DSK and Casey Anthony: Is This Justice? Actually, Yes

It's been a crazy week in the American justice system.

First, the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka DSK) fell apart because the credibility of his accuser, a hotel maid, got trashed. Coming on the heels of that news, 12 jurors agreed unanimously, and in record time, that Casey Anthony could not be found guilty of having anything to do with her daughter's death.

The immediate response is to criticize our justice system as being faulty and in need of reform, but if anything, it shows that our justice system really is grounded in the concept of "innocent until proven guilty."

All the pundits in the world can say and think and believe that DSK and Casey Anthony are guilty as sin, but in our courts you still have to prove it. In Casey's case, the jurors told the prosecutors that they did not prove it, and who are we to say they're wrong? No one was able to say how Caylee died, and there was no direct proof that Casey killed her.

The prosecutors had a theory that Casey suffocated her 2-year-old daughter to death with duct tape, but there was zero proof of that. (And as much as people compare this to the O. J. case, there was a lot more evidence against O. J. than there was against Casey.)

We may hate the outcome of the Anthony case and feel the same way about the likely collapse of the DSK case, but think about it: do we really pay more than just lip service to the bedrock concept of our justice system that everyone is presumed innocent unless proven guilty?

We say we'd rather see 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be found guilty of something he did not do. Do we really believe that, or do we only believe that when it's convenient?