I have a confession…

I’m almost ashamed to say this, but I’ve been watching an awful lot of the whole Casey Anthony saga on TV.  I’d like to say that it’s out of some greater feeling of responsibility to the american people to provide responsible social commentary but it’s not.  It’s really just voyeuristic interest on my part.
So, now for the responsible social commentary part of the whole sordid affair.  If for no other reason then to make myself feel better for having watched so much of this daytime drama unfold.  I’ve watched the trial, the recaps, the pundits and I’ve heard a slew of “experts” talk about what went wrong and what went right with the entire fiasco.  Many of these so called experts are really nothing more then myself with the exception that they have been on TV whereas I just pound away blindly on a laptop posting to a website that only two people have seen, counting myself as one of those two people.
We now find ourselves in a CSI and Law and Order society where guilt is always proven beyond any shadow of a doubt by genius level technicians manipulating computer systems with capabilities only possible in the fertile imaginations of Hollywood writers.  After listening to interviews with many of the jurors it’s clear that there is no way for today’s prosecutors to provide the type of evidence these folks now require.  If a prosecutor is not able to show a computer simulation recreated from satellite coverage digitally enhanced to show the crime in explicit detail then there is no way they will get a conviction.
This really should be no surprise to anyone when they honestly think about it.  Everything we feel, the way we react to any given situation is colored by the things we’ve seen in movies and television.  We don’t have honest reactions to anything anymore.  We have been taught how to react and how to respond to things around us by the things we see in our magic boxes.  We respond to feelings of love, hate, fear, and joy with the same reactions we see people portray on screens. Those reactions are no longer our own.  They are not real.  And to make things that much worse, when we don’t respond to a given situation with the same reaction that others have seen in movies or television then we are obviously some kind of deviants, unable to express “true emotion”.  I believe this, more then anything, is what has done in Casey Anthony and made her the villain we love to hate.  Her inability to display any “true emotion”.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  I think she’s guilty as hell, I think she killed her kid for what reasons we may never know.  But I believe she’s guilty just like I believe that the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow!  I believe that the only reason she went free was because the prosecution was unable to provide the type of evidence that the 12 folks in the jury box were expecting.
This, boys and girls, brings me to the most troubling aspect of all this trial coverage.  I was sitting on the couch watching all the post verdict coverage and one of the “experts” on one of the cable news channels was saying that this trial and verdict was indicative of what’s wrong with our jury system.  This same “expert” implied that we should move towards a “professional jury system”.  What the hell is a “professional jury system”?  Did this person honestly mean that instead of a jury of our peers we should be judged by people who are professional jurors?  Would these same professional jurors be like our professional politicians? or maybe our professional TSA agents?  I mean holy shit, how terrifying is the prospect of being judged by people who are professionals at what they do?  I’ll pass, thanks.  The only thing wrong with our jury system is that the folks serving on the juries are the ones that weren’t smart enough to get out of it.  Keep this in mind the next time you get a jury summons in the mail and immediately begin scheming of ways to get out of it. How would you like to be judged not by your peers but by “professional juries”?