is "not guilty" really not guilty?

Supernova brought up lizzie borden in another thread... it made me wonder how many people believe she did it? even a nursery rhyme about the crime convicts her as the perpetrator, however she was found not guilty.

do you think she was guilty and got off because men didnt believe women were capable of murder back then? or do you believe that she did not do it? and how could the maid have not heard two brutal murders occurring?


Even OJ was not guilty... yet will forever be remembered as a butcher. Is this right or fair?

Points for mentioning the maid who was in the house at the time of the murders and didn't hear a thing.

Not guilty only means not enough evidence to convict, it actually has nothing to do with innocence. Which explains why in high profile cases people can still scream guilt when someone is found not guilty. Sometimes it's a matter of what more did the jury need to be convinced, but what I want to know is how, since they didn't have any actual evidence against Lizzie and this was initially a problem for the police, how then they arrested her?

People back then did not think she was capable of doing it because they likened her to their wives and daughters and did not think women did things like this, especially women who came from good families; a delusion that unfortunately still occurs today.

The problem is there are a lot of little details that could be key clues but they're not common knowledge: one source says Andrew's brother left the house that morning, and had stayed the night before in the bedroom Abby was butchered in, HOWEVER that was not his regular room so why did he change it? And there's a possibility that he came back, and why would Abby be suspicious of the person who spent the night in the room she was cleaning? Another source said there was a coach outside the house during the time of both murders and neither Lizzie nor the maid told the police about this, but then I have to ask who did? Unfortunately it's a case of too many questions and no answers. Other people point out her sister Emma, while supposedly out of town at the time, keep in mind she was 11 when her mother died and her father remarried so she would remember loving her mother and hating the new woman, probably more so than Lizzie who always protested "She is NOT my mother!"

So did she do it? We'll probably never know, though some believe that the hauntings that occur at the Borden household today are the ghosts of Abby and Andrew trying to tell who really killed them. But since she stood to inherit the money with her father dying before he could change his will, and she was at the house that day, and her irrational behavior afterward damned her more than anything probably, she is still the most likely figure for it.

But a lot of people, myself included, also wonder about that maid, and would also like to know, this is the 1800s, no cars, no TVs, no radios, you can't block out noise like you can today, and it's August, it's hot, everybody has their windows open, so how did NOBODY hear anything?

She did it and got away with it as OJ did.

It's not. Usually it just means that they weren't able to prove you did it.

Tony Marino wrote:She did it and got away with it as OJ did.

Quite frankly, I know OJ killed those ppl but if I were on that jury I would have had to vote for acquittal. From what I read of the trial they just did not have or screwed up the evidence, plus that racist pig sorta threw a bias wrench into the whole mess.

Some years ago DNA tests were done in the Lizzie Borden case, (don't ask me how after so many years they still had DNA) but Lizzie was innocent, the maid did it.

I would have voted not guilty in the OJ case, and after reading American Tragedy I would still vote not guilty. He might have done it, but I will never be sure.

And then there is Casey Anthony who did do it and got off.

Suzi wrote:Some years ago DNA tests were done in the Lizzie Borden case, (don't ask me how after so many years they still had DNA) but Lizzie was innocent, the maid did it.

I would have voted not guilty in the OJ case, and after reading American Tragedy I would still vote not guilty. He might have done it, but I will never be sure.

And then there is Casey Anthony who did do it and got off.

But I'm sure we'd all love to know HOW was it proven the maid did it? How could they confirm anybody's DNA after a hundred years?

Supernova wrote:


But I'm sure we'd all love to know HOW was it proven the maid did it? How could they confirm anybody's DNA after a hundred years?

Not long ago I read the History of Lizzie Borden and don't recall them saying anything about a new DNA test being done and nothing about the maid committing the crime. Link please?

Supernova wrote:


But I'm sure we'd all love to know HOW was it proven the maid did it? How could they confirm anybody's DNA after a hundred years?

I said don't ask me how the got the DNA, but at the time it was announced on the news.

Any idea what year it was? Because it seems if they had found a way to prove that, it would've made headlines somewhere.

Nystyle709 wrote:It's not. Usually it just means that they weren't able to prove you did it.

And shame on the justice system for being unable to prove it if it's just "THAT" obvious.

wants2laugh wrote:Even OJ was not guilty... yet will forever be remembered as a butcher. Is this right or fair?

It is what it is! There's not much "fair" in life and even less when it comes to the criminal justice system. And whether or not OJ actually killed Nichole Brown and Ronald Goldman (which I personally believe that he did) it is clear that he is a complete moron and probably wouldn't be serving time for a completely different crime years later. So even if you thought he was innocent, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for him. He still ulimately destroyed his own life by being a dumbass.

Having said that...

OJ Simpson is NOT GUILTY of murder. NOT GUILTY doesn't mean INNOCENT, and this is where people get confused. The reason he is not guilty is because that's how he was found by a jury of his peers in a court of law. It doesn't matter if someone else thinks he's guilty or not because the record show's that he is not. That of course doesn't mean that he DIDN'T commit murder, or that he is "innocent", but if someone's guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, they ARE not guilty. At best, one could say that he is "guilty" only in the court of public opinion. But they cannot say as a general statement that OJ Simpson is "guilty" of murder, because a court of law says that he wasn't.