The Audacity of Ignorance

Joran van der Sloot needs to nix the insanity plea and hire Jose Baez. The man is obviously a genius and may be the only person in the world who can get him acquitted of murder. With his inconceivably awesome ability to sucker a jury into believing reasonable doubt exists where clearly it does not, Mr. Baez is perfectly equipped to shred the case against poor put-upon Joran.

When prosecutors show the security camera footage of him and the alleged victim entering the room together, he can point out how happy they look together and how there's no way their relationship could go from such a love-me-tender scene to one in which he brutally kills her--there's no way it could happen. Obviously someone else did the killing, and hotel security doctored the video in order to implicate dear innocent Joran.

When the medical examiners maintain that her injuries are consistent with her having had the living daylights beaten out of her by someone Joran's size, he can point out that there are millions of men in the world who are the same size, and obviously it was one of them who killed the girl, not hunka hunka burning love teddy bear Joran.

He can concoct cool catchphrases that exude reasonable doubt, like his own "fantasy forensics" or the late Johnny Cochran's "..if the glove don't fit, you must acquit..." Simple-minded people glom onto that crap as if it were key evidence that indisputably exculpates the wrongly accused.

He can exhort them to walk a mile in Joran's shoes and don't be cruel and release him. He can excoriate the prosecution for their suspicious minds, and beseech the jury not to allow them to make Joran dance another day to the jailhouse rock. He can tell them he's counting on them to let him be free to reach out to Jesus in the ghetto or anyplace that is paradise. It sounds like nonsense, but ignorant, gullible people always fall for that kind of thing, because when they've been baffled by bullshit, they always want others to believe they were dazzled with brilliance. It truly is a crying shame.

He can admonish the jury not to let the behavior that has absolutely nothing to do with this case influence their verdict. There is no evidence that he had anything to do with Natalee Holloway's disappearance/death; there is no evidence that he had anything to do with the death of Stephany Flores. The prosecutors can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was in the room when she died; they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he laid a hand on her if he was in the room when she died. With so much left unproven, the case against him unravels. Let's not forget all the other men in the area built like railroaded scapegoat Joran; one of them has gotten away with murder by getting his crime pinned on this pillar of unjustly vilified innocence. The police didn't report that they found him crying in the chapel, where he was waiting so patiently for her to come and marry him, until the real killer so deviously and callously returned her to her sender. And what about the rash of alien abductions at that time? Oh, the humanity!

Shit probably won't play out like that, but I find it sickly pleasurable to imagine a scenario wherein Mr. Baez takes the case and introduces Casey Anthony to Joran in prison, where they have an alcohol-fueled conjugal visit that ends like too many others of his have. Where's the fucking duct tape when you need it??

How about my choice of picture, Lt. Ilia?