Casey Anthony

I read an article about her a few days ago and I've been thinking about it recently. Casey Anthony is the woman (I won't demean the term "mother") who was acquitted in the murder of her child. The verdict produced widespread outrage, and I understand why. Sadly though-it highlighted the education gap in our culture.

I'm not a big supporter of education. You read that right. A girl with a high school diploma is often ten times smarter than a dude who went to college. Your college degree (and I graduated college so I'm obviously not jealous of those who did. We'll talk about jealously and envy in another blog, for sure) means you had different opportunities than a person who didn't go. In fact, I've seen more people whose learning stopped the moment they got their BA then those whose learning stopped in high school. Many times a self education is much more important than a formal one.

I noticed that many people who couldn't understand why Casey Anthony was found not guilty lacked knowledge of how the legal system works. It's not education per se, the more I think about it-it's wisdom. The two are vastly different as we all know.

In our criminal legal system the state has to prove that you did something. They can't just say "I think you did it, so let's give you the death penalty." Prosecutors can't be trusted-they'd indict the world for their own political gain. The state has unlimited resources and the ball is already in their court. Thank GOD the founders created a system where the burden of proof is on them to prove that something happened instead of the accused proving something didn't. The prosecution decided to arrogantly lecture the jury about what a bad mom Casey Anthony was (and she was, for sure) and assumed the jury would just go along with them because after all, the prosecution is always the good guy and the defense attorney are always the bad ones.

People were outraged over the verdict-and those who were didn't understand how the justice system works. They wrongly thought the state didn't have to prove anything.

When I explained this (or tried to) on Facebook right after the verdict I was, not surprisingly, attacked for being "anti-child" and "pro-Casey Anthony". That's garbage of course-I think Casey Anthony will burn in hell for eternity if she did it and she should-but I would still have voted not guilty because the state didn't prove it.