I think if I hear "move on" one more time I will explode. There is a group think going on in which individuals believe that anyone boycotting or complaining about Florida vs Casey Anthony is obsessed or has no life. While I am sure that there are some that fit that description, not all do.
There is a frustration building with citizens at the growing number of child murders, neglect, and sickening habit of "burying the tragedy" and moving on. The cost of this behavior is that those individuals with various psychosis's in communities read this as willingness to "move on" and "forget" and disgard their children like trash.
Some have stated that Caylee's Law is just a knee jerk reaction and can serve no good purpose. I say have you read the details? Laws that are developed to protect children are not a waste of time and not as some think unneccesary. If Caylee's law had been in place, perhaps her family would have reported her missing sooner than 31 days. If they had, there would have been forensic evidence toward cause of death.
A recent case "Emma Leigh Barker" could be called a copy cat of the Caylee Anthony case. Am I going to say that Barkers mother knew about Caylee and copied the case, no but strange isnt it? The point is children are being murdered at an alarming rate. Am I angry, yes....am I going to "move on" , no..
So for those who choose to return to the sheep mentality living...more power to you. I personally will be shouting from the roof tops "STOP KILLING CHILDREN AND START PROTECTING THEM!!!!!"
By Bill Walsh Bedford Minuteman Posted Mar 24, 2010 @ 12:06 PM Bedford, Mass. — One of the problems of the 24/7 health care bill coverage over the past few weeks is that it’s pushed other stories off the front page, and some of them ought to have seen the light of day. There was a significant development in the Caylee Anthony murder story, for example, and it merits our attention regardless of how health care turns out.
Caylee Anthony, you may recall, was the cute tot in Florida who disappeared and was later found murdered in 2008. Her mother, who had not reported little Caylee missing for over a month, was indicted for first-degree murder shortly thereafter and now sits in prison awaiting trial.
The new development in the case was that mom Casey Anthony appeared before a judge last week claiming that she was out of money and needed the public to start paying her defense costs. Where had she been getting the money she used from 2008-2010, the court asked? The shocking answer was ABC News.
It turns out that ABC News had paid Casey Anthony $200,000 (that’s nearly a quarter of a million dollars) while her daughter was still missing. According to both ABC network officials and Anthony’s defense attorney, the money was for “exclusive rights to reproduce family photographs and videotape of Caylee.”
Well, ABC certainly got their money’s worth. On Sept. 5, 2008, the day Casey Anthony was arrested for child neglect and endangerment (authorities hadn’t found Caylee’s body yet), the network did a special segment on “Good Morning America” featuring the photos, and broadcast a full-hour of them later that same day on “20/20.” Since that time, ABC has done at least 30 separate stories on the case.
“Never-Before-Seen Images of Casey Anthony and Missing Florida Toddler” said the promotional spots for ABC programming. And the ABC Web site gloated, “Intimate, never-before-seen pictures and home videos of the girl and her young mother offer a rare window into Caylee’s life.” What ABC kept secret, however, was the fact that they paid Caylee’s accused murderer hundreds of thousands of dollars for those pictures.
There are at least three things wrong with such behavior. The first is the maudlin, saccharine, overly-emotional and intimate nature of what ABC News first bought and then trotted out for public display. Pictures of a happy toddler and her mom are meant to arouse our sympathy or anger – appeal to our sense of the tragic – in order to boost ratings. I don’t know if more people watched ABC programs because they had “exclusive” and touching photos of little Caylee in happier times, but I’ll bet there were some. Broadcasting those images at all was a pretty sleazy thing to do.
Paying for them (and then keeping that fact a secret until years later) was another. I don’t know if it was criminal. I do know that it was unethical. ABC News violated at least six of the ethical guidelines for news reporting by paying for those pictures, and although other news organizations have done so from time to time, that doesn’t make it right.
In 1912, the New York Times got an exclusive interview with the telegraph operator of the Titanic – for $1,000. The Hearst newspaper company paid the legal fees for Bruno Richard Hauptmann (the accused kidnapper in the Lindberg baby case) so that they could get exclusive stories from inside the defense. Life magazine paid some of America’s first astronauts for their cooperation in stories during the space race of the 1960s.
More recently, CNN may have paid $10,000 to one of the passengers who helped stop a Nigerian man from blowing up a plane (again, technically not for his interview, but for his cell-phone photo). The list goes on. These days networks ostensibly pay people for the exclusive rights to their photographs of newsworthy events. They think it’s better or more ethical than paying them for their stories. To my mind, it’s a distinction without a difference. They’re really paying them for information and interviews, regardless of whether they claim it’s for the photographs.
“Don’t pay for news items,” is part of the professional journalists’ code of ethics, but it seems that many news organizations think they’ve found a way around that by buying “photographs.”
And to make matters worse, ABC not only paid for pictures they used in an inappropriate way, but the person they bought them from was the accused criminal herself. Yes, Casey Anthony is innocent until proven guilty, I know. But can you imagine what it would be like if news organizations paid accused murderers for their stories (or, ahem, “pictures” – of the victim, no less) in every case?
“The idyllic boyhood of John Wilkes Booth! What went wrong? An exclusive series of pictures on the Walsh News Network! See the assassin as no one has ever seen him before! Watch our exclusive jailhouse interview!”
Something is wrong here.
Buying news is a sleazy thing to do, regardless of how many news organizations do it.
And we, the public, ought to know about it when it occurs, because (justifiably) it colors not only that news story itself, but everything that network tells us from now on.
Ethics still matter – to many of us who watch the news, at least, if not to the people who report it.
Bill Walsh is a Billerica resident and regular contributor to the Billerica Minuteman. E-mail him at bmhswalsh@aol.com.
Copyright 2010 Bedford Minuteman. Some rights reserved
Yet another example of the effects of school bullying. In this incident the lines of victim-offender are blurred. The victim of the bullying chose to take her own life instead of taking others, as society has seen other bullied students do.
"Even in death, Phoebe Princewas bullied. On a memorial page dedicated to the Massachusetts teen who had recently committed suicide, Facebook members left taunting comments that had to be removed."
" Nine teens have been charged in the "unrelenting" bullying of a teenage girl from Ireland who killed herself after being raped and enduring months of torment by classmates in person and online, a prosecutor said Monday.
Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley was stalked and harassed nearly constantly from September until she killed herself Jan. 14. The freshman had recently moved to western Massachusetts from Ireland.
"The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school. The bullying for her was intolerable," Scheibel said.
Six teens - four girls and two boys - face charges including statutory rape, assault, violation of civil rights resulting in injury, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly and stalking. Three younger girls face delinquency charges.
Scheibel said the harassment began in September. She said school officials knew about the bullying, but none will face criminal charges.
While making the transition to a new town and a new country, Prince, officials believe, became the target of intense cyber-bullying." (CBS News, 2010)
The most horrifying aspect of this incident is that teachers were aware of the harrasment and had observed some of the incidents. Officials could not file charges on teachers involved as school policy was unclear on preventative measures and teachers responsibilty in these situations. In light of the recent revalations of the effects of bullying on teens, how could this be so? Across the counrty schools annouced that awareness of bullying and its dangers when the killing of 15 people by Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Kiebold, 17, occured in a Denver high school. Since then otherincidents similar to the one in Denver have made clear the responsibility of teachers in these matters.
Phoebe Prince went to teachers six times, and still the bullying persisted. Siting this incident and the incident of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who killed herself after being harassed on MySpace by a neighbor's mother, Massachusetts House lawmakers have unanimously approved a bill designed to clamp down on school bullies. One amendment requiring teachers, nurses, custodians and other school workers to report all incidents of bullying to the school principal and a second amendment requiring anti-bullying training for teachers. Considering all the warning signs have been there for a number of years, this effort comes a little too late for Phoebe and her family.
When will society stop standing in the shadows, wringing their hands, saying "how could this happen?" We know how it happens and we as adults are just as responsible as the juveniles that do the bullying. As long as we do not protect the weak and vulnerable, we should be standing in the courtroom recieving a minimum charge of neglect, or endangering the welfare of a minor.
Personally I have been treated with disdain when speaking out toward juveniles acting in an aggressive manner towards my daughter. Parents take a 'how dare you accuse' attitude and juveniles grin with delight behind their parents back. Does this bother me? No, as long as I am taking a stand, defending the abused, and confronting those that allow it, I am making a difference. Often people will aquaint my bold appraoch as an interfering parent. If protecting ANY juvenile from a bully is interering, well I guess I am.
The point is, how many dead children will be enough, how many times will we stand back and say "how could this happen?" How many times will we chastize a parent for confronting bullies? How many times will we allow teachers to hide behind policy, or lack there of?
Personally, I am not willing to sacrifice any children. I will sacrifice some social standing to confront bullys and their parents to save one child though. So bullys beware, I am watching and I will oust you, and your parents if they are present for your victimzing acts
FEDERAL SON OF SAM LEGISLATION Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last week we debated the Juvenile Justice Act. We had a good number of provisions, especially dealing with guns, gun shows, and gun sales that were very controversial. I did not speak last week on an amendment I offered to the juvenile justice bill that became a part of that and is now a provision that has been passed by the Senate. I want to take a few minutes today to describe the amendment I offered and its importance.
Some while ago, I was watching a television program. It was about a serial killer, a man who killed four women and one man in Gainsville, FL. The program described the book this serial killer has written: ``The Making of a Serial Killer: The Real Story of the Gainsville Murders in the Killer's Own Words.''
I thought: That cannot be the case. If you murder four or five people and are sent to prison, you lose your right to vote and you lose certain rights. Do you have a right to write a book and profit from it? This television program described the dilemma.
There was a murderer in New York who was described as the ``Son of Sam'' murderer many years ago. He was sent to prison and wrote a book in order to profit from his murder. In other words, a violent murderer goes to prison and spends his time writing a book to sell to the public to make money. Is that a right prisoners have in this country after committing a violent crime? Is there a constitutional right to profit from a violent crime in America? I do not think so.
The State of New York passed a statute, the ``Son of Sam'' statute, and the Federal Government passed a statute saying that the proceeds from a book written by a violent offender who is sent to prison cannot be retained by the violent criminal.
That was appealed and went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Guess what. The U.S. Supreme Court said: No, you may not prohibit the expressive writings of a violent criminal, because that is a violation of the first amendment. I am truncating the Supreme Court decision, but essentially the Supreme Court invalidated the ``Son of Sam'' laws. The Federal law has never been enforced, to my knowledge, and the State laws have been invalidated.
So we had a circumstance where, on the program I watched, this serial killer was interviewed. The woman with whom he apparently is romantically involved, who is one of the sponsors of this book, was interviewed. It raised the question in my mind: Shouldn't we correct this issue and these statutes so the next time this goes to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will not overturn the law?
I wrote a piece of legislation, after consultation with some constitutional lawyers, that I think does solve this issue and will say to any prospective author, some disgusting human being who murders four young girls and a man in Gainsville, FL, who now says, I want to write a book to describe the detail, the horrible detail of these murders: You can write until you are dead, but you will never ever profit, you will never profit by writing the accounts of your murders and then sell a book and keep the money. Not just you, but your agent, those to whom you assign the profits--you will not be able to reap the rewards of telling the gruesome, dirty tales of your sordid criminal lives.
The juvenile justice bill which passed last Thursday has an amendment in it that closes the loophole and rewrites the Federal law. It says that any individual convicted of any Federal or State felony or violent misdemeanor, if that convicted defendant tries to sell his book, movie rights, or other expressive work or any property associated with the crime--a bloody glove, murder weapon, photos and so on--whose value has been enhanced by that crime, then the U.S. attorney will make a motion to forfeit all proceeds that would have been received by the defendant or the defendant's transferee--spouse, partner, friends, and so on.
Is this important? I think it is. I think we ought to have a Federal statute, and if the Supreme Court said the ``Son of Sam'' statute is not valid, we ought to have a Federal statute that says to anybody in this country: If you commit a violent crime and you go to prison, do not expect to sit in prison and write and profit by publishing a book about your crime.
I offered that in the Senate last Thursday, and I was joined by my colleague, Senator EVAN BAYH. It has now passed the Senate, and my hope is my colleagues in the House will see fit to keep this in the Juvenile Justice Act, and it will go to the President and be signed into law.
(The remarks of Mr. DORGAN pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 105 are located in today's RECORD under ``Submissions of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'') END
The "Son of Sam" Law in Florida is codified at F.S. 944.512. In Rolling v. State ex rel. Butterworth, 741 So. 2d 627 (1999, FL 1st DCA), Appellee State, pursuant to Fla. Stat. ch. 944.512, sought imposition of a lien against property in an action against appellant, convicted criminal, especially seeking proceeds from sale of a book containing accounts of the crimes for which appellant was convicted. Appellants argued that Fla. Stat. ch. 960.291(7) violated U.S. Const. amend. I and was, therefore, unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to each of them. Under the plain language of the statute the lien encompassed appellant's art, autographs, and proceeds from them, as well as proceeds from his book. Appellant publisher was receiving benefits on appellant offender's behalf and thus the lien attached to the proceeds she garnered from sale of property. Appellant offender could not transfer his property to appellant publisher to avoid the lien.
In 1997 the State of Florida sued convicted serial killer Danny Rolling and his fiancé/freelance writer Sondra London for the $21,000 the two received from the sale of Rolling's story in books and magazine articles. Based on Florida's Son of Sam Law, also known as the Civil Restitution Lien and Crime Victims’ Remedy Act of 1994, London was ordered to turn over the money to the state. London appealed but the decision was affirmed.
All information and text found at Congressional Chronicle software (C) National Cable Satellite Company 2009
Unbelieveable this Circus. Allegations of Baex passing Casey contaband in court, looking for a Patsy in Casey's many lovers, selling Caylees photos. Once they dropped the investigation into Baez's inappropriate behavior he took it as a sign he was free to act like a complete idiot!
I just finished reading the: Amended Notice of Service of Interrogatories presented to Casey Anthony’s lawyer. This is essential a list of questions that Casey Anthony has 30 days to answer in regards to Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez’s lawsuit filed against Casey Anthony. The questions there make it obvious to anyone why Casey’s lawyer will not let her answer them; they will force her to tell the truth.
As I was reading the questions that referred to Casey’s statements to police so light bulbs came on in this old noggin. Question 9 refers to a description Casey gave of “Zanny’s” car. As it appears on official file: 9. Before you told law enforcement officers that Caylee was with to Zenaida Gonzalez the last time you saw her, were you aware that a to Zenaida Gonzalez had been to Sawgrass Apartments and was driving a car with New York tags?
Notice the end of the question; it refers to New York tags. Please tell me Baez’s little trip to New York was not because Casey said this. This is where the whole line of statements from Casey on jailhouse video referring to “Zanny” having family in New York. Bingo! Remember the jailhouse video of Casey and her parents when they said Baez was in New York and Casey said it was on business for her. Good grief this is nuts. This girl (Casey) spent the whole month Caylee was missing putting this fairy tale together with things she picked up here and there. It is as obvious as the nose on Barbara Streisand’s nose.
Question 11 refers to Casey’s, Counter Suit states that “Zanny” had 2 children, then in question 12 it says that Casey’s Motion to Stay or Defer Defendants Deposition states that Casey told police that “Zanny” was 24 and had no kids. Question 12 ends with “which part is true and which part is not. Duh, none of it is true and it does not make Baez’s and motions he continually files look very professional.
Question 14 states that “the Counter-Claim states that Zenaida Gonzalez is a common name in the Hispanic community and there are 20 listings in the OC Florida area alone. If so what phone book did you use”? I seem to recall when the police interviewed Casey she was adamant about the hyphen between Fernandez and Gonzalez. Is the hyphen not important now?
This mockery of the justice system has got to cease. What right does Baez have or any lawyer for that matter, to act in this idiotic, shameful, non-professional manner. I understand that he has to defend his client to the fullest but this is ridiculous. Even lay persons are shaking their heads in amazement of the audacity of this man. The blatant Bugs Bunny like routine this lawyer displays with his big toothy grin is sickening.
I can not believe that the investigation into this mans actions was dropped. If the common citizen can pick out the grammar school mistakes he makes and comment on his shameful display of affection with Casey Anthony why can the Big Guns not see this? Wearing rose colored glasses perhaps. Maybe they, like many, do not want their name tied to Casey Anthony. It is similar to Typhoid Mary thing I guess. Once you connect, it is goodbye Charlie.
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