An open debate on Caylee's Law

I would like to take this opportunity to make an open rebuttal to the page Get Caylee Justice, in regards to their support of Caylee's Law.

As many readers here know, I am against Caylee's Law for many reasons, including the painfully simple fact that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Nevertheless, so many folks continue to deny the facts, and come up with any number of illogical reasons why we need this law. Using the lengthy response from this one page as an example of the oft-repeated points by supporters of Caylee's law, I will now refute their position through applied logic and the exposure of their application of the classic 25 Rules of Disinformation. Point by point, in parentheses, I will cite the tactic being applied, so keep the list handy.


Let us begin...

Absolutely amazed with people. I didnt not ban you yet so I can explain a few things to you about Caylee's law and effective parenting.

Right out of the gate, we see the opponent try to goad us (5, 18), while threatening to ban us (25, 6) and then attempt to establish themselves as an authority (8) as if they are the only good parent on the planet, while assuming that we know nothing about good parenting.

One, on average a child who is abducted is killed with in the first six to eight hours. SO to be quite frank, without a doubt, every second counts.

Here the opponent exposes the fallacy of their position, and is "quite frank" about it, establishing a fall-back position (11). While anyone would agree that indeed seconds do count either in an abduction, or even of course in a medical emergency, the proposed Caylee's Law only makes it a felony crime to not report a missing child after 24 hours, not the first six to eight in which the child is actually killed, according to our opponent. Therefore, Caylee's Law is not a practical measure or standard for dealing with a child who may have fallen into harm's way.

Second, to all of your little attempted theories about well what if you didn't know in the first hour or 24 hours, it is after you discover. Sure, a child might go off to a friends house, but I can tell you, my daughter will need to call me whenever she gets to where she is going, and if she leaves that place to go to a new place. A rule every parent in my mind should have into effect. 

In the first sentence they ridicule earlier statements we had made in the course of previous discussion on the issue. as "little attempted theories" (3, 8, 18) rather than seeing the points raised as the legitimate and logical points they were (1, 19). That discussion can be viewed here. Or if they remove the thread/comments, we can add the screenshots later that we took of the conversation.

As to the specifics of the proposed law itself, most versions propose to make it a felony if you fail to not report a missing child within 24 hours, or a child who has died within 60 minutes. Now, in general, a reasonable person should not have to point out how these time constraints may be impractical in the real world for any number of reasons which may not otherwise be considered to be criminal or even immoral.But more to the point, our opponent here specifies that the point of "discovery" is when the clock starts ticking. There is no such provision made in the laws I have seen proposed. If it were, it would again make the law itself pointless. After all, a parent accused of wrongdoing could claim that they didn't know, had not made the discovery for any number of reasons, for any amount of time. Indeed, in the Anthony case itself, Casey never did admit to discovering her deceased child at all, at any time. The only thing that can be factually established is the time of death, not when the parent actually discovered the child was deceased.

Next we see the "MY child" logic (2) so often applied in these discussions. Again in an attempt to establish themselves as the perfect parent with perfect children (8, 11) while simply ignoring (9) the many, many examples of why a child may be out of touch with a parent for more than 24 hours, and why it is not necessary to always have the police micro-manage how you raise your child. Maybe the child simply forgot to call. Maybe because of scheduling between work and school the parent and child fail to connect. Perhaps the child has run away from home in a fit of rebellion against an overbearing and obnoxious parent who fancies themselves perfect and who demands nothing less than perfection from the child. Is it a good idea to set out rules like this for a child to keep in contact and be communicative? Absolutely. But trying to force them to act in this way will only encourage rebellion and leave the parent in situation after situation where they will not in fact be able to find their kid. And more importantly, it should not be a FELONY on the parent if the child breaks this household rule.

Also if you do not report your child after as you say been floating in the pool for twenty hours, you are going to have some serious felonies on your hands anyhow with federal level child negligence and abuse.

Yet again we see the opponent actually make the point for us, that Caylee's Law serves no practical purpose (15), because as the opponent themselves have pointed out, there are already laws on the books which can be applied. Murder, negligence, all of these things are already illegal, and did nothing to save the life of little Caylee, nor was Casey proven to be responsible for her daughter's death. If this law had been on the books already, prosecutors would have had an even more difficult time actually proving that Caylee was even in her care at the time of the baby's death/disappearance.

Third, every law has acception to the rules. Technically if you were to be walking by a man screaming for help while drowning in the river, and you didn't jump in and save him, you can get first degree murder, not even man slaughter, murder. This law was added to be able to charge everybody in a group killing with first degree murder. Now how many people do you know charged with murder because they didn't jump into a save a stranger over something they had nothing to do with? It is an exception to the rule.

This passage is outright false in a number of ways (3, 4, 13, 20, 22) and the opponent is trying to use a "red herring" in order to distract us from the facts. To begin with, no as a matter of fact, laws do not have exceptions to the rules. Nor should they have any.

"The duty we owe our constituents obliges us to be as attentive to the safety of the innocent as we are desirous of punishing the guilty; and we apprehend that a doubtful construction and various execution of criminal law does greatly endanger the safety of innocent men." ~JOUR. HOUSE OF BURGESSES (1773-1776) 

Arbitrary justice is no justice at all.When a particular police officer, prosecutor, or judge can pick and choose who they will and will not prosecute based upon their own personal biases, hunches, political affiliations, etc., rather than on the rule of law applied equally to everyone, you wind up with fiefdoms of absolute dictatorship.

Now again, the example of the man drowning in the river is patently false. There is no such law that requires anyone to risk their own life and limb to save anyone. Even the police are not required to take any such risks. No murder charge, no manslaughter. In fact if you did jump in to save them and failed, then you could actually be opening yourself up to charges and a lawsuit. Same goes for rendering first-aid of any kind, Heimlich maneuver, CPR, etc. The only way you can be charged with murder in a group setting, is if you conspire to and are in the process of carrying out a felony. If you and a friend decide to rob a store at gunpoint, and your friend shoots the clerk, you are going to prison for murder as well, even if you did not know your friend was going to kill the clerk.

So end all be all, the opponent here has failed to establish a rule, and therefore cannot establish an exception to the rule. 

For further information, you might like to watch this video discussing a recent case where people stood by and watched while a teen girl was brutally raped.

As I have read posts on your page, let me explain this to you. Caylee's law was not made to "bring back a dead child" it is infact to bring harsher punishments on things such as this to maybe deter somebody from killing their or anybodies child (if you read the entire law, it isn't just for parents, it is for adult in a caregivers position, like if your kid went over to a friends house and went missing it would be the responsibilty of that adult. Like the Haleigh Cummings incident where she wasn't reported for a few hours.

Again we see that our opponent is trying to put words in our mouth (4). No one ever said anything about bringing back a dead child, though the logic (13) of some opponents in that camp seems to often imply it, or that the law would actually prevent a death. If the threat of execution or life imprisonment on a charge of murder does not deter someone from killing their child, then they certainly are not going to be deterred by Caylee's Law.

Yes, we are aware (8) that the law applies to all caregivers, not just parents. Which actually only complicates matters further. How does one prove who's care the child was actually in when they disappeared or died? This was one enormous gap in proving Casey guilty of murder in the first place, so how will this new law actually help in that regard? It also opens the door to wrongful prosecutions.

I know you think it want stop people from commiting crimes but a lot of people do like to obey the law. There are some people who dont care if they are going to get the death penalty and are going to do things regardless of the punishment. But some of us respect the law. You wouldn't rob somebody for a million dollars if it was completely legal and you werent going to hurt anybody? The law stops you from doing that because you dont want to go to jail. It is to try and stop those who can be stopped.

Again we see circular logic being applied (13) along with assumptions made as to what we would do in a given situation (4). No law ever prevented a crime. If someone is willing to murder their child, then obviously they don't care enough about the law to worry about another few years getting tacked on to their life sentence thatnks to Caylee's Law. And those of us who respect that law, who don't murder and abuse our children, should not go to prison not meeting some arbitrary reporting deadline that fails to take into account the many nuances of modern family life and the many reasons why a parent may not be able to, or may feel it is best not to report to police. 

Also the law was created to try and preserve the evidence so nobody can walk away free because the body was to decomposed.

Which now bring us to the entire crux of the matter. This law is created to destroy YOUR Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Your right to not provide evidence against yourself or to self-incriminate.

But we also see here again the fallacies of our opponents position  (1, 9, 13, 15, 20)  since we all know full well that many people have been successfully prosecuted without a body ever being located at all, or in very poor condition for examination as was the case in the Scott Petersen trial.

And in mind, anybody who is complely opposed to this law, should think twice about becoming a parent.

So then our opponent finally signs off by invoking a whole slew of disinformation tactics in a single sentence. (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 18)

I expect rules 24 and 25 will follow soon as well. So let me sign off here with a little of the old number 18.

And check out some of our previous coverage on the subject:

Caylee's Law - Do we need one?

Was Casey Anthony trial propaganda-coup to destroy the Fifth Amendment?

Is Casey the poster-child of modern feminism?

And also be sure to join the Facebook page Say No To Caylee's Law.

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach." -Adolf Hitler