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Petition for "Caylee's law" spurs legislation controversy
The verdict of the Casey Anthony trial, the Florida mom acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, shocked a lot of trial-watchers across the nation, and sparked one mom into action. Michelle Crowder launched an online petition to create a Federal law that would make it a felony for parents to fail to notify police within 24 hours of a child's disappearance or within an hour of a child's death.
Within hours of creating the petition, 15,000 people had signed. A week later, the petition has over 1 million signatures, making it the fastest growing and most-signed petition on it's host site, Change.org. Now local lawmakers are taking note, with legislators from Oklahoma and Florida expressing interest in enacting similar laws in their states.
However it's unclear if a federal law such as the one Crowder is suggesting can actually be enacted, as criminal law constitutionally falls under the realm of the states. Critics of the law also feel it's knee-jerk legislation, that could lead to more problems - what if a grieving parent forgets to notify the police within the hour? Or if the time of death is unclear? Detractors cite the inefficiencies of other laws like California's "three strikes" rule and "Meghan's Law," which created the sex offenders registry, as an example of why reactionary laws don't work.
Do you support Caylee's law?
Comment
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Comment by jewelxkitty on July 23, 2011 at 8:18pm -
I agree I think it should be a 24 hour notification of death and a 48 hour notification of disappearance, Here in Florida, you can't even file a missing child report until the child has been missing for 24 hours so... For us that's asking for trouble. And an hour is not a long time if you're freaking out trying to resuscitate or figure out what happened or something... you're not looking at your watch.
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Comment by drea on July 22, 2011 at 3:24pm -
I think the notification of a death should be longer. If your baby dies of sids or something in the middle of the night you probably wouldnt know until the morning which would be longer than an hour. I also think 48 hours is better than 24 just because kids sneek out and dont always do whaat they say they are going to. I definately think there should be some sort of law though because a month is a long time to not report your child missing.
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Comment by leah smith on July 20, 2011 at 9:13pm -
I think it should be 24 hour notification for a death... I would want to spend time alone with my child or family member and an hour isn't much but I still think there should definatly be some sort of law!
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Comment by rebecca coyne on July 20, 2011 at 12:30pm -
I don't think it that it is a good idea to force parents to call the authorities over the death of a child with in an hour. I can just picture myself not wanting to give my babies up so quickly. I would probably want to spend a little time with them morning before I handed them over. It was a couple of hours after my grandmother had passed because we cleaned her up and dressed her up out of her night clothes. That is how she would've wanted it. She was always big on appearances. I figure it would be even harder with your children. Also what about those children than say they are at a friend's house or something and sneak out. Let's say the parents find out and then report it when they do, however, they didn't when it happened because they didn't know and some jerk wants to give them trouble just because they can. You need to remember that there are always loopholes and when it comes to our system those loopholes generally end up protecting the guilty and biting the hones, good people in the back side. The intentions are good, but I think the law would be faulty.
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Comment by ZephyrVI on July 20, 2011 at 11:59am
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I think this is a pretty good idea actually, even if casey anthony didn't kill her daughter she still didn't call the police or anything for a month...she basically said I don't care and abandoned her daughter to whatever happend. There is a need for repurcussions on this kind of negligence...it is criminal.
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Comment by Laurie on July 20, 2011 at 12:06am -
And this law is a great idea. I support cayee law. I cannot go a day without seeing my little girl smile. I love her to the point that I can't hardly get anything done.. I just want to be with her.
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Comment by Laurie on July 20, 2011 at 12:03am
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I encourage people to NOT buy her book, watch her interviews. Let's not let this lady gain from killing her baby. Please let's not give her anything.
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Comment by Chelsey Cameron on July 19, 2011 at 9:58pm -
Definitely a good law
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Comment by Bethany L on July 19, 2011 at 9:48pm -
she is a evil person, and what she did was beyond wrong, and a law like this needs to be made, im just saying its gonna be hard to get the wording right.
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Comment by GreenMama on July 19, 2011 at 5:06pm -
I have never had a child die but I am pretty sure I personally would not be able to even function, much less call the police. However, I feel like my DH or I would almost immediately, almost instinctually contact someone that is in our family/support system. And I would hope and pray that if my husband and I could not do what needed to be done, that one of those many people would step in and help make some difficult decisions and calls. And if I know that I did nothing malicious, I would have no problem with that or with any consequential investigation. That's all I am getting to - not passing judgment or anything like that.
I will add that I DO realize that not everyone has a support system or even a living, caring parent but for those that do (like little miss Casey did), I just don't honestly believe that people could just do NOTHING.
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