I agree with you 100%. It sickens me everytime I see a politician use another "crisis" or yet one more crime as an excuse to draft yet more useless legislation so that they have something to point to as an "accomplishment" when it comes time for re-election. This is the price we are all paying for allowing people to make politics their full time career instead of something they do to give back to the country in service.

I don't believe it's jumping on the band wagon to draft a law like this. If something like this law was enacted before Caylee's death then this monster would be behind bars for other than "lying". It should be a national law and should include covering up a child's disappearance/murder as well.

If you are trying to cover up a crime by not reporting a child missing, it stands to reason that you wouldn't give a sh!t if you broke another law.

I agree. That said, a law like mandatory reporting of a missing child within 24 hours is still a good idea. Sure, something like that should be [and generally is] a no-brainer for any responsible parent/grandparent/caregiver. A law like that isn't targeted toward those people, however. And if it gives a future prosecution team another arrow in their quiver for bringing someone to justice by attaching a felony charge to it, why not?

I am a bit confused about the "reporting the death of a child, accidental or otherwise, within one hour". What if a child suffers a seizure in the middle of the night [natural causes] and isn't discovered until the morning, after several hours have passed? I see that as a bit more emotional than logical in the case of responsible parents who have the potential to be penalized. Back to the drawing board there.

Exactly how Caylee Anthony died is still a mystery, and will probably always be. It is clear she didn't have any responsible adults around her who felt an obligation to do the right thing by even reporting her missing; anything else I might say here is pure speculation, which is pretty much all the prosecution had, unfortunately.

But something has to be done to help protect children in that situation if at all possible. I see zero harm in such a law, and the potential for benefit later in cases like this one.

Reporting the death of a child within one hour of discovery might be better language (actually I am sure there is legalese that is better than my suggestion).

sigh, another legislator shamelessly using a tragic circumstance to their political gain. What a bunch of tools.

This law, while certainly significant as an addition to guardian responsibility, is simply a product of emotion from a relentless "court of public opinion".

Its a sensible law, but call it something else.

Tying it to the death of this particular child, and the unknown manner in which she died, would do nothing more than to serve as a constant reminder of this particular case, keeping it at the forefront of an angry public focus.

The death of ANY child is incredibly unfortunate. But the mother was acquitted by a jury of her peers. And that's all there is to it. And in all likelihood, had the participants been Black, Hispanic, or Asian, this case would have NEVER been televised on national cable, nor would it be even a blip on any legislator's radar.

People need to stop ignoring the fact that travesties the likes of this HAVE happened before, and WILL happen again.

Bar, and KEEP cable news media out of our courtrooms.

This is a very sensible proposed law that closes a necessary gap. I don't see a problem with it--problematic cases often show us where the law is excessive (so it can be modified or removed) or where it is missing. Only by looking at laws in practice can we test it out and see what we need to do.

One law I think we need, and Alan O. mentions it, is a law that makes it a felony for any news organization to mention a person by name when s/he is accused but not convicted of a crime. This would limit the ability of the Nancy Grace's to make a living out of playing on people's emotions. It would also limit the tendency of communities to single people out for prosecution and public shaming, particularly when the people never even get convicted.

It should be a crime not to report, in a timely fashion, a child that is missing. One would think that this is only common sense. The goal is NOT to force people to report missing children, but to be able to punish those who have pulled this stunt.

It will be particularly helpful in the case of LGBT children who are forced out of homes by their parents. If the parents don't report them "missing"--then the parents can be prosecuted. This could be very handy for LGBT youth--who might be sent to other caregivers so the parents can legally wash their hands of them rather than just throwing them out into the streets.

Seriously--do people really think that the goal of a law is to prevent a behavior? The goal is to punish the behavior--this creates a disincentive, not a preventative. It also means that an individual like Anthony, who probably planned this incident, would know that they would have to report the absence of the child and thus would make it less likely that they would think they'd get away with the act. Laws are disincentives--not things that will categorically prevent something from every happening.

If the law had been in place, Casey Anthony wold be guilty of a felony and have to spend at least seven more years in prison, as opposed to getting out next week

Your obsession with your political stance and "government control" is pathetic. It controls everthing you think, say and do. Sad sad life.

The only question I see is why wasn't this already a law - we should always look to be pro active.

DOT; you sure it's the law you don't like or how it's being processed. Take a class like business and you will start to grasp the bigger picture. One semester of Business Law and my own experiences with Workers Comp and I have a very different view of laws now - before that I was anti laws only because they hadn't legalized my favorite herb...lol. Lots of things change as you age - comprehension of why laws and business work the way they do is one of those changes - hell I even like Johnny Cash now...lol.

I could propose several law changes where it concerns Injured Workers - but it took being screwed several times and countless hours of scouring their denials to find their errors, to open my eyes.

Careful what you oppose when you don't have the full story - when you react without all the fact(s), that too is an emotional response.

Jones, children go missing all over the country, every hour of every day; somewhere "out there"right now, there is an innocent being victimized. I'm very sorry to have to break that to you.

Jones has never seen a milk carton apparently. Prolly never seen the outside of the basement for that matter.

Deep Dixie. Yes children are missing all over the county, but a law to report them missing is not going to help them. Any person with an ounce of dignity would report any information they have on the disappearance immediately. Any one who intentionally chooses to not report a child missing isn't going to change there mind just because it is a law.

Laws have the potential to harm innocent people ( your paragraph two of your first comment states one of the many many reasons) Once law it can be used both properly ( or successfully interpertated incorrectly) by both prosecution and defense.

I do not believe this law will help to recover missing children. It could however be twisted, turned, used and abused by both prosecution and defense "after the fact" and could do damage when it was intended to help. However, it will not help recover missing children.

I think the bad far out weighs the good on this one.

No, DOT; nor do I believe the intention of it is to actually recover missing children. It is about accountability for parents/caregivers, and I don't have a problem with that.

Like everyone else, I have no way of knowing how Caylee Anthony actually died. What does not appear to be in dispute from any source is the fact that her mother didn't report her missing for roughly a month, and was actually found guilty of lying to the authorities due to the reasons she gave as to why the little girl wasn't around. [In part.]

That apparently doesn't fall under the umbrella of criminal child neglect; although it certainly is. Perhaps if it did/had, there would be no need to address a situation like that with new legislation. Again, this legislation isn't targeted to responsible parents/caregivers, but the totally irresponsible ones whose actions result in tragedy for the smallest and weakest among us. There should indeed be penalties for that.

I still believe the "one hour death reporting" that is appearing on petitions around the Web is carrying things too far; there are simply too many variables there, and I notice that it isn't included in the FL legislation. To me, that is a very slippery slope; but this is not.

That's exactly right Deep Dixie; this legislation, if it were to be drafted would be about accountability of the accused in such cases. I think its pretty damn obvious that the kind of deranged individual who would not report a child missing OBVIOUSLY wouldn't give a hoot about being slapped with an extra felony charge. What this law would prevent is tragedies like this from unfolding where too much time has passed and evidence and testimony becomes circumstantial. And this would have precedence in ALL cases involving missing children because you know what the first thing authorities do when a there is a case of a missing child? Well? They try and see if there was any foul play or if it was an accident. Inevitably, this would make the accused accountable to a certain degree of his/her involvement in the disappearance of said child. Why would this benefit the justice system? SO WHEN EVIDENCE CANNOT BE JUSTIFIABLE BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT BY THE PROSECUTION AND THEY KNOW THEY HAVE LITTLE TO NO HARD EVIDENCE, THEN THEY CAN FOCUS THEIR ATTENTION ON THIS FELONY CHARGE TO ATTRIBUTE THE INDIRECT INVOLVEMENT OF THE ACCUSED.

-Please support 'Caylee's Law'-

DOT; apply your own reasoning to this case - the Defense did exactly what you claim to fear - they spun the existing laws so that a killer was found innocent. It is up to the Attorneys to be well enough versed in the laws to make sure they counter any spin doctors. Not filing the proper charges allowed Casey to walk - the Prosecution looks very inept in hindsight - they must have been listening to Nancy Grace's praise of them too much.

Don't spike the ball until the final gun sounds.

I agree. Look what Adam's Law, Amber's Law, and Laci's Law have done for missing children so far.

Sad sad pathetic people.

But it isn't the first time we've seen a dumb jury. I think all this man is trying to do is cover all bases, so that the next time something like this happens, atleast some justice is served for the dead child.

I am just thankful that there is a law on the books about lying to law enforcement. That one seems like it would be a no-brainer too.

Well yah, but in this case, even with 4 counts of lying to law enforcement, she's still walking.

I am actually surprised this jury was able to connect the dots on those crimes.

11 hours to come up with that ridiculous verdict. Connecting the dots apparently is harder than I remember.

I'm so sick of everyone blaming the jury. If you want to blame someone, blame the prosecution who didn't give the jury enough evidence to convict! The jury is a group of normal people, some of whom personally believe she's guilty (according to another article) who made the best decision possible based on the evidence.

Actually experts are saying that the jury rushed to judgement and didn't do its job. If they had the kind of questions they were expressing, they should have asked for more clarification, more material, more explanation from the judge.

And lets face it: That Not Guilty verdict gets a helluva lot more book contrats and interviews than a Guilty one would have.

Legal experts are saying this was a strong case. Many are shocked by this verdict and I ma not referring to Nancy Grace or her ilk. This jury was lazy . They wanted to GTFO and $$$.

LOL…Yeah that's funny. I wonder if Casey A.’s lawyer’s would be willing to risk their kids lives to let Casey baby sit their kids also. You know since they fought so hard to prove...excuse me I mean, lied to prove her innocence. Seriously though I wouldn't trust that woman enough to be near my kids (even from a two inch distance) let alone baby sit them.