Sam Olens: Pursuing death penalty against Casey Anthony a mistake
Worth noting from Reporter Newspapers:
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens told the Rotary Club of Dunwoody on July 8 that he would not have pursued the death penalty against Casey Anthony, a Florida woman who on Tuesday was acquitted of charges of murdering her two-year old daughter.
Olens said prosecutors need to be careful in seeking the death penalty when the cause of death has not been determined, as it was in the Anthony case. Olens said he felt it would’ve been easier to convict Anthony if the death penalty had not been on the table.
“Jurors expect to have a robust set of evidence,” Olens said.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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53 comments Add your comment
Choosey Republican
July 9th, 2011
10:31 am
When did Olens want to be Nancy Grace instead of focusing on Georgia matters?
Dave
July 9th, 2011
10:32 am
Monday morning quarterback!
South Fulton Guy
July 9th, 2011
10:45 am
Sam got it right
Jon
July 9th, 2011
10:45 am
Yes, but if Olens was the Cobb County DA and something like this happened, he would have done the same. Any less and he gets labeled “Soft on Crime” and his political career would be over.
poof!!!
July 9th, 2011
10:48 am
All of these prosecutors use the death penalty to try a curry favor. Olens would of been no different.
Hide-n-seek
July 9th, 2011
11:01 am
Based on comments made by Jose Baez, he agrees with Sam.
what a joke
July 9th, 2011
11:06 am
I didn’t realize Mr. Olens’ background as a 1-800-lawyers ambulance chaser and county commissioner makes him qualified to critique strategy in a death penalty case.
OJ Simpson
July 9th, 2011
11:13 am
Sam speaks the truth and the uninformed assumes he has an agenda and/or he’s an idiot. Easy, my friends, Sam is one of the good guys. He’s not going to hurt you.
SWAT Native
July 9th, 2011
11:31 am
I agree with Olens. Even if there was better evidence, it would have been hard for jurors to send a cute young lady to her death. And, the standard of proof is higher.
I remember that the Fulton County DA didn’t seek the death penalty in the Atlanta child murders case because he wanted to make sure he got a conviction.
I don’t think that the prosecutor in the Anthony case was concerned about reelection because he retired right after the case.
DJ
July 9th, 2011
11:45 am
I am so sick of people saying Casey killed her daughter if she did and they didn’t prove it what does that tell you. She is Innocent. INNOCENT until proven Guilty. People are going to be going to jail for threats and etc. let it go People if she did and they didn’t prove it she can’t be tried again in the court of law but she will be convicted on JUDGEMENT DAY believe me i don’t want to see anyone get in trouble for going after her.Lets be smart and don’t do anything stupid. Like the man Sam said you have to have the evidence to ask for the Dealth penalty. If someone is at Fault blame the DA for not gathering the evidence to convict. You have to have a strong case to ask for Death they didn’t have enough for her to be charged with Murder.
TIM
July 9th, 2011
11:50 am
Iy seems that Sam AND the jury doesn’t know the law. The jury cannot take punishment into consideration when deciding guilt or innocence. That’s the instructions and that’s the law.
It also seems the jury required a motive to convict. By law, Motive isn’t required to convict. They are all idiots.
RGB
July 9th, 2011
12:01 pm
If someone is at Fault blame the DA for not gathering the evidence to convict.
Umm, little Caley’s body had rotted because her mother didn’t report that she was missing for a month. She told police she had talked with the girl by phone when she had not and this indicated the girl was still alive. Your comment suggests the DA overlooked evidence when there is no indication that that is the case.
Because her body had decomposed (due to her mother covering it up) there was little evidence to gather by the DA.
So were you unaware of that or are you just not the sharpest knife in the drawer?
Steve
July 9th, 2011
12:07 pm
20/20 hindsight is generally pretty accurate. Does he have a prediction on the Mega Millions numbers for Friday 7/08/11 also?
itsmeagain
July 9th, 2011
12:08 pm
It certainly was the DA’s fault. There wasn’t a complete story there; they didn’t even know how the child died. It would be a huge stretch to convict someone if you don’t even know the full story. The point is, if there is a reasonable doubt that someone didn’t do what they are being charged with, the should be found innocent. There was clearly reasonable doubt, and that is because there wasn’t enough evidence. Maybe the DA had all the evidence, but clearly it wasn’t enough.
@DJ
She can’t be tried again due to the 5th amendment having the double jeopardy clause in it
Taxpayer
July 9th, 2011
12:13 pm
Poor Sam seeking the spotlight – Sam needs to address criminal issues in Georgia and keep off the soap box offering opinions on national TV trials – Sam, being a member of Cobb EMC, should start by prosecuting Dwight Brown and his Board of Directors of Cobb EMC – now that should be a focus for AG Olens.
pb
July 9th, 2011
12:16 pm
Don’t understand why people just don’t leave this issue alone… She was found not guilty, whether we like it or not. Her life will be not be very easy now, as well it should be. Where can she go where she is not notorious for this? You can say the jury was stupid or whatever, but that doesn’t change the outcome.
Dash Riptide
July 9th, 2011
12:16 pm
@DJ “She is Innocent. INNOCENT until proven Guilty.” Um, no. That’s neither the law nor reality. She committed a homicide, but she couldn’t be found guilty of murder. The jurors just couldn’t wrap their brains around that. The State went for broke, knowing that if lesser options were offered she would definitely be acquitted of murder. They should have charged those lesser offenses anyway. Hindsight is 20/20.
Dabir Dalton
July 9th, 2011
12:25 pm
The last defense against a bad law is a jury composed of citizens who have a moral right to consider the consequences of their decision and the legal right to nullify a law that says they can’t consider punishment. The standard in a death penalty case is beyond reasonable doubt which is impossible to reach when the cause of death can’t be determined and no hard evidence of guilt has been presented.
Jackie H.
July 9th, 2011
12:29 pm
I agree with Mr. Olens. The DA was overreaching in the indictment. The case was basically circumstantial and because the death penalty was on the table the jury (rightly or wrongly) could not ignore the repercussions of their decision with such scant evidence presented by the prosecutors. Its always amusing to me that we say “innocent until proven guilty” in America but that is only the case if we agree with the verdict. What a bunch of hypocrits we are. Twelve peers said not guilty and although we may not agree; that is our system of justice. We all reap what we sow – let a higher power be the final judge of us all.
Michael
July 9th, 2011
12:31 pm
Non lawyers discussing legal stuff is always amusing. Probably why we have so many lawyer shows on tv. Or is it the other way around?
Dabir Dalton
July 9th, 2011
12:32 pm
Dash Riptide until one has been convicted of a crime then under the law the individual is presumed to be innocent. Only treasonous and unpatriotic conservatives collude and conspire with republican politicians and those in law enforcement who willingly violate their oath of office to uphold the law in order to change the presumption of innocence to the presumption of guilt. The law does not require any one to prove themselves innocent but requires that the prosecutor proves guilt.
Dash Riptide
July 9th, 2011
12:37 pm
@Dabir Dalton “Dash Riptide until one has been convicted of a crime then under the law the individual is presumed to be innocent.”
That’s not what DJ said. Pay attention.
Michael
July 9th, 2011
12:45 pm
Had a crazy, dumass senior judge on the bench yesterday in Fayetteville. What’s Richard Hyde’s phone # at the JQC?
Robert Barron
July 9th, 2011
12:53 pm
The jury has used the death penalty as an excuse for a cowardly verdict. They sound, in interviews, like one forceful person convinced them that the lack of a cause of death was not sufficient grounds to convict. Six voted on the first ballot for manslaughter which would have given the defendant ten or twenty years. What was the excuse for caving in there?
eatmotacos
July 9th, 2011
1:09 pm
3 to 5 children are killed in this country every day, on average, by their parents. This case is no more or no less important than the others, but the media chose to run with it because it was easy money. It was a way for Nancy Grace, with her grating, screaming voice, to keep simpletons glued to the tube between commercials. The news is no longer news, but a form of cheaply produced entertainment, mostly of little or no significance. That is how we ended up with Baby Face Nelson and Al Capone as governors of the state.
Ken Stepp
July 9th, 2011
1:09 pm
I felt that to pursue the max in a case where no murder can be proven beyond reasonable doubt was foolish. I’m not a Monday morning quarterback. I said this from the beginning. I believe the prosecution was arrogant and thought they could use this case to advance their political ambitions. They kept the media on their side the whole way. They had a weak case that they could have won had they handled it a different way.Really hard to believe anything else. Hopefully the voters will remember this.
Jack P
July 9th, 2011
1:20 pm
Right on target Mr. AG.
Dash Riptide
July 9th, 2011
1:35 pm
Actually Olens missed the mark. There’s a rule of thumb regarding the death penalty for tragic family-on-family crime. Don’t seek it. Regardless of what the perp deserves, it just adds the survivors’ pain. Even if Anthony had confessed to a death penalty-worthy killing, in the end that was just never going to happen.
Politi Cal
July 9th, 2011
1:39 pm
DJ just doesn’t American law. A verdict of “not guilty” is NOT tantamount to a verdict of “innocence.”
td
July 9th, 2011
1:53 pm
eatmotacos
July 9th, 2011
1:09 pm
You are absolutely correct. The crimes against children in the country is a dirty little secret that no one really wants to talk about.
Gwinnettian
July 9th, 2011
2:09 pm
And yet the jury did have lesser charges they COULD have convicted her of. It is plain and simple – this was a bad jury. Pinellas county if full of a bunch of ignorant yahoos! I’ve lived very near in Florida and I can tell you they are not rocket scientists. Given a more intelligent group of people – she would have been convicted on aggravated manslaughter in the very least. It was an option!
One juror even stated that he wanted to convict her, but apparently lacked the balls to stand his ground – too bad because justice suffered for it.
really?
July 9th, 2011
2:11 pm
It is always amazing to see the mentality of our American people. They are fine with allowing this chick to get out of jail, because she was deemed “not guilty” and just for the record “not guilty does NOT mean they didn’t do it” for the gruesome murder of her 2 year old daughter and duck taping her mouth and shoving her in a bag. O.J. was “not guilty”. However, she was held accountable for lying to investigators on 4 different counts in the murder investigation of her own child. But people rally for her and allow her to make money off the murder, but yet we can dispose of a group of people that is here just trying to make a living for their family and really don’t care if they get murdered, raped, break up their families, etc aka illegal immigrants where their own crime is being somewhere where they shouldn’t
but yet we allow this horrible American citizen to murder her child (in my eyes she is responsible one way or another) let alone, not reporting her disappearance for 30 days, lying about the Nanny, partying while her daughter was murdered by her or someone else and not lose one drop of sleep, using her parents for her defense by bashing them and countless other wicked things but yet we allow her to go free, and most likely make millions of her daughters murder. Wow, how great of a justice system we have.
I also think of the many people that serve prison sentences and have been convicted of “circumstantial evidence” or “reasonable doubt” and haven’t hurt a human being.
mamaj
July 9th, 2011
2:14 pm
@PB; I guess people will leave this issue alone, when hell freezes over OR when they leave the issue about OJ alone.
Ghost Rider
July 9th, 2011
2:20 pm
Word has it that Casey Anthony will join O.J. Simpson in a search for the REAL killer.
Michael T
July 9th, 2011
2:30 pm
You have to be some kind of idiot if you have any doubt she murdered her child. Humans are supposed to have this thing called reasoning. Apparently not.
At the very least, she was an accomplice. Isn’t it still against the law to be an accomplice to murder? With idiots like this sitting on juries, I don’t see how anyone is every convicted of murder unless they have them on video actually committing the crime.
double
July 9th, 2011
2:38 pm
I thought all felonies were beyond all reasonable doubt.Not just the standard for death penalty.Preponderance of evidence civil.
Dash Riptide
July 9th, 2011
2:41 pm
@double Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard for jaywalking.
mehlman rings twice
July 9th, 2011
3:09 pm
I find it interesting that a toddler is found with duct tape from her grandparent’s home over her mouth, numerous searches for chloroform are found on her grandparent’s computer, the mother is found to have told numerous lies after her child is missing, yet none of these is enough circumstantial evidence to convict the mother of even child neglect. Yet to some, a certificate of live birth from U.S. state, a concurrent birth announcement in the local newspaper, eye witnesses, is not enough actual evidence to show that a person is born in the United States?
mehlman rings twice
July 9th, 2011
3:14 pm
Ghost Rider @ 2:20 pm:
Word is the jury wanted to get back to their birther meeting where all evidence is ignored.
andrea
July 9th, 2011
3:18 pm
Ghost Rider,
Your comment was too funny.
KK
July 9th, 2011
3:25 pm
@ really?
I agree 100%! The mentality of people in this society lack common sense and compassion. People have focused so much on Casey Anthony that they have forgotten about the REAL victim: CAYLEE!!! Where is the justice for this little girl whose mom did not do all that she should have done to protect her like a real mother should. Isn’t that, at the least, neglect that led to her death? For those who think she’s innocent just because she wasn’t found guilty by a lame brain jury: get real and have a Happy Meal with a side order of common sense. smh.
OnlyNAmerica
July 9th, 2011
4:00 pm
The common man,and especially minority, has been convicted on much much less evidence/even if the prosecutors and police worked in cahoots to make stuff up. Let’s see Anthony claims this was an accidental drowning, afer telling countless lies over and over again. She even played the Susan Smith and Charles Stuart game of blaming it all on a minority(Mexican woman). Then, after telling all those lies, she actually expects everyone to believe this was the cover-up for an accidental drowning? That she tossed her baby into the woods to rot and be eaten by wild animals to cover up an accidental drowning. He!! America went hog-wild crazy over the O.J. case and proceeded to attack black people who, by the way, had no connections with O.J. whatsoever, other than skin color—Blacks across America are still being punished for the not-guilty verdict of O.J.
Anthony’s father is a retired cop. Surely, an accidental drowning would have been investigated as just that if only for that reason. So why go to such extremes to cover up an accident? Then go on partying like it’s 1999? *Bella* *Vita* LIFE SURE IS GOOD when you can get away with murdering your precious child and now I read somewhere she’s been offered 1mil for her story. Only in white surburbia middle-classed America could someone get rich from such a horrific and hideous crime!
I personally have no sympathy for Anthony. If only for the fact that she tossed her baby, accident or not, like weeks old garbage in a trash bag. Now those pics of her looks like the cat that ate the canary and got away with it. ,
You Got Dat Rite!
July 9th, 2011
4:21 pm
Killers go free every day in our court system. Get over it.
teacher
July 9th, 2011
4:33 pm
She will get her’s. OJ did.
Satan
July 9th, 2011
4:37 pm
I don’t care how she did it – SHE KILLED THAT BABY and she will pay in hell.
Who Really Cares?
July 9th, 2011
4:46 pm
Look, she was acquitted. Leave her alone.
Alabama Communist
July 9th, 2011
4:52 pm
More Breaking News On Pop Culture Murder Trial in Florida……….A Spokensperson for the underground dumb down movement said today that the American people were more concern about a Circus Trial in Florida than their country going to hell in New York Minute….
mo money
July 9th, 2011
5:24 pm
the slick prosecutor in the anthony case was getting ready to retire and thought he had a slam dunk 1st degree murder case, followed by book and movie deals. instead, he bungled through the case, didn’t prove anything except his incompetence and laughed and smirked during defense closing argument. congrats!
Ghost Rider
July 9th, 2011
8:59 pm
Stimulus spending and the play money printed by the Fed is working out great! The government now tells us that the unemployment rate is 9.2%. The truth is that it is much higher, and that these numbers fail to even address recent college graduates who are working at waiters and waitresses.
The simple truth is that the stimulus spending did absolutely no good, except to line the pockets of certain people as political payoffs. Just as President Roosevelt’s efforts failed during the First Great Depression, President Obama’s efforts have failed here in the Second Great Depression. History show us that only World War II brought the United States out of the First Depression. President Obama failed to learn from President Roosevelt’s failure and thus repeated history.
Why not raise the debt ceiling? After all, we only owe $14.5 trillion at present, so why will a few more trillion matter?
It is long past time to make very tough decisions, and these decisions are going to affect each and every one of us. This country had been operating WITHOUT A BUDGET for over two years now. Wouldn’t you think that a budget is something that is needed? Spending must be reduced, and it must be greatly reduced by elimination of unnecessary programs. The wonderful health care legislation just passed must be repealed in light of the ballooning costs over the next ten years as projected by the budget folks. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid along with farm subsidies, foreign aid, defense spending, ACORN (Yes, they STILL receive federal funding) and EVERY ITEM IN THE BUDGET must be on the table and subject to either elimination or reduction.
This will not be a pretty picture, and I know that I will be affected by these cuts, but the hard choices have to made NOW.
Congress should put their salaries, retirement and other government goodies up for a vote by the citizens of this country. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
Dash Riptide
July 9th, 2011
10:21 pm
@Ghost Rider We’ve got to stop this runaway Titanic of a federal government. Let’s run it into this iceberg! It’s the only way!
Sam Olens. Anthony verdict. Must focus.