Cheney Mason - Justice in America

J. Cheney Mason

Copyright 2014 by J. Cheney Mason

FIRST EDITION

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Interior design by Vally Sharpe
Cover Design by Jessica Ciesluk-Hunter

Dedication and Acknowledgments

To my wife of 41 years (so far), Shirley, who has supported my career through several hundred trials and untold tribulations. Without her, I could not have survived Caseys trial and all of the insane fallout.

To Casey, who has endured the unthinkable with the courage of a lion, and to whom much of the world owes an apology.

And finally, to twelve of the most courageous citizens who should forever hold their heads high and proudly for doing their jobthe jury.

In addition, thanks are due to attorneys Lisabeth Fryer and Dorothy Clay Sims, draftees for the defense team, without whom our success in saving Caseys life would have been near impossible; to my assistant Diana Marku, who had to do much of the labor and all of the screening to make the trial survivable; to my long-term suite-mate, attorney Don Lykkebak, who constantly provided support and stabilized my practice during the long ordeal; to Karen Rhine, the court reporter who took over a hundred depositions for the defense at the indigency rate and provided all of the typing for this book; to Ed Bailey, who helped in my drafts with his input as a psychiatrist; to James Carpenter, the final editor who provided invaluable assistance with the final organization and editing; and of course, to Tracy Ertl of Title Town Publishing, who pursued me to write this book and would not take no for an answer.

I should say, to begin with, that this book is about more than my client Casey Anthony and her trial. While it does include much about her case, and reveals the truth behind the accusations against her, as well as behind the legal process and its abuses during her trial, its main concern is in fact a much larger one. Our societyand unfortunately, it would appear, much of the worldhas a very distorted understanding of what is, or at least should be, meant by the term justice.

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion or equity. This is a definition attributable originally to Plato; if we look to more modern times, specifically to Websters Dictionary, we find justice most generally defined as the quality of being just, impartial or fairthe maintenance or administration of what is just, especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.

Nowadays, unfortunately, as a result of lack of understanding, miseducation or simply gravitation toward a spirit of meanness, all too many people equate the term justice with the concepts of vengeance or punishment. It may well be that, in many circumstances, arriving at a concept of moral rightness may include punishment. It does not, however, follow from this that punishment and penalties constitute the central point of the concept of justice.

In this book, we will explore the application of the term justice as it pertains to a specific practical problem: namely, to its obstructions during the Casey Anthony murder trial. Yet the problem is by no means limited to this case. The obstruction of justice has become a pattern of our society: politically, with respect to campaigns and elections; legally, with respect to trials, the balancing of interests and the punishment sought for criminal acts; and in our daily lives, in the ways in which we have grown accustomed to simply lying. Little white lies are commonly accepted, rather than discouraged. Cheating has become rampantas revealed, for example, in the scandals that have recently plagued some of our most respected educational, financial and athletic institutions. Misrepresentation and outright fraud have come to pervade our daily news media, in its coverage of every subject. Even candidates for the presidency of the United States have found it acceptable to cheat, hedge and lie about anything and everything that comes to mind. In such times, expediency in obtaining a desired result appears to us to justify any means: we forget about doing whats fair and right, ethical and rational; we lie when we need to; we deceive as we feel it necessary; and in doing so, we obstruct justice in its purest sense.

To introduce the following discussion of the obstructions of justice specific to the Casey Anthony case, however, we should define the term specifically. In Florida law, and throughout the jurisdictions of this country, obstructing justice is defined as preventing witnesses from attending or testifying; suppressing evidence; and other acts defeating, impeding or delaying the administration of justice, public or private, not constituting a distinct offense. Local laws in every jurisdiction generally prohibit such conduct as it interferes with the due administration of justice, as do the Federal Statutes; but it occurs with a far greater regularity than might be supposed, even on the part of governmental legal practitioners.

To take an example, one of the most basic violations or obstructions of justice is the effort to obtain a conviction through the use of false evidence. Such conduct is undeniably antithetical to the basic precepts of our Constitution. Yet the most glaringand, unfortunately, frequentinstances of this are seen when the government itself, acting as the prosecution in a legal trial, is able to threaten witnesses (either directly or indirectly) to get them to change their testimony. I will be so bold as to say that there is not a single defense lawyer in this country who has not been aware of such instances, and of various other efforts on the part of prosecutors to pressure witnesses to deliver what the government has already decided should be the outcome of a trial. It is the proverbial attempt to shove a square peg into a round holeand like many other obstructions that we will have occasion to point out in this book, it happens all the time.

The real tragedy is that this particular failing is, at bottom, a perfectly human one. We are all liable to believe in our own initial analyses of a situation, and are often tempted to adjust reality to suit our judgment rather than question the judgment itself. Law enforcement officers and legal professionals are as human as the rest of us; but when they fall victim to this temptation, and endeavor to create evidence to satisfy their predetermined judgment, rather than allow the real evidence to bring them to the truth, other human lives are at stake.

Complicating these matters is the unfortunate fact that justice, being all too often in the eyes of the beholder, is subject to distortions from outside as well as from within. In Casey Anthonys extremely well-publicized trial, and others like it, a secondary, though perhaps more insidious, source of obstruction arose in attempts by the media and other outside parties to adjust the story to fit their own predetermined notions and goals. Malicious prosecutors, self-serving politicians, self-aggrandizing talking-head lawyers and media opportunists made the trial an occasion to seek personal and financial gain by distorting the truth, fabricating allegations, reinforcing each others empty testimonies with sound-bite lies and exaggerations, and pursuing many other questionable actionsall the while ignoring that a persons life was on the line.