Thursday, July 7, 2011

Casey Anthony and Terrorism

Now that the Casey Anthony trial is finally over, we can all go back to our normal lives of watching Judge Judy and pontificating over her decisions. The one thing this trial has showed me, and I must admit that I haven't followed it as closely as many people I know, is that we should never use civil litigation to try terrorists lest the same result be rendered and they slink away only to kill another day.

Just imagine a guy named Muhammad Mohammad Mohannad, let's call him 3M, (but no reflection on that wonderul American company nor their Scotch Tape) on trial for blowing up a Synagogue and killing fifty nine Jewish congregants during evening prayers. Let us also assume that he did, in fact, do this terrible crime, but let us also imagine 3M as an incredibly handsome 25 year old Arab, with piercing brown eyes, thick, black hair, a sturdy build, and who speaks perfect English with no foreign accent. Let's even say 3M was well-educated and looks a lot like Omar Sharif. He hires a hot shot attorney, a guy who makes Alan Dershowitz look like an ambulance chaser, and a jury of his peers is selected; only they aren't peers, of course, because peers would mean they would have to be killers themselves--they're just a bunch of people, a few of them women who happen to find 3M incredibly handsome, and men who find him to be the kind of guy you could have a beer with and discuss sports.

One of the witnesses for the prosecution is a maintenance man who works for the temple.  He is bald, overweight, and always looks like he wants to be elsewhere--let's call him Mr. Adolf Schnitzer. The jury watches Schnitzer and they hear how he was working on a broken water line near the front of the building and saw 3M running down the street, away from the temple. Next came the explosion and Mr. Schnitzer was knocked to the ground.

The hotshot attorney asks a lot of tough questions but Schnitzer's answers are nonwaivering and has the facts clear as to time and description of 3M, even though it was becoming dark outside. He saw 3M running from the Synagogue shouting, "Allahu Akbar!" and then the explosion.

The jury hears the facts, and they learn that 3M has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through another Islamic organization called ISNA. They listen to the defense and watch 3M, other people testify and one even serves as character witnesses for him, and after days of testimony, the prosecution finally rests. The jury deliberates and after, say, eleven hours, they reach a verdict. Everybody waits as the anticipation builds, and finally the verdict is read by the jury foreman. The announcement is loud and clear: "Not Guilty." 3M hugs his attorney, walks away from the courtroom, not innocent, but not proven guilty. The jury could not believe that a nice looking, educated guy who looks a lot like Omar Sharif could kill innocent people as he was accused of doing. One of the jurists doesn't even like Jews all that much and was in full support of the Gaza flotilla, but that never came up in the voir dire, unfortunately.

Had this been a military trial, where 3M was considered to be an enemy combatant, there would be no emotional jurists, the outcome would have been different and justice would have been served.

As I mentioned, I hadn't seen a lot of the Casey Anthony trial, but many people who did believed that she was guilty and got away with murdering her child. The evidence was quite convincing, at least it was to Nancy Grace, who, I should add, was just as quick to condemn the Duke LaCross team players of raping a young lady, and who were found innocent. I don't particularly like Nancy Grace but just because she felt that Casey Anthony was guilty and was found not guilty does not mean she was wrong in her assessment of the trial. In the LaCross team's case, the accuser confessed to lying, but in this case we could only go with the evidence, which seemed to point to Casey's guilt. I hope this case serves as a wakeup call to our politicians who still want to try terrorists, enemy combatants, in civil courts where they are afforded the rights of an American citizen. They are not American citizens and do not deserve to be treated with the liberties and respect they seek to destroy.

Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

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