Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

What's this even about? I don't get it.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

EDIT: Have since changed opinion since this post.

I see nothing wrong with it. People are in an outrage because even though the system can't prove Casey was guilty of murder, we at least knew that she was involved somehow. Her story even admits involvement (albeit in a very contrived way of making an accident looking like a murder, if you believe that BS).

Waiting 31 days before reporting a dead child just adds so much complication. It not only clutters the proceedings with muddle over character traits, but it makes the forensics more difficult when decomposition has set in hardcore. Caylee's Law would basically close this loophole up.

The funny thing is, I had assumed that something like Caylee's Law *already existed*. I was surprised to hear that there was no punishment against failure to report within a reasonable timeframe.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

can someone throw down a link explaining the basics and background behind this law

what is it/this

edit: or even just give me some damn words to Google I'm a grown ass man I can research my own ****ing information

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Caylee's Law basically proposes that it becomes a felony to fail to report a missing/dead child within 24 hours of knowing about it.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

wikipedia is pretty awesome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caylee%27s_Law

Anyway, I support this 100% and I also thought that there was something like this already in effect. I don't think this should just occur with children, the death or disappearance of ANYONE should be reported within 48 hours, children even sooner.

This petition to the president, which I've signed, has 1,184,205 signatures (as of this edit) to make this into a law. http://www.change.org/petitions/create-caylees-law

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

oh **** "Caylee's Law" I googled "Casey's Law" and it was some Tennessee law about involuntary drug rehab, no wonder I couldn't piece together this thread.

GRACIAS MI AMOR

Well after that quick readthrough I'm very against the Oklahoma bill but Florida's bill is acceptable.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

I think maybe 24 hours is a bit of a strict legal deadline that will hurt more innocent parents than harm guilty ones, though. The time cutoff should be a little looser than that, but obviously well under the 31-day mark.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Yeah, exactly why I suggested 48 hours. If you can't figure out in two days that your kid is missing and/or possibly dead and report it, then you have no business being a parent.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Yea i kind of thought this was already a thing... I am skeptical about the wording of such a law. Like we might be rushing here and calling people who aren't responsible felons if its too broad a statement.

What even happens, paperwork-wise, when you die? Who do you report it to? Is it legal to just bury someone anyways?

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Absolutely. Even 48 hours is strict in my opinion. I could maybe agree on five days, but only two?

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

Yeah...I like the 48 hours decision. 24 hours will make parents panic.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

OPPOSE.

This is tabloid legislation. As a rule, any law with the name structure "______'s law" should be looked at with extreme suspicion -- doubly so if it's been on the news, triply so if it's a white girl.

Laws like this don't actually solve anything. People look at cases they hear about on the news in a similar fashion to how they look at movies, so their desire for closure is intense and laws like Caylee's Law serve to close a narrative. Then they can forget about it, and then they can feel like all is right in the world.

I can tell you what will happen: the law will be cleverly used by someone's personal army of lawyers to sue the shit out of less fortunate people who aren't doing anything wrong. And the next time some freak tragedy happens and some white girl dies, it will happen anyway because otherwise it wouldn't be a freak tragedy.

Michael Tracey wrote a great article on the worrying trend of reactionary law named after dead white girls. He writes on this subject with far more detail than I've bothered to go into, so if you found my post lacking I encourage you to read it: http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/2...-make-bad-laws

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

To sum up that article for those that suffer from tl;dr-ness:

In New Jersey, if you're younger than 21, you need to put red, reflective decals on the front/rear license plates. This is because of Kyleigh's Law, where 16-year-old Kyleigh D'Alessio was a girl who was killed in a car accident because her friend (who was driving) got distracted.

But imagine a predator/stalker who notices a car with the red decals, which basically advertise that the driver is young and alone. Fortunately, this issue hasn't ever really been a problem in practice -- it's just been fought back against vigorously by those who feel like the state is putting their kids in danger by forcing them to expose themselves as targets. What has actually happened, though, in terms of problematic eventualities, is when police officers pull people over for noncompliance and give fines for those who don't display the decals. It becomes another needless thing to worry about, as it's something that doesn't actually help people be any safer but still serves as a source of punishment.

It can be argued that the decals wouldn't have actually prevented Kyleigh from getting killed in the first place, raising the question of whether or not it's a good idea to begin with.

EDIT: I had written up this huge thing in this post, but then I decided to change my mind and actually oppose Caylee's Law.

I completely spaced the 5th Amendment. I have a right to remain silent and not incriminate myself. Caylee's Law would directly contradict this.

From my original form of this post, I had said: "I think Caylee's Law should stipulate that if there is evidence that you were able to report your missing/dead child, and you failed to report that child in a reasonable timeframe, AND there is not enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt how that child died (if the child is found dead), then the parent/guardian is punishable via felony."

But on second glance, I can think of a few legitimate scenarios where innocent people would be punished under this framing of the law. Say my kid tells me he's going to stay at his friend Joey's house as of Friday, and Monday rolls around and my kid is still gone and Joey's parents claim Joey never had anyone over. Or, at least, you'd have to simply believe me if I said my kid told me he was going to a sleepover, and I can claim that it isn't my fault my kid lied to me. There is a problem with determining when a parent should "know that his kid is missing."

Caylee's Law is an emotional response to the verdict, and I do think it has its intentions in the right place. The ideal goal is to punish those who act as an instrument to atrocity and let time wash away evidence of culpability. The problem is whether or not it's possible to do this without placing undue burdens on everyone else. It sucks that there was no justice for Caylee, but perhaps it really is better to let ten guilty go free than it is to wrongfully imprison one innocent. Caylee's Law is a form of punishment that doesn't actually serve to help prevent the atrocities themselves. At best, it punishes a few guilty people, but at worst, it gets abused and becomes another Kyleigh's Law that screws over the average Joe.

While I think it's possible to frame Caylee's Law in such a way that it would only serve to punish people who wind up in situations similar to that of Casey Anthony's (perhaps by focusing more on dead kids rather than missing kids), I fail to see how it doesn't contradict the Constitution (the Fifth Amendment is hugely important for our protection). For that reason, I'm now against Caylee's Law.

Re: Caylee's Law : Support or Oppose?

There are plenty of legitimate scenarios where, say, a single parent has to leave for a week (perhaps for something work-related) and trusts that his son is mature enough to hold down the fort for a week. There are also many scenarios where parents are just *out and about* for some period of time and pretty much treat their kids are roommates rather than dependents they have to actually oversee.