Bill O'Reilly: 'The Casey Anthony verdict is a dark, dark day in American history'
Bill O'Reilly, the permanently uptight Fox News host of "The O'Reilly Factor," did a fascinating thing Wednesday night. He began his "Talking Points" segment by saying "it would not be fair to disparage the jury in the Casey Anthony acquittal without first hearing from them," then he went on a spree of disparagement, taking shots at the jury, the defendant, O.J. Simpson's jury and America as a whole.
He named his rant "Dumb, beyond a reasonable doubt."
Later, O'Reilly called Anthony's defense attorney immature in a segment called "Pinheads and Patriots."
But back to O'Reilly condemning the U.S.A., its justice system and the Americans who did their civic duty by serving on the jury. He has nothing but judgmental questions about all of them but strangely no condemnation of the prosecutors who failed to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the lying and erratic Anthony was the killer.
"Have we become a nation that does not make judgments any more about behavior? Is there always an excuse for everything?" O'Reilly asked. "Reasonable doubt was not raised by Ms. Anthony's lawyers. They ran around concocting a lot of bull they couldn't prove," he editorialized, concluding that "the Casey Anthony verdict is a dark, dark day in American history, no question."
Jennifer Ford, Juror No. 4 in the trial, told "Nightline" host Terry Moran on Wednesday that the jury was "sick to our stomach" while making the tough judgment. Ford, a nurse, explained that because they felt the prosecutors did not establish motive or prove that Anthony was the one who killed 2-year-old Caylee, they were forced to return the not-guilty verdicts.
"If there was a dead child in that trunk, does that prove how she died? No idea, still no idea." Ford told Moran. "If you're going to charge someone with murder, don't you have to know how they killed someone or why they might have killed someone, or have something where, when, why, how? Those are important questions. They were not answered."
While O'Reilly was judging the jury on Fox News and speculating that Caylee is in heaven and her mother "will most likely go to hell," Ford addressed why she and her counterparts are lying low.
"Everyone wonders why we didn't speak to the media right away," Ford said. "It was because we were sick to our stomach to get that verdict. We were crying, and not just the women. It was emotional and we weren't ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial."
-- Tony Pierce
Image: Screengrab of O'Reilly on Wednesday on "The Factor" Credit: Fox News
Andrew Malcolm is on assignment.