked the judge to have jurors 1 [through] 12 as the jury and 13 [through] 18 as alternates.”

In Mr. Connelly’s opinion, the defense attorneys did this in order to guarantee an all-white jury and, so, provide another grounds for appeal if the verdicts were guilty. I’m sure he is correct.

Media Are Destroying the Jury System

Mr. Connelly was forced to testify before the court about his alleged misconduct. Simpson’s lawyers tried to have him charged with perjury for his answers on the juror questionnaire. His family was harassed by the media. I can’t begin to imagine how horrible all this was for his family.

The State of Nevada owes him an apology, in my opinion.

You know this is true: in every high-profile trial, the only verdict the media will accept is “Guilty.” Any “Not Guilty” verdict is blamed on the jury system and the ignorance, stupidity, or corruption of the jurors.

Pray you are never the defendant in a high-profile trial of any kind. I say “pray,” because your fate is out of your control. Perfectly innocent people are arrested all the time.

But you can do something to help yourself from serving on a high-profile jury. If you don’t feel it’s ethical to ask to be excused from jury duty, then be very sure you don’t ever talk to the media.

Technorati Tags: cameras in courtroom,media coverage of trials,O.J.Simpson

Let Me Lend You an Ebook for the Holidays

The Hanged Juror — 2011-12-10T17:11:17Z

My mystery short-story collection, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, is now available for borrowing from the Amazon Kindle Lending Library. Most of the stories were previously published in hardcopy and e-magazines, and most are fairly tongue-in-cheek, so the evil isn't entirely out-of-character for this season. Only one, "At the Foot" is definitely a horror, rather like most of the murders I discuss in this blog.

Recently, the Authors Guild and other writers' organizations have criticized Amazon for its lending policy. As a result, Amazon has established a generous fund to compensate authors for royalties that would otherwise be lost through its lending library. So, you don't have to feel guilty about borrowing any author's books, let alone mine. More than royalties I'm looking for readers--believe it or not. And if you read my work and like it, I would appreciate an email from you.

In addition, the ebook will be FREE for downloading between December 22 and December 26, so you can buy it for $0.00 and email it as a gift to someone else. Please take advantage of this offer.

If you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free app for Smartphones, iPhones, and iPads, as well as computers.

To borrow a copy from Amazon, you don't need a Kindle and you don't need an email from me, although I would love it if you would email me at ccm@ccmambretti.com to let me know you've borrowed it.

Sinister Bigotry

The Hanged Juror — 2011-12-09T16:23:45Z

On Tuesday, a headline graphic above the Wall Street Journal’s masthead read, “The Power of Lefties.” Naturally, being a proud lefty myself, I turned immediately to page D1 where I was slapped in the face with this headline: “The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed.”

Sidebar: If any business but a newspaper had been so misleading, this would have been an instance of illegal bait-and-switch.

I have read a great deal about the health hazards of left-handedness: the worst, IMHO, is the tendency of a left-handed driver to swerve into on-coming traffic in an emergency, rather than to the right, out of harm’s way. But there’s also a huge risk of cutting yourself when you use a knife (which you have to use with your right hand because of the bevel on the blade, which is right-biased).

The WSJ article claimed, however, that lefties face a greater risk of ADHD, dyslexia, and even schizophrenia than right-handed people. Supposedly, “researchers” have conducted statistical studies to this effect and have also concluded that lefties have 10% lower IQs than righties. They claim the only possible cause of the disease of left-handedness is pre-birth trauma to mothers, who apparently suffer from surges of nasty chemicals in their systems. “Proof” of this comes from studies of identical twins who do not share the same “handedness.”

One such pair of identical twins are my maternal aunts. I have always attributed their divergent brain wiring to the original split of the embryo, which produced what my mother called “mirror twins.” I guess that idea is beneath modern “scientists.”

As for dyslexia, the fact is that I do believe it is related to left-handedness. When I was first learning to read and write, I wrote backwards and had a very hard time reading words with certain letter combinations. For instance, I remember that the word “scissors” baffled me, and it took me forever to figure out the difference between p’s and q’s. Once I realized that the rest of the world read in a different direction than I did, I was able to sort it out. However, to this day I can write backwards like Leonardo da Vinci, and I can also write upside down and backwards simultaneously with both hands. (I guess that makes me either an idiot savant or schizophrenic or both.)

As for the IQ of lefties, anyone who’s left-handed will tell you that he or she has never met another left-handed person who wasn’t brighter and more creative than average. Please don’t forget that our current president is left-handed and so is Bill Clinton. Tell them that the Bush righties are 10% smarter than they are.

Ancient Bias Against the Sinister Side

The word “sinister” derives from the Latin word for the left side. A “bar sinister” on a medieval coat of arms indicated that the owner was descended from a nobleman’s bastard son. I’ve been told by someone who has lived in Moslem countries that it is taboo to use one’s left hand in public, especially for eating, because the left hand is supposed to be used only for certain filthy, self-maintenance tasks.

I have just completed a novel set in 1929, the Year of the Stock Market Crash, tentatively titled Snow Ghost, in which the protagonist is a left-handed typesetter. She explains to another character that parents and teachers often try to force a left-handed child to change hands, because left-handedness is highly suspect, not healthy, and improper. When I wrote that, I thought contemporary readers would be surprised to learn that left-handedness was once so despised. Foolish me.

Coming Soon: The protagonist of The Juror Hangs, Iris Ginge, is also left-handed. Now available only on the Kindle, in the first quarter of 2012, it will be available for the iPad on the iBookstore, as well as the Nook and the Sony Reader.

Technorati Tags: left-handedness,The Juror Hangs,Snow Ghost

The Fate of the Jury—Part II, Genetically Inferior Classes of Jurors

The Hanged Juror — 2011-12-05T16:28:45Z

When recently, after the Casey Anthony acquittal, legal pundits called for “professional jurors,” they probably didn’t know it, because they probably aren’t well-enough educated to know it, but the idea of a superior class of American individuals who are more-capable than the average American is a concept first articulated in the early 1900s (I won’t say ‘early 20th century,’ because legal pundits think the latter era is right now) by Social Darwinists, and ‘ “[e]litists, utopians and so-called ‘progressives,’”as Edwin Black explains in “Horrifying Roots of Nazi Eugenics,” a chapter from his War against the Weak.

Eugenics

Until very recently I naively believed that eugenics had been thoroughly debunked as quackery decades ago. Then someone very close to me made this chilling statement about a little girl we know:

“You have to understand: some people are just worthless; nothing can save them; nothing can even help them. They’re born that way.”

The person who said this claims to be a scientist, to understand Darwinism and genetics—thus giving him the right to make such statements. (As I have asserted before, many people who claim to be scientists are nothing but very superstitious—their superstitions involve bogus statistics rather than mysticism.)

If you have any doubts that the U.S. has long been a hotbed of eugenics, please read Wikipedia’s article on the topic, which correctly notes that one “darling” of contemporary progressives, Margaret Sanger (promoter of the birth control pill and abortion and founder of Planned Parenthood, which is now a government-funded NGO), was a eugenicist.

Sidebar: I am a proponent of “a woman’s right to choose” as a privacy issue. I’m not arguing against the right to abortion. Nor am I disparaging religious opposition to abortion on moral grounds. What I’m saying is that there have always been a large number of people who favor abortion as a means of genetic engineering. Is it a mere coincidence that, according to the Center for Disease Control in 2000, the ratio of abortions-to-live-births for African-American women is 3 times that of white women?

Eugenics in Law and Literature

Margery Allingham (1904-1966), British author of the Albert Campion mysteries, was also a eugenicist. As late as 1963, she wrote a mystery novel about a series of crimes committed by a genetically flawed child born during the Nazi bombing of London in 1940-1941. The novel is The China Governess.

In The China Governess, the mystery kicks off with a young man’s search for his genetic roots. An orphan (adopted by a gentleman of the landed-gentry, whose roots extend back to the Norman Conquest) learns just before his marriage to a wealthy heiress that he was born in the worst slum in London. Until then, he had thought he was the wealthy adoptive father’s “bastard,” as he puts it. It panics him to think he might have inherited “tendencies, weaknesses” from an unwed, poverty-stricken mother.

Of course, in the end we learn the hero isn’t a defective after all. His mother and father were married, middle-class, and educated. His mother died in child-birth, and his father was separated from the infant during the London evacuation. The criminal in the mystery is revealed as the true child of the slums, “a poor type. . . not necessarily an imbecile. . . ,” though barely human, more “reptilian” than anything.

Now, since many modern murderers seem barely human to me, too, you might think I would find this attitude acceptable. But, saying that someone doesn’t behave up to the standards of humanity is very different from saying there are classes of humanity, some of which are inherently, grossly inferior to others. No, I would not have thought this villain was genetically inferior just because he was born in a slum or that he was destined for a life of crime.

Worse yet, Allingham also extended her class of genetic inferiors to the working classes. Here’s how the heiress fiancée of the hero describes her unexpected encounter with the masses in a tobacconist’s shop:

“Many of the women were factory workers. . . . They were . . . all hot, and laughing aloud. The brutal noise, meaningless as a bird call, reached an intensity which stunned her. . . . The uniformed factory women were imitating their men folk and swearing as they never did in the normal way when each was as it were a private person. The trickle of dirty fantasy threading through the crackle produced a shocking sound which she had not met before, and which gave her the illusion that there were no individuals present, only a single merciless personality. As the queue fed her relentlessly into the dark shop the stale, sweaty smell of leather and newsprint met her in a wave . . . .”

That’s right. She had never been inside a shop that sold tobacco and magazines before. I repeat: this was written in 1963. John F. Kennedy was President until November of that year—the heyday of liberalism, one would have thought.

Another eugenicist was poet Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) (The Spoon River Anthology), a lawyer and Clarence Darrow’s law partner in Chicago, when Darrow was accused of jury-tampering (a Los Angeles jury hearing a case of union violence against a newspaper).

Edgar Lee Masters wrote two epic-length, blank-verse works on the subject of eugenics, crime, and juries: Domesday Book (1920) and The Fate of the Jury (1929). In my quest for literature about juries and jurors, several years ago I found copies of these (first and only editions) at an online antiquarian bookseller’s website. Inside the front cover of the Domesday Book was the slip of paper reproduced to the left: it is Masters’ autograph. It reads: “For Alice Woodward’s copy of Domesday Book. Edgar Lee Masters September 25-1933.” (If I were a graphologist I think I would call his handwriting rigid and say that the cross on his T looks like a whiplash.)

Sidebar: I don’t know why he called it the Domesday Book, rather than the Doomsday Book, but he did. Frankly, my guess is he pompously thought the spelling was more authentic and medieval.

The Domesday Book is a murder mystery in blank verse, which, as far as I know, makes it unique in literary history. A young woman is found dead in Illinois’ Starved Rock State Park (which has had its share of notorious murders, including “The Starved Rock Murders” of 1960.) The detective in the story, so to speak, is a coroner who calls together a jury of the leading professional men of the community to determine whether she died accidentally or as a result of homicide. In the end, it turns out that the young woman was genetically inferior and promiscuous. Her behavior had so horrified her father that the thought she might bear him a genetically inferior grandchild out of wedlock drove him to kill her. In Masters’ mind, the tragedy seems to be what the father was driven to do to save the bloodline from contamination. (Hmm, maybe that’s what George Anthony was trying to do by testifying against his daughter.)

In The Fate of the Jury, Masters follows up on how the jurors were impacted by their experience on the coroner’s jury (something that more writers ought to pay attention to). The coroner himself, unfortunately, ultimately falls in love with a “neurotic” young woman who ought not to have children for fear she would produce equally defective children.

Professional Jurors

The idea of professional jurors is an abomination. Everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence and everyone who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would roll in their graves if we permitted a class of professional jurors to decide guilt or innocence. As a consequence, I imagine there would be another earthquake on the East Coast where, as far as I know, all the Founding Fathers are buried.

Just imagine what such a class of people would be like: They would be well-educated in the law and little else, like lawyers. Paid by the state, they would be obliged to side with the state. They would feel duty-bound to make sure justice was meted out to every guilty person, and they would be able to recognize a guilty person from a mile away.

I’ve always thought lawyers were people who chose their profession so they could tell other people what to do. I’ve never been to law school, but I’m beginning to think that Law 101 must be a course in the inborn superiority of people who can tell other people what to do.

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony jury,professional jurors

The Fate of the Jury—Part I, Coroner’s Juries

The Hanged Juror — 2011-11-22T15:21:20Z

The tabloids are still full of Casey Anthony gossip, but no mention has been made of the fate of the jurors in her murder trial. After all the cries of outrage at the verdict, after all the bubble-headed pundits who saw the verdict as a sign that jury trials were obsolete, after Judge Belvin Perry, Jr., wrote to the Florida Attorney General about the folly of the “sunshine” law that compelled him to release the jurors names, now no one cares what happened to the jurors—no one but me, apparently.

Wisely, most of the jurors seem to be hiding. Foolishly, one juror has hired a publicist.

In an insightful article about the so-called “scientific evidence” presented in the Anthony trial, Matt McCusker of the American Society of Trial Consultants explained very clearly that the Anthony jury served the role it was intended to serve; it applied common sense to the arcane machinations of the law (my interpretation of Mr. McCusker’s article).

Among the so-called scientific experts who testified against Casey Anthony was the media darling, Dr. G (medical examiner Dr. Jan Garavalia—warning, link is a noisy ad). Dr. G testified that the manner of death was homicide, based on the presence of duct tape in the vicinity of the skull and the fact that the body was transported to a wooded area in a garbage bag, a.k.a. trash bag.

Of course, this is nonsense. It’s fallacious reasoning. No real scientist would draw such a conclusion. The only conceivable reason an intelligent woman would make such a claim is that she was biased toward the state’s argument, because she is a state employee. It was clearly in her self-interest to support the state’s case, and it would clearly have been personal and professional suicide to go against public opinion.

Coroners v. Medical Examiners

The office of coroner goes back almost to the Norman Conquest in England. The coroner (or “crowner”) was the king’s representative in the counties and, as such, handled legal matters. The coroner conducted inquiries into crimes in the form of trials (inquests) in which testimony was presented to a jury. In matters of unexplained deaths, the coroner’s jury decided whether the death was of natural causes, accidental, or homicide.

Sidebar: I took the photograph above earlier this year in the city of Westminster, which is a borough of London. Westminster is the seat of the British government. I found it interesting that in Westminster there is a coroner’s court, not merely a medical examiner’s office.

Medical examiners are forensic pathologists who, like coroners, are appointed at the county level in the United States. Coroners are not forensic pathologists; they can be any citizen.

Apparently, the first medical examiner’s office in this country was established in New York City in the 1940s; board-certified forensic pathologists were first recognized in 1959. Since then, the trend has been away from coroners toward medical examiners—based on a common assumption (or perhaps mythology) that medical examiners are more objective in their judgments than the layperson.

I contend that Dr. G proves otherwise.

Coroners must convince a jury of their judgments about cause and manner of death. Medical examiners need only convince a prosecutor, a lawyer who generally knows nothing about the scientific method.

When a medical examiner pronounces a death to be a homicide, then the State is free to step in and take away the liberty of any citizen it chooses to blame.

In the Casey Anthony trial, the jury played the role of a coroner’s jury and declared that the cause of death was not proven to be homicide. The cause of death could have been accidental. It could even have been natural. The medical examiner did not have sufficient evidence to determine the cause of death, and, without a cause of death, the manner of death can never be proven.

It may rankle the mob, but that is why we have a Bill of Rights.

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony jury,coroners juries

Be careful what you wish for, and what you wish will never happen

The Hanged Juror — 2011-10-14T13:37:47Z

I’ve written several times that the only two chairs in a courtroom worse than a juror’s are the defendant’s and the witnesses’. I could wish nothing worse for my enemies than being forced to testify in front of a judge. I would never wish my enemies to be charged with a crime for fear that crime would be strangling me. Now I’m faced with the possibility of having to testify in a hearing, and the thought of it has sent me into a complete panic.

I suppose I’m not even supposed to talk about the issue that may require my testimony, so I’ll just say I’ve found proof of life after death in probate court.

Why am I so afraid of swearing an oath and testifying? I’m told that a lawyer would never understand that. I’m told that most people wouldn’t mind a bit. I’m told that most people think a reluctance to testify indicates a person has something to hide. Well, I have nothing to hide. I don’t feel I need to lie about anything. That isn’t the source of my anxiety.

Fear of Telling the Truth?

The belief behind the idea is that guilty people fear telling the truth, so they lie. But it’s also possible to fear making a mistake and inadvertently lying or even to fear that when you tell the truth you may not be believed.

I would never agree to take a lie detector test, for that reason, and that doesn’t make me guilty of anything. Even the law recognizes that lie detectors are not reliable determiners of veracity. Lie detector results aren’t allowed in court. But if a situation arose in which the cops felt it was a good idea to strap me into a lie detector, the situation would have to be dire, and as a consequence I would no doubt be as distraught as I am right now. That distress would undoubtedly register with the lie detector. The lines would jump up and down like crazy, even when they asked me my name.

Ken Alder’s The Lie Detectors is a fascinating, novelistic account of the invention and promotion of the lie detector among law enforcement. Alder concludes that “The lie detector and its progeny have been repeatedly denounced by respectable science—but since when has that stopped millions of Americans from believing in something, especially when the public media breathlessly extol its successes?”

Fear of Swearing an Oath

I wouldn’t like to be told to raise my right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—whether it was “so help me, God” or not. I’m a word-monger and a literalist. I take words very seriously. I could swear to tell the truth, but only as I know it; since I’m not omniscient I would have some trouble with the simple oath to “tell the truth.” I could not swear with an easy conscience to tell “the whole truth,” not only because I lack omniscience but also because I know the whole truth is very complicated and it would take me a very long time to tell the whole truth as I know it and I doubt that any judge would sit idly by while I rambled on and on (as I am now). And I would feel uneasy about telling “nothing but the truth,” since I might inadvertently tell something untrue or half true.

When I was sworn in as a juror, the clerk recited a very bizarre oath, which I must say I swore to “with mental reservations,” in the old sense of the word. It had something to do with the “eyes of the all-seeing God.” I said, “I do,” when I didn’t have a clue what she meant by that, and I was literally sweating the whole time. A lie detector would have jumped off its chart.

Historically, “mental reservations” were the “out” used by Christians to avoid punishment for refusing to swear an oath. Mental reservations were a way of crossing your fingers while you hand was raised to swear an oath. By holding mental reservations, the Deity would understand that you intended to tell the truth or perform an honorable act (such as taking a high office) but that you did not necessarily mean the words of the oath literally.

In time, the authorities caught on and added to every oath the words “without mental reservation.” That precipitated a crisis of faith for some people. Many Protestants did not believe in oaths of any kind. The swearing of an oath was an act of faith for Catholics and some Protestants but a denial of faith for others. It’s rather like the controversy now over whether or not to lay one’s hand on the Bible (or Koran) when taking the oath of office.

So, I’m not the only person who starts shaking when asked to raise her right hand and swear. And I’m not the only person who would flunk a lie detector test even if all I was asked was my name or who would refuse to take one in the first place.

Honestly, if I’m called to testify I’ll have to take Valium to get through the experience.

Technorati Tags: lie detectors,oaths,witnesses

What would you do if you found your father after 50 years?

The Hanged Juror — 2011-10-05T01:01:25Z

When I was 11 years and 1 week old, my father died in an auto accident. For whatever reason, my mother (who died this year) refused to discuss him or his life or his family with me. She lied to me and said my father’s half-brother refused to attend the funeral (although I now know he was a pallbearer), and she refused to take me to the funeral. Not only that, she would not take me to visit his grave, although almost 40 years later my sister said she visited the grave with my mother often.

Last week I discovered that Marquette University owns a scrapbook of my uncle’s that contains 43 of my father’s letters from World War II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and received a battlefield commission, which was awarded at Fontainebleau.

I’ve just begun reading my father’s letters. To me, as a child, he was a rather formidable father, not a person. Now I’m learning about his love of his parents and brother, whom he called “my bud.” I’m learning who he was as a person. He writes about his father, a “peculiar man” who was the son of a U. S. Deputy Marshal in Indian Territory. He worries about his mother, a Native American woman who “passed” for white and who ultimately was excluded from his wedding to my mother, because my mother’s mother was a racist (and, ironically, discovered in time that she had married a Jew).

I am overwhelmed.

Trauma or decomposition at fault for spate of jogger-less feet?

The Hanged Juror — 2011-09-08T13:54:07Z

Voice of Sanity tells me:

“Decomposition. ‘Not by trauma’ means no signs of cutting. There's been considerable discussion of this in BC. The head and limbs don't bloat up like the torso so they tend to sink, however the runners provide some flotation. It's still very puzzling.” (He also recommends this Wikipedia article, which is indeed very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discoveries )

The actual quote by the coroner Stephen Fonseca to which I referred was: “Foul play was not suspected because there was no sign of trauma.” Since I have a low opinion of medical examiners, I failed to note that the idiotic remark was made not by a medical examiner but by a “coroner,” who may or may not be a physician or pathologist.

It is obvious that the people in question who lost their feet did so after they were dead, and the only way they could possibly have died was after a traumatic event. Drowning is a trauma. Drowned bodies show signs of the trauma in their lungs and eyeballs, so obviously there would be “no sign of trauma” on a drowning victim’s feet. One of the feet was in a hiking boot. The least sinister explanation for this is that a hiker on a cliff overlooking the shore slipped and fell to his death. This trauma could have resulted in the same trauma a person would suffer by jumping to their death from a tall building—but much trauma, nonetheless, and not likely to the feet.

It seems to me that the only way anyone’s foot could rot off their submerged body is if they first suffered a traumatic event.

It is absurd to say that there is no reason to suspect “foul play.”

Sidebar: If Dr. G. had testified in Casey Anthony’s murder trial that the manner of death was “some form of foul play,” I would have agreed. A reasonable person could easily conclude that a crime had to have been committed when a child’s body was found in a trash bag in a wooded area near her mother’s home. (But it could have been merely improper disposal of a body.)

As in the Anthony case, the causes of death for the athletic-shoed feet are unknown and, therefore, so is the manner of death: they could have died accidentally of drowning, or as a result of suicide, or homicide.

However, since few people wear athletic shoes while swimming, it is highly unlikely that they all drowned accidentally. Yes, some people do wear athletic shoes instead of boat shoes when boating, and people on cruise ships might wear them on deck. But such people would have been reported missing, and DNA testing could match the feet with the victims.

Most of the explanations provided in the article have not been scientifically proven to be possible. For instance, how does anyone know a foot could travel 1000 miles on ocean currents?

The idea that the feet may have come mainly from the 2004 tsunami isn’t reasonable, either. Two of the feet have been tentatively identified as belonging to people from British Columbia. Two of the feet are from the same woman, and the odds of two feet from a tsunami victim winding up in the same place are astronomical.

In addition these feet have all been found in the past four years and all in a relatively small area given the enormity of the oceans on this planet and the length of their shorelines.

I think a better remark from a coroner might have been: “Foul play cannot be ruled out in any of these cases.”

Technorati Tags: Salish Sea feet,Dr. Jan Garavalia,coroners,medical examiners

Maybe the ME’s Office in Knoxville, TN, isn’t the worst in the world.

The Hanged Juror — 2011-09-01T17:13:22Z

I was preparing a blog post about the decades’ long problems with medical examiners in Knoxville, TN, when an article on a CNN blog caught my eye: “Canadian Floating Feet Mystery Deepens.” I urge you to read it, if you have any reasonable doubt that juries ought to listen to medical examiners’ courtroom testimony with a great deal of skepticism. (Think Dr. G’s claim that Caylee’s remains proved the manner of death was homicide.)

If you don’t care to read such a gruesome article, here is the punch line:

“For the 11th time in the past four years, a human foot in a sport shoe was found on a Pacific Northwest shoreline. . . . ‘These human remains did not show any evidence of trauma whatsoever,’ CBC quoted [Medical Examiner Stephen] Fonseca as saying.”

Okay, doc, exactly how did the foot become detached from the ankle if it was not by trauma?

Technorati Tags: Dr. Jan Garavaglia

Literary Criticism and the Casey Anthony Trial

The Hanged Juror — 2011-08-30T13:52:32Z

Ever asked yourself why Borders is bankrupt? No, I haven’t either, because I know why it’s bankrupt: their supplier, the American publishing industry, is intellectually and morally bankrupt. American publishers have been shoving garbage down America’s throats for decades and gifting their friends with 6- and 7-figure book deals while paying only pennies to serious professional writers.

You don’t agree?

Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton has announced a book deal with William Morrow for a 256-page hardcover titled Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony. It will go on sale before Christmas so we can all give copies to our friends and relatives. (What a nice gift to find under the Christmas tree!)

Sidebar: I suspect William Morrow is hoping for a holiday hit, but the year-end holidays aren’t the top holiday for book sales. That’s Mother’s Day (I kid you not). Hmm. Casey Anthony on Mother’s Day.

Since Ashton and his publisher have already decided on a list price and know the total number of pages, that tells us he finished the manuscript weeks ago. The verdict in the trial was announced only 8 weeks ago on July 5. Assuming Ashton spent six weeks full-time on the manuscript and that the average 300-page book is about 60,000 words, then Ashton cranked out about 1,429 words per day with no breaks.

On a good day, I can write 2,000 words, but I spend a horrific amount of time on revisions after the manuscript is done. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I can’t whip out 500 good words in a morning. But, of course, maybe Ashton is some kind of “savant” and, of course, I’m no Jane Austen.

Why Ashton and Not Baez?

Jeff Ashton will go down in history—if at all—as a loser. The only reason William Morrow gave him a contract is for the cache of Casey Anthony’s name. Ashton is feeding at the same trough as all the other exploiters of the death of Caylee Anthony.

The person they ought to have offered a book deal was the lawyer who pulled off one of the greatest coups in legal history, Jose Baez (who appears to be in talks with agents now). I might read a book by winner Baez; clearly he’s taking his time to do it right. He also understands that anything he says or writes now, during the appeals, can only hurt his client. (I wonder if Ashton gave any thought to how his book might affect the appeal of the lying charges.)

Linda Drane Burdick could probably write a good tell-all behind-the-scenes book, too, about how Ashton flubbed it. Early on in the trial, media commentators said, “This is really her case, not Ashton’s.” Then, as the trial progressed, it became obvious that Ashton loved the limelight too much to sit in the background while she handled “her case” quite competently. Instead, Ashton relegated Ms. Drane Burdick to the role of arguing the law before Judge Perry while the jury was out of the courtroom.

Ashton lost the case. He made a mess of the forensic evidence. The jury knew this.

Sidebar: One of my favorite moments in the trial was when Jose Baez cross-examined forensic entomologist Dr. Neal Haskell and nagged him into making the incredibly stupid claim that “There’s a difference between garbage and trash.” I’m sure everyone on the jury thought as I did that the scientist must think we’re all incredibly stupid to try that one on us. But Jeff Ashton believed it and repeated the testimony during his closing.

Even so, a Jose Baez book could not have saved Borders. Not even a book by the infamous evil-doer herself could have done that. By the time any of us first heard of Casey Anthony, Borders was doomed, because American publishers publish very little worth reading.

Technorati Tags: Jeff Ashton,Linda Drane Burdick,Jose Baez,Casey Anthony,Dr. Neal Haskell

Hot Air and Forensic Science

The Hanged Juror — 2011-08-22T18:57:59Z

Some time ago in response to my statement that (like one of the jurors who spoke to the press) I suspected Casey Anthony might have used chloroform as a babysitter, blogger “Voice of Sanity” contacted me:

'Easy' to concoct is arguable - it is 'easy' to accidentally produce phosgene, a deadly gas, instead. DuPont had a release from their plant, killing a worker. VOS

Two chemistry professors in this video clip from In Session disagree: they claim that not only is it easy to concoct, chloroform is also released from chlorinated swimming-pool water and lingers for a very long time in enclosed spaces, such as a car trunk and a sealed can (used by Orlando CSI’s to capture the gases in the air of the trunk and later tested at Oak Ridge National Labs and the FBI lab). (They also admit that pure chloroform is hard to make, but for most people’s purposes the purity is irrelevant.)

Two pieces of evidence presented at trial hinted that Casey Anthony might have used chloroform to sedate her daughter:

a computer search for “how to make chloroform” found on the Anthony-family computer
a minute amount of chloroform detected in the air in the car trunk

Unfortunately for the prosecution, the evidence did nothing more than hint; the defense thoroughly shredded the forensic analysis of both the computer search and the air in the trunk—and the jury understood this.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, the chloroform junk should never have been admitted into evidence. It was nothing but hot air. I am absolutely certain now that chloroform played no role in Caylee Anthony’s death, but not because of the difficulty or ease of concocting it at home.

The idea that chloroform might have been used as a murder weapon came initially from a poorly conducted computer forensics analysis of the Anthony hard drive. First, a police officer created a report listing all the Google searches on the hard drive. He found nothing sinister other than a single search on “how to make chloroform.” Because he did not know how to use the analysis software properly, he put the report he had generated aside for almost a year before asking a real software expert to look at, but he did initiate an investigation into the presence of chloroform in the remains and the “crime scene” (the wooded area and the car). The remains and the wooded area produced no hint of chloroform.

Some time later, forensic anthropologist Voss from Oak Ridge examined the air in the trunk in hopes of discovering it contained gases that would prove a human body had decomposed there, one byproduct of which is chloroform. He ran a test on the air using a gas chronometer/mass spectrometer: an instrument that determines the chemical makeup of a substance. Voss found chloroform in the sample—as expected, since he had been told that a body had decomposed in the trunk.

But he did not conduct a test to determine how much chloroform or any other single chemical was in the sample. Instead, all he did was determine that chloroform was present and was the dominant gas in the sample.

And here is where logic flew out the window: Voss assumed the air was filled with the gases of human decomposition, but his studies of the gases of human composition had never before shown that chloroform was the dominant gas. Therefore, he concluded, most of the chloroform in the car trunk sample must have come from some other source than the victim’s body.

Since he was also told that chloroform intoxication was suspected as the cause of death (because of the Google search), he ran to the prosecution with his GSMS readouts—and a theory of the crime was formed.

Let’s look at the prosecution’s syllogism again:

The gas in the car trunk was from the decomposing body of a child killed with chloroform (a faulty premise).
The gas in the car trunk was composed of too much chloroform to have come entirely from the process of decomposition (if you believe Voss’s database).
Ergo: chloroform was the murder weapon.

What?

There was nothing fishy about the Google search for “how to make chloroform,” because it was made in the context of someone’s visit to the Facebook page of one of Casey Anthony’s boyfriends who had written a remark about winning girls over with chloroform.

There was nothing fishy about the findings of a very, very minute amount of chloroform in the air of a smelly car trunk. Chloroform is present in many common household products and produced by the decomposition of mammal flesh, such as pork chops. It’s even present in pool water in which the child could have drowned, as the defense claimed.

Casey Anthony’s bizarre behavior after her child’s death compels me to believe she felt guilty about something. Her mother’s apparently false testimony about being the one who searched for “how to make chloroform” makes me wonder if she doesn’t suspect Casey used chloroform as a babysitter.

But there is no evidence at all—not a shred—that chloroform had anything to do with Caylee Anthony’s death.

So, I still feel Casey Anthony felt responsible for her daughter’s death—even if it was because she didn’t keep an eye on Caylee when she most needed to, and Caylee sneaked out of the house one June morning to go swimming alone.

The Casey Anthony trial should be a wake-up call to the forensic science community: a few more public spectacles like it will sour the public on the whole profession. “Forensics” may produce intriguing clues the likes of which Sherlock Holmes would delight in, but clues aren’t evidence. Detectives need to get back to basics. Prosecutors need to learn to respect juries and present them with solid cases.

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony jury

Medicare to the American People: “Die Slowly and Miserably!”

The Hanged Juror — 2011-08-21T14:19:09Z

This post has nothing to do with crime or courts. It has to do with laws, though, and specifically the laws surrounding death.

In the past five years I’ve had to manage the deaths of two members of my immediate family. I use the word “manage” advisedly, because neither of them died instantly—no car wrecks, no heart attacks, no strokes. They died slowly while enmeshed in bureaucratic red tape.

Because of government regulations, my loved ones died traumatically.

Through this process I learned that while Alan Grayson may have been correct when he said Republicans want us all to “Die Quickly!,” the flip side of the death coin is that Democrats want us all to “Die Slowly!” and according to the rules set out by government agencies.

Sidebar: I have tried to warn everyone I know about the horrors awaiting them when their elderly parents begin to die, but no one will listen. Most people assume their parents have “taken care of things already”: that they have insurance, they have a living will, they have a regular will, they have siblings or relatives or neighbors who are watching out for them, or “they have long-term health-care insurance.” But I guess you have to go through it to understand that none of those “preparations” are a parachute. The government takes charge, no matter what the living will says, or the will says, or the insurance policies say, or even what the dying person says. So, I’m writing this as a public service. Ignore this post at your own peril!

Americans are not free to choose the way they die, any more than a condemned murderer can choose between the gas chamber and lethal injection.

Conventional wisdom says that when a person knows she’s going to die and her family knows, then mercifully they all have time to “come to terms” with the end of life. Conventional wisdom believes dying slowly is a good thing.

As usual, conventional wisdom isn’t wise. Dying slowly is just one damn thing after another.

Hospitals and Terminal Illness

When a person is admitted to a hospital for diagnosis of a serious problem, one of several bureaucracies tells the patient’s doctor what to do:

if the patient has private insurance, then the insurance company takes charge
if the patient is uninsured and eligible for Medicaid, then Medicaid takes charge
if the patient is insured through the Veterans Administration or Medicare, then the VA or Medicare takes charge

In all cases, the doctor’s first task is to diagnose the illness as quickly and inexpensively as possible. If the diagnosis is that the patient has a terminal illness, the doctor’s next task is to make a prognosis: how long will the patient live?

How Long Has He Got?

The nature of the terminal disease is all important in determining how long it will take for a patient to die. A patient with heart disease or cancer is especially problematic, because few definitive tests are available. Most doctors can only estimate how long it will take for a given patient to die, and the estimate is just that—an estimate.

This is the first catch in the system: unless the estimate is that death is imminent (6 months or less) the patient cannot be put into hospice care immediately, even though that is the most-humane thing to do. Why? Because the insurers and the government don’t cover hospice care if the patient could live longer than that. (And, BTW, Alan Grayson is sadly mistaken if he thinks the people in charge of hospice care are Republicans.)

Discharge from a Hospital to Hell

If the patient has private insurance, then an accountant in the hospital will consult the insurance company to determine what treatments are covered and how many days’ stay in the hospital are covered. Normally, no insurance covers hospital stays unless their purpose is for diagnosis and treatment. As soon as a terminal prognosis is made, the patient is promptly discharged from the hospital and for a limited time sent to a skilled-nursing home of the patient’s choice (approved by the insurance company) for “recuperation” from the hospital visit.

Sidebar: A friend told me that when her uncle was diagnosed as having a terminal illness, at his bedside and in front of him the doctor told her, “He can’t die in the hospital.” After that she had to scurry around to find a suitable nursing home for recuperation.It makes you wonder why state governments bother to collect statistics about the recovery rates at hospitals, doesn’t it? They kick out anybody who’s dying.

If a hospital patient is on Medicaid or VA benefits when a terminal prognosis is made, a Medicaid or VA social worker will take charge. The patient will be discharged to a Medicaid-or-VA-approved skilled-nursing home for a limited period of time—if the patient is on Medicare, then to a Medicare-approved skilled-nursing home.

Recuperation in Skilled Nursing Facilities

Every stay in a nursing home for recuperation from a terminal prognosis by a hospital is a bureaucratic sham.

It is also a waste of money.

But that’s what our wonderful government insists on. The way the bureaucracy sees it: if you go into a hospital with a serious illness, then you cannot go home immediately even if you want to so you can die in privacy. You have to go into a bureaucracy-approved skilled-nursing home to lie in a hospital bed in a ward filled with other dying people so there can be no doubt in your dying brain that you aren’t long for this world.

Why does this happen? The government makes money from this: each skilled nursing home is licensed by the state and approved by the bureaucracies for a fee. The state and the bureaucracies employ thousands of people, including social workers, to inspect these facilities; they employ thousands of managers to oversee the social workers and other employees; and they collect income taxes from the money the dying pay or cause insurers to pay to these facilities.

Catch 22: You can never recuperate in a skilled-nursing home if you are dying.

So what happens when the social worker in the nursing home figures out that you aren’t getting any better?

Well, it’s simple: the social worker notifies the insurer, whether a private company or a government bureaucracy such as the VA, Medicaid, or Medicare. When the insurer hears that the patient isn’t getting any better under the care of the skilled nurses (surprise, surprise), then the insurer cuts off benefits.

Let me stress this fact: decisions about benefits are not made by doctors, nurses, or patients but by social workers and accountants. And “benefits” are all those things you need to die painlessly.

When benefits are cut off—usually with only a few days notice—the patient has to leave the nursing home or find a way to pay for an extended stay out of his or her own pocket. This is where the patient with private insurance is really screwed, because such patients usually have an estate (property, savings, investments) that disqualify them from Medicaid benefits that would permit an extended stay at government expense.

This is also where long-term health care insurance can kick in if the patient has it. The problem is that every elderly person I’ve known who enters a nursing home wants to leave it as soon as possible, not lie there and rot in a ward of dying people. Everyone would prefer to die at home in their own bed with hospice services.

Limbo

At the point when a dying patient is dropped by the insurance company or government insurance agency, the family (if there is one) suddenly finds themselves in a horrible bind. (Not that they weren’t suffering already.)

In my experience, though, it is at this point that the family realizes they have few, if any, options. Not many people have the wherewithal to take responsibility for the care of a dying person in their home or the patient’s home. (The friend I mentioned earlier actually took care of her uncle in his home with the help of a paid companion until hospice services could be provided for him there. That a family should choose to do this is rare. Most families in that situation would have to endure months of a heavy burden with a dying relative in their own home.)

This is also the point at which the family may understand for the first time that they’ve been railroaded—by the doctors, the hospitals, the nursing homes, the social workers, the bureaucrats. All along most of these people have been smiling at them and saying, “There’s nothing to worry about. We deal with these issues all the time. Let us take care of things. You don’t have to contact Medicare (or Medicaid or the VA or the insurance company); we do that. We bill them directly. Everything’s covered,” and the naive family member sighs with relief.

Then the bill comes in the mail, and the notice of termination of benefits, and the demands for a personal guarantee of the patient’s pharmaceutical costs—with a requirement that your signature be notarized and witnessed by two other people.

Suddenly the bureaucrats turn blank stares upon you, when you ask where exactly the patient should go now that he or she can’t stay in the nursing home any longer.

Where to Die for More Than Six Months?

This is the single most-important question everyone should ask themselves today: where will I go to die?

Over a decade ago I heard for the first time about hospice care. Someone close to my mother died in hospice care. It sounded like a wonderful institution. But I didn’t give it any more thought than that—and this was a huge mistake.

Hospice care isn’t a place; it’s a service. Hospice workers go into a dying patient’s residence when the prognosis is that the patient has six months or less to live.

Hospice is only available through an insurer. In other words, if a patient has private insurance, then the insurer must cover hospice care or else hospice care isn’t available at all. If the patient is elderly, then hospice care is covered by Medicare or if destitute by state-specific Medicaid. There’s no such thing as private hospice, because of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement requirements. It’s the law.

Remember, hospice is only available if the patient has less than six months to live. If the attending physician can’t make that determination, then the dying patient has to go somewhere without the benefit of hospice-workers’ assistance. That means in many cases that a family member must care for the dying patient until a hospice social worker or nurse can be convinced that the patient’s condition has deteriorated sufficiently.

“That should be easy to do,” you say. Oh, yeah?

When my mother was diagnosed with a form of cancer that is inevitably fatal and was already in terminal, stage four, the doctors and nurses caring for her said, “To look at her you wouldn’t know she was sick at all.” The doctors gave her from “a few months to two years to live.” Hence, no hospice.

VA Hospice Benefits

One of my dying relatives was covered by the VA. Because I didn’t know anything about skilled nursing homes or hospice at the time, the terminal illness became a bureaucratic nightmare. If you have a relative who may be eligible for VA benefits, find out now. Find out what end-of-life care coverage the patient is entitled to.

VA hospitals don’t want anyone to die in the hospital any more than private hospitals do. They will try to kick your loved one out as fast or faster than a private hospital will. But to make things worse, there is no length to which the VA will not go to be able to ship the patient off to a nursing home if the patient has no living will that permits them to withhold life-sustaining treatments or is competent and requests treatment. (Some people don’t want to die, you know.)

My veteran relative became convinced—as a result of poor communication skills on the part of the case social worker—that because the VA would cover several weeks recuperation in a skilled nursing facility, it meant the disease was not terminal after all.

When Hospice Kicks In and You Kick the Bucket

My recent experience with hospice was not a good one. The hospice “team” (as they called themselves) bullied us all into doing what they wanted us to do, not what we wanted to do. At one point they even told me that I would not be “a good person” unless I followed their instructions—instructions that would have put a huge strain on my whole family’s emotional resources. I bowed to their demands.

The determination that hospice-care was called for, in this case, came from the administrator of the retirement community in which my mother lived—a bureaucrat, not a doctor. She contacted a hospice service (of her choice, not the patient’s or the patient’s family). As it turned out, my mother died in less than two weeks after the hospice care was initiated; and no one could tell that death was imminent until less than 48 hours before she died.

After the administrator’s first call, a hospice admissions nurse then visited the patient to make sure she was going to die soon enough. After that a social worker called me to introduce herself as the “team manager.” She demanded to know the most-intimate details of the patient’s life and our family. She also asked whether a pastor should visit the patient, but, even though I recommended no such visit, a “sister” soon showed up at the bedside to pray and sing hymns, which—had the patient been conscious at the time—would have disturbed her immeasurably.

Every day, a hospice nurse called me to describe the patient’s condition. Among the “comforting” tidbits the nurses shared with me was that dehydration (from lack of fluids) and starvation (because the patient’s stomach was involved in the cancer) cause the brain to produce endorphins, thus making dehydration and starvation pleasant. The nurses and social worker also decided when and what medications to administer. When the patient fell unconscious and began moaning, they decided more pain medication was unnecessary; instead they administered anti-anxiety drugs.

Finally, the social worker decided when a vigilant was required at the bedside. She also ordered my brother and I to get there as quickly as possible and to do some other things I would rather not discuss in public.

I was so distraught at that point that I blindly obeyed. It wasn’t until my mother died that I realized what bullshit it all was.

My dying mother and her family had no say whatsoever in how she was cared for after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Accountants and social workers made all the decisions. All of them. And at each step they decided to spend the least amount of money they could, to provide the least amount of care they could, and to administer the least amount of medication they could. They even decided that a woman who could best be described as a wiccan should have a Catholic nun pray and sing at her bedside.

Technorati Tags: hospice care,death and dying,Medicare,Medicaid,VA benefits

Law and Disorder, Spread the Wealth, and Kristallnacht

The Hanged Juror — 2011-08-19T20:20:43Z

The justice system only works if criminals are “brought to justice.” When crimes are committed by mobs of criminals, there’s little hope of that ever happening. While the media continue to fret over Casey Anthony’s “freedom,” mobs of violent criminals are storming through the streets here and in England—and getting away with murder more certainly than she did.

I suppose that’s what troubles me most about the American justice system these days: prosecutors and judges can’t distinguish between law-breakers who make serious mistakes for which they should be duly punished (not executed) and law-breakers who have no concept of the law at all. The justice system is so heavily politicized that it gravitates to sensational, personal tragedies in which beautiful young women are involved as either the criminal or the victim. The system can’t recognize, let alone cope with, national tragedies and the breakdown of social cohesion.

The media, of course, can only deal with simple, little things—like a plastic bag with a child’s bones in it or the disappearance of beautiful blond girls on the island of Aruba. And they are obliged for profit purposes to cover only crimes committed in states where cameras are allowed in courtrooms. So, whatever happens in Florida is big news, but crimes in Illinois are nothing (even when the fourth governor since 1973 is now in jail, three of whom were Democrats, not Republicans).

But Casey Anthony was never anything more than a disturbed girl who neglected or abused her child to death and then tried to cover it up. We’re ignoring whole cultures of young people who are committing violent crimes against not only individuals but society who never will be brought before a jury for justice.

London Riots

Last week I was in London and a nearby town on the nights of rioting. I don’t know how the riots were covered here in America, but the media coverage in England was very, very strange.

At first when the riot was contained to the Tottenham Court neighborhood, the media chewed their white knuckles and puzzled over the reasons why young people would do such things: “Why? Surely this isn’t going to continue. This isn’t the beginning of a rebellion, an English Spring?”

Tottenham Court is a central tube station in London—not a slum neighborhood. While buildings burned overhead at street level, I and hordes of other tourists passed through the station. The trains didn’t stop at Tottenham Court. Instead the conductors said, “A fire alarm has been sounded at the next stop. The train will stop but not open its doors.” And “Due to circumstances at this time there will be no service to Tottenham Court.”

The next day, video of the riots showed that the rioters weren’t just any and all young people. They were minorities who clearly were of immigrant families from former English colonies in Jamaica and South Asia or the Middle East. The victims were also minority immigrants. These weren’t race riots against white oppressors. They weren’t riots against austerity measures—because the rioters aren’t affected by Britain’s budget cuts.

They were riots of “pensioners,” young people “on the dole,” “on benefits,” people with no jobs—not because they can’t find work. They don’t want to work. Why should they? They don’t need to work, because they are given everything they want.

The next night the riots spread to cities like Nottingham, which I visited several years ago. In those days, there was a riot every Friday and Saturday night in Nottingham. Nothing burned; the young people got drunk and went wilding. In the lobby of the hotel where I was staying a brawl broke out at a wedding party. In smaller cities like Nottingham, for many years the young people have behaved as if it was Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale every weekend.

In the small city where I was last week, Colchester (the oldest town in England), the proprietor of the bed and breakfast where I stayed was so concerned about street violence that he closed the English Civil War-era shutters (last used in the Siege of Colchester in the seventeenth century) for the first time since he had owned the building. Fortunately, there were no riots in Colchester. But neither is there a large immigrant population, and its young people tend to be serious students at the highly technical University of Essex. (Yes, they got drunk and staggered through the streets at night, but they did no harm.)

Eventually the London media learned that the London mayor and chief of police had told the cops during the Tottenham Court riots not to arrest anyone “lest they hurt someone.” As a result, of course, the rioters did not get hurt—only innocents did. Several young people were killed. Some were raped. Businesses were destroyed so that their employees can now enjoy the “benefits.”

Soon afterwards the Prime Minister called on his cabinet to return from their vacations to deal with the crisis. A few of them came home to London. Many did not. The mayor of London finally issued orders to arrest rioters. The rioting promptly stopped.

Over the next few days they began to identify the looters and most violent of the criminals from CCTV surveillance videos. One of the arrested rioters was a 15-year-old boy whose young mother “didn’t know where he was at two in the morning.” (The media were careful to say, though, they “did not want to stigmatize single mothers.” I guess they would have treated Casey Anthony with more respect, too.)

The victims were identified, too—young people who were murdered, rape victims, the owner of a modest family-run department store that was burned to the ground. This is significant—it wasn’t Harrad’s or Selfridges that burned. It was a smallish store, but one just big enough to look as if its owners were richer than the rioters.

Eventually the Prime Minister and others began to call for a withdrawal of “benefits” from the rioters. For those who don’t know, in England no one has to work or pay for their own homes. The government provides not only a living stipend to anyone who wants it but also any home they want to live in. For instance, it was revealed last week that a refugee Somali family was living in a 2 million pound home in the neighborhood of actress Emma Thompson at taxpayer expense (the pound is worth more than the dollar is today). How many unemployed people do you know who live in a $2 million home? Or for that matter how many employed people?

Kristallnacht All Over Again

In Nazi Germany in 1938, one night gangs of youths stormed through Jewish neighborhoods, rioting, looting, smashing shop windows, killing. That night was known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) because of the shattered glass that lay everywhere afterwards.

Kristallnacht was one of the most evil events in modern history. It happened because the Nazi government in Germany made it crystal clear to the youthful thugs of the era that they were entitled to take whatever they wanted as long as it was from Jews, to destroy anything Jews had, to rape and kill Jews.

In England the government has made it crystal clear to youthful thugs that they don’t have to get a job, they don’t have to do anything, and everything is theirs to destroy or take, as they choose.

I have been to England several times over four decades. This most-recent visit was the first time I hated being in London. I hated walking on the streets, because the crowds of young people wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence; they shouldered and elbowed me aside; they bashed me with their handbags; they pushed me through turnstiles. The underground was a nightmare: it was hellishly hot; half the stops were under construction and inaccessible because of “upgrades” for next year’s Olympics; several times I found myself in long, narrow, low-ceilinged tunnels pressed up against crowds of people who were at a complete standstill because there weren’t enough trains. It was even worse than my memories of New York City in the Sixties and Seventies. (In those days, it was before anyone ‘ed New York.)

And all the English politeness and exactitude was gone, too. No one seemed to know what they were doing. The trains were all late. The signs displaying times and destinations were wrong. No one knew how to get from point A to point B. Every question and request for assistance or directions was met with a sigh, a head shake, a rebuke: “What does the sign say? Isn’t that what the sign says?”

For the first time, I came home to the Chicago area feeling relieved to be out of England. Then, guess what happened?

Kristallnacht came to Chicago, but now it isn’t only Jews who are the targets—it’s everybody who owns anything.

A group of men “of mixed ethnicity” (or a flash mob, if you prefer) forced their way into a private home in broad daylight less than three blocks from my suburban home. Apparently the home was picked on a whim by a carload of thugs who just happened to be passing by on the Illinois state highway that runs through Chicago’s western suburbs. It isn’t a road that looks like a highway; it’s a very old road that connects with a nearby interstate, only two lanes with a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit. The town is Victorian-era. The street is residential and lined with ancient oaks and elms.

(The local police chief is now playing down the incident. Instead of portraying it as a home invasion as he originally did, he’s now claiming it was one of a previously unreported series of “ruse burglaries” in which burglars claim to be utility workers in order to gain access to homes. My, that really calms my fears.)

I knew that for the past year Chicago’s “Gold Coast” area along Lake Michigan had been targeted by flash mobs of youths from the South Side. But I had never before heard of a flash mob invading a private home. Have you?

In Chicago the flash mobs get on the subway and ride up to North Michigan Avenue where the most-exclusive shops and luxury hotels are. They flood into designer-clothing shops and in plain view of surveillance cameras try on clothes and then just walk out with them. As in London, the cops are being told to “let it be.” The mayor has pulled most of the cops off the streets because of budget issues, and retailers have to employ private security firms for protection.

Why do they do it? Because they can. Why did the Somali family move into actress Emma Thompson’s neighborhood? When asked they claimed not to speak English and refused to explain why.

The real question is why do politicians let people get away with this kind of behavior? IMHO, it’s because politicians aren’t incented to do anything but get reelected—just as prosecutors and judges aren’t incented to do anything but convict and execute high-profile defendants.

Chicago flash mobs clearly feel entitled to spread the wealth around as they see fit. They clearly do not respect private property. I can only suppose their thinking goes like this: if it’s offered for sale to the public and the flash mobbers are the public, then they must be entitled to the goods, even if they can’t pay for them.

On the East Coast, I’ve heard that flash mobs are targeting 7-Elevens and other quick-stop stores. It isn’t surprising, is it? If it’s okay to take luxury goods, it must be okay to take cheap stuff, too.

But what made the flash mob that invaded the home in my neighborhood think they were entitled to what was inside a randomly chosen suburban house? I guess we’re back to the days of “Eat the Rich,” but now “the rich” are anyone who has more than you do—even if it’s more they earned by selling Slurpies at a 7-Eleven.

This is anarchy. These criminals will never be brought to justice. No jury will ever hear their side of the story. The victims will never be compensated. Meanwhile, in Florida, law enforcement and the justice system whine on and on about Casey Anthony and how her jailors stupidly signed papers admitting she served her probation for a minor check fraud crime while being held on other charges.

Technorati Tags: flash mobs,London riots,Kristallnacht

Apologies to subscribers for inadvertent, incomplete post.

The Hanged Juror — 2011-07-27T16:31:06Z

I need a new blogging program.

If you could ask a prospective juror one question, what should it be?

The Hanged Juror — 2011-07-25T11:54:00Z

Self-insights are usually few and far between, but recently thanks to the Casey Anthony trial I’ve had several. Perhaps the most significant is an insight into why this “Hanged Juror” can’t find many judges or prosecutors to admire.

Sidebar: If you’ve read The Juror Hangs you know the last two characters in the novel to figure out what really happened are the judge and the prosecutor. Even the meter maid who tickets jurors’ cars outside the courthouse figures it out sooner.

Until yesterday’s epiphany, all the furor over the Anthony jury’s verdict and over the defense attorneys’ bills, and the utter bafflement of the judge and prosecutors, made no sense to me. What was I missing that everybody else in America saw? Why was I once-again so out-of-the-mainstream?

Then—flash! I got it. It isn’t me that’s missing something. It’s all those people out there who have never served on a criminal jury, especially one involving a serious crime: civil trials don’t put the same stresses on jurors; civil judges have less stake in the outcome; there are no prosecutors in civil trials, only plaintiffs.

1995 B. J. D. (Before Jury Duty)

Before I served on a criminal-trial jury, like everybody else I followed O. J. Simpson’s murder trial. I learned about hair-and-fiber experts, about blood-spatter experts, and all about DNA evidence—for the first time. I fell under the spell of CSI evidence. I was convinced that wife-beater O. J. did it, and I was shocked like 80% of the public when he got off.

2011 A. J. D. (After Jury Duty)

But by the time I served on a jury in 2005, the media had already sensationalized family tragedies of ordinary citizens (Laci Peterson’s family), investigators had already proven their incompetence (the murder of JonBenet Ramsey), and prosecutors had already over-reached (the Nanny Murder Trial).

So I was already skeptical when I raised my hand and swore “by the eyes of the all-seeing God” (I kid you not) to follow the law as the judge explained it to me. Of course, at that moment I still believed the judge would also explain to me the statutes as written by my elected representatives.

What This Juror Thinks

Yesterday I realized what it is about judges and lawyers that drives me crazy: they all want to tell me what to think. Not just tell me what to do—although they clearly want to be in charge, too.

Big Brother

Everyone in a courtroom except the defendant and the jurors thinks it’s their job to tell everybody else what to do. Who in a courtroom isn’t involved in law or law enforcement? Even the clerk of the court probably loves telling everybody, “All rise.”

Sidebar: I suppose the court stenographer isn’t particularly interested in telling anyone what to do or think. Instead I suspect that anyone who spends most of their productive, waking hours listening to and transcribing what other people say has a thought-avoidance problem. For what other reason would a sentient being want to make a career of transcribing other people’s thoughts?)

All the denizens of the courtroom believe it’s their job to tell the jury what to think and what to do. And that’s why Judge Perry and the prosecutors in the Casey Anthony trial are still baffled by the verdict. They told the jury to find her guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated manslaughter, and the jury just ignored them. They believe the jury must not have understood the science. They must have fallen asleep by the end of the trial. They must have engaged in improper speculation. Their minds must have been poisoned by the defense’s baseless accusations in the opening statement.

The jury very definitely did not think what they were told to think.

The End of a Trial

At the end of every criminal trial, the prosecution sums up its case against the defendant. The message of all such summations is: “The mountain of evidence we have shown you proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. You must find the defendant guilty of each and every one of these charges.”

Then the defense sums up its case: “The prosecution has not fulfilled its obligation to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. One or more of the charges is highly questionable. You must not find the defendant guilty. You swore an oath to be fair.”

Then the judge reads a long, arcane list of instructions, the gist of which is that the law states that the crime in question consists of several elements, all of which the prosecution has shown to be present: “You must follow the law as I have just read it to you and reach a true verdict.”

But here’s what goes through every juror’s mind at the moment when the judge sends them into the deliberation room:

“The judge must believe the prosecution did its job properly, or he wouldn’t have let the trial go on to this point. The judge has tried to be fair to the defense, but clearly something isn’t right about what the defense attorney said. I was hoping the prosecution and the defense would both put on better cases, clearer evidence, more witnesses. I’m sure the defendant did something wrong, but I’m not sure it was exactly what the prosecution said it was. In fact, I’m thoroughly convinced it wasn’t what the prosecution said it was. Now the judge and all the lawyers have told me what I’m supposed to think, but none of it is what I think.”

Jury consultants of the world, I promise you this is what every juror thinks. And that leads me back to the title of this blog: If you could ask a prospective juror one question, what should it be?

If you’re on the defense team, you should ask every prospective juror this question:

How do you feel about being told what to think?

The jurors you want on your jury are like me. They’ll say, “I hate it.” Then let the prosecution try to excuse such an individual “for cause.”

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony,jury consultants,jury nullification,jury thinking,Sunwolf

A Modest Proposal for Casey Anthony et al.

The Hanged Juror — 2011-07-14T12:21:16Z

Yesterday, Tim Miller, President of Texas Equusearch filed a suit against Casey Anthony for reimbursement of expenses incurred during the unnecessary search for her daughter—unnecessary because Casey Anthony knew she was dead and probably knew where her body was.

In an interview with InSession, Mr. Miller explained that not only had his charitable organization spent over $112,000 to help Casey find her daughter, but some of his biggest donors had withdrawn their support. Specifically, they told him that he was not using their money wisely, since it was obvious “the mother” was involved in the child’s disappearance.

I heard that Casey’s lawyers have said they would seek to have the suit dismissed and, besides, their client was indigent.

Here’s a clue Casey et al., not only is it the right thing to do to reimburse Texas Equusearch, but a promise now to do so is your ticket to a reality show titled “Footloose and Free: Casey Anthony.”

No, I’m not kidding. Think about it: you know that right now reality show producers would kill to follow you around with a camera day and night. Unfortunately, though, some may fear the public would resent it if they found out how much they were willing to pay you for the rights to Casey Anthony’s private life.

However, if they could say that $150,000 or so of the production’s revenue would go to Texas Equusearch to pay what you owe them plus an additional tax-deductible donation, they would look like heroes.

With your own reality show, you could also pay Zanny some fair compensation for her troubles.

And you would all still come out ahead.

However, if you litigate the lawsuits, all you will do is incur substantial lawyers’ fees and court costs—and you know you can’t possible win.

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony,Texas Equusearch

The End of Justice for All

The Hanged Juror — 2011-07-13T15:07:17Z

If InSession talking heads had their way Casey Anthony would be the last defendant to be tried before a jury of her peers. A few days ago, one of the TV show’s commentators suggested that it was time for “professional jurors,” as if a trained jury would—of course—have found her guilty, in other words would have made the correct decision.

I once served on a criminal-trial jury. Before that experience I would likely have opted for a bench trial if I ever got in trouble with the law. I thought my fellow citizens would operate irrationally and not be capable of giving me the benefit of reasonable doubt. I thought a better-educated judge would be more likely to understand that I was not guilty.

Boy, was I wrong! The judge in the case I heard was a bigoted, illogical, autocrat. My jury peers were all thoughtful people who wanted to give the defendant every break they could, because it was so obvious that the judge and the prosecutors were not interested in justice.

The assumption is that a professional juror would be a sort of mini-lawyer. What a horror!

Professional Jurors

Recently in Great Britain proposals for abolishing jury trials or at least for professional jurors have been trotted out, and now, I guess, we’re going to have endure the same debate here. Proponents in the U. S., though, will have to cope with a little stumbling block called the Bill of Rights—something they don’t have in Great Britain, as you know if you know anything about the American Revolution.

British courts operate differently from American courts. I have read that jurors are summoned to hear more than one case over a certain period of time, such as two weeks. Jury verdicts need not be unanimous, even in murder cases, but neither is there a death penalty in Britain. (Because of Google’s obnoxious way of trying to search for Britney Spears every time I begin a British search string, I’m afraid I can’t give you a link for further information.)

What is “a professional juror”? In Britain the idea is to call jurors from the general public, train them, and pay them well to sit in judgment on numerous jury panels for an extended period of time. As I understand it, the idea is not to have people whose sole profession is juror.

The question is: What sort of training would make a “good juror”? Some types of training would be helpful to jurors, but other types of training would only be helpful to judges and prosecutors.

Juror Training

As a former criminal-trial juror I would have found helpful training in the role of the foreperson, selecting a foreperson, deliberation, consensus building, eliciting discussion from reticent participants, understanding the jury instructions, and understanding the charges and the elements of a crime. I suspect some jurors would also benefit from a quick tutorial on the Bill of Rights.

When I served, the only training we were given was a ten-minute video delivered to the prospective jury pool. It told us how jury panels would be called by number at random, what to do if our number was called, what to do if our number wasn’t called, and how much we would be paid per day. Nothing else.

Once we were interviewed by the judge, she gave us some simple instructions: don’t talk about the case, follow her instructions, that she would read the indictment but we would never see it or hear it again, that we could take notes but must leave them in the deliberation room, and that we were about to be sworn in.

But there were a number of instructions and a lot of training that I would have strongly disliked if the judge had tried to deliver it to me: training in interpreting CSI evidence, interpreting testimony, or legal terminology, especially the meaning of “reasonable doubt,” which I am eminently better qualified to interpret than any lawyer in any courtroom in this land.

Any effort to turn jurors into amateur lawyers and judges like that would be a disaster.

The real problem with professional jurors, it seems to me, is that a professional isn’t a true peer of the ordinary citizen, at least not in the court system, which is run by lawyers. The reason the institution of the jury arose in the first place, more than two millennia ago, was to provide a check on political and legal institutions so they could not arbitrarily take away the rights and property of ordinary citizens.

Jury Reform

The American Bar Association has a long-standing Commission on the American Jury Project, which has published a number of recommendations for jury reform. Unfortunately, no one has suggested judicial or prosecutorial reforms as well. And if you listen to the lawyers commenting on the Casey Anthony verdict you know that none of them think their profession needs any tweaking, let alone reform.

I have a huge problem with the current, highly politicized judiciary and state’s attorneys offices. Theoretically, the citizenry elects judges and state’s attorneys, but in many jurisdictions the judicial system is so large that even the most-informed of voters can’t possibly know enough about candidates for judgeships. Of course, the county state’s attorney is subject to a great deal of public scrutiny, but not the assistant state’s attorneys, who are more numerous than judges and who are all appointed and hired by the political state’s attorney.

Many judges seek higher office. Every state’s attorney I’ve ever heard of seeks higher office. As a consequence, it is in their best interests to prosecute high-profile defendants to the maximum extent of the law and to adjudicate high-profile cases and sentence convicted defendants to the max.

With the advent of live broadcasts from the courtroom, more and more trials of non-high-profile defendants are going to become circuses. It won’t take jurors long to figure out that if they find a high-profile defendant like Casey Anthony not guilty, they will be the ones who pay with their lives—either literally from stalkers or figuratively in that they will lose their jobs, alienate their friends, and worse.

The Casey Anthony jury did effect justice. They did not ignore any of the judge’s instructions in finding her not guilty. They did not “speculate,” despite what InSession says—what they did was understand the difference between speculation and proof; in deliberations when one of them wandered off into speculation, his or her peers drew the conversation back to what was proved. They did understand the “scientific” evidence—they understood it wasn’t scientific and therefore wasn’t proof.

They understood that in the evidence and testimony the dots were not connected. Yes, there were a lot of dots leading to the child’s remains—there just was no dot labeled Casey Anthony. The only person who claimed to have seen Caylee on June 16, 2008, with her mother was George Anthony, and as the foreman of the jury said, George couldn’t seem to remember important facts and incidents; all he remembered clearly was what everybody was wearing three years ago.

Technorati Tags: Casey Anthony,jury reform,professional jurors