Orlando Sentinel poll: Given the national media coverage, can Casey Anthony get a fair trial?

As I have highlighted in the past, the Orlando Sentinel has a weekly poll that asks questions pertinent to current affairs. I only write about those that pertain to the Casey Anthony case. The questions are posed every Friday and the results are published in the following Friday’s edition, in print and online.

Here are last week’s questions and the results. I will only include the opinions from the Anthony poll. Remember that anyone from anywhere may respond.

Will Congress pass an unacceptable health-care-reform by year’s end?

YES: 38.1%

NO: 61.9%

Should children who commit heinous crimes be tried as adults?

YES: 73.1%

NO: 26.9%

Given the national media coverage, can Casey Anthony get a fair trial?

YES: 55.1%

NO:  44.9%

Here are some of the opinions from readers:

Jurors take their duties seriously

Casey Anthony can get a fair trial. My past experience as a litigation attorney has shown me that jurors take their civic duty very seriously, and consider the evidence presented in the courtroom very carefully before reaching a verdict.

More importantly, why does the Orlando Sentinelcontinue to give space to Casey Anthony and the rest of her dysfunctional family? Nobody cares about these people anymore, and I’m getting tired of the media beating a dead horse month after month. It’s time for the vultures to pick a new carcass to fly over, and let the chips fall where they may at Casey’s trial.

Joy Stricker Longwood

The court of public opinion

Maybe down in Immokalee … but not locally. I have never witnessed an untried criminal case where so much of the case evidence has been released to the media for [public] scrutiny.

Support her or condemn her, Casey Anthony just [marked] her first year behind bars on nothing more than a very weak case by the prosecution and, in my opinion, a rather poor legal-defense counsel. This case is being tried in the open court of public opinion. …

nailman (from the Web)

Media want ratings and advertisers

If she can’t, all the media can do is blame themselves. In their quest for ratings and sales, they have swarmed the Anthony case like flies on a fresh cow patty. Given the media’s recent history, I have to wonder if they even bothered to check the facts of the stories they have reported on the case before broadcasting and printing them.

Sadly, the people most likely to give Casey Anthony a fair trial would never be in a jury pool. They can provide good enough reasons or excuses to get out of jury duty.

mikep-ovi (from the Web)

Did Caylee get a fair trial?

I don’t look at this sordid case through the eyes of a liberal lawyer, fretting and losing sleep over whether Casey Anthony can get a fair trial. I instead ask: “Did little Caylee Anthony get a fair trial?”

[We] become increasingly sick at our stomachs when we continue to read stories fretting and fussing over the rights of the perpetrators and [there is] no mention at all of how their victims must have lived their final hours. …

mycatchoco (from the Web)

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