Justice

The pundits will now move on, the center ring slowly emptying outside the Stark County Courthouse as the snaking cables from live trucks are rolled back into their hiding places, ready to unfurl at a courthouse or crime scene to be named later. Bobby Cutts, Jr. is guilty.


The questions most of us will ask the jury will likely center on just what
they talked about during their 27 hours of deliberations -- about half as long as the total testimony they heard inside Judge Charles Brown's courtroom. How did they decide against finding for aggravated murder in Count One, the murder of Jessie Davis? Was is Bobby's tears or did they find plausible attorney Fernando Mack's opinion that the death was a horrible accident, the intersection of a powerful elbow and soft tissue?

What plays loudest in the follow-up to the State v Bobby Cutts, Jr. is the apparent view of jurors forged by what seems to have been a lifetime behind closed doors, a dozen people charged with deciding life or death: the adults in this tragic play were held to a different standard than the one player who never had a voice to speak her side. Baby Chloe's only story could be told through the evidence, gruesome photographs simply too graphic to show on TV or the web. It was in consideration of her, two weeks shy of entering this world, that the jury found murder was more than just murder, it was enough to call aggravated and now triggers the next step.

The gag order continues for the lawyers and family members; no commenting, please, despite the calls coming in from New York to feed the media hunger when tonight's viewing audiences watch the evening after Nancy shared tragedy of school killings, OJ's girlfriend and other cases with her babies in the studio to spend some of Valentine's Day with mom. The so-called penalty phase will determine the measure of justice for Bobby Cutts, to be spelled out by the still promise of his unborn daughter.