Cases like this serve as the ulterior motive to why I am eventually pursuing a MS in criminalistics starting next year. As my first major I did sociology and wanting to help everyone out due to the impression people were all nice and kind, and liars were a rare thing. Once I tried that profession when I got out of college, boy I was in for a hard but well-learned lesson. Even at my previous job, people could do nothing but be complaining bastards even though all I intended was to help them without a second thought.
I believe in the idea of helping out people in the forensic world today, my take on it is that you are still helping even if you keep the answers to yourself after you did the lab results, due to legal boundaries.
Cheri and the side clashing her opinions both have respective reasons for their judgments.
#1 fact that is prior to everything and still applies; is the definition of law. Laws are a collection of rules made by the people which are then enforced by the proper authority.
Laws were created to regulate & monitor society's behavior.
Society often has scumbags, or people who attempt to cheat the "honest" system, which is ultimately why laws are created.
We cannot control what people think of, this is something that is unregulated. Our government's constitution allows for this.
This is why Cheri's argument still applies - she thought Casey Anthony is a killer immediately due to the way the case progressed. The facts were overwhelmingly against Casey, no matter which way you look at it. The same applied for O.J. Simpson, which serves as a strong counter for the legal action debacle in this case. Everyone with logical thinking had a premonition O.J. killed his wife, yet legal action could not prove this.
Then there is the reason why the laws for fair trials were created. It is to give everyone an equal chance, regardless of race, language, sexual orientation, or any form of discrimination. With plausible reasoning, they will find you guilty or not. This way, guilty people will be served with the proper justice they deserve in "proper format", rather than just jump the gun and put them on the chair or lie detector test.
Yet we do know, there are often mistakes with this system, there are plenty of examples out there, to give a few:
[1] [2]
The real issue is, we know that people lie. If no one could ever lie, even through modern means, such as a truth serum, lie detector tests - there would be no means for a criminal justice system. But reality is, we know people continue to lie and the actual truth serum is highly unreliable.
Fortunately with the ever-improving advancements in forensic science today, we can get more information out of less evidence. I can assure you that they don't work as fast as CSI on TV and a lot of that is fancy mumbo-jumbo, however the lab results are similar and take time but most importantly have legal issues you have to document prior to advancing towards a sudden claim.
On topic, I really wish I was in that crime lab to know what was discovered in the evidence aside from what was said. I hope the child gets proper justice as a result of all this.