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I found an article beginning with the phrase, “As Casey faced her the jury” in today’s Time Magazine (July 7) reporting the conclusion of Casey Anthony case under the title, “Casey Anthony sentencing: Release date set for July 13.”

To a non-native English speaker like me, the composition “Casey faced her the jury” felt somewhat confusing. Do we need ‘the’ between 'her' and 'jury'? Shouldn’t it be “As Casey faced her jury,” or “As Casey faced the verdict of the jury,” or even “As Casey faced the sentencing by the judge”? Am I nitpicking too much?

The article in question reads:

“As Casey faced her the jury, America was able to sound off in tweets, texts, Facebook postings and story comments. The majority of those that followed the verdict, according to my own informal survey, exclaimed some sort of appalled wonder that she would get off. In their heart of hearts, most Americans knew that there wasn't enough evidence to convict Casey Anthony, but they were pretty sure she wasn't totally innocent, either.”

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It's a proofreading or typesetting error. The 'correct' version could have either the or her, but not both. Neither would affect the meaning.

Most likely the original writer typed both absent-mindedly because subconciously he hadn't really fixed on either. But it should have been picked up before you read it.

Per @Thursagen's answer and comments thereto, quite possibly the writer vacillated over the implications of the superficially valid "her", leading to a lapse of concentration.

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Your initial reaction is right. "As Casey faced her the jury" is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. This is more of a typo than a grammar mistake -- it sounds just as unnatural to any native English speaker.

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    I wouldn't call this sort of error a typo, but maybe that's because I understand the word differently. To me typo's are spelling mistakes, mis-hit keys, and such. Adding a whole extra word through failure to make the concious choice of which to use strikes me as a different kind of writing error that I don't have a word for.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 13:00
  • Printer's Devil?
    – Autoresponder
    Commented Sep 23, 2011 at 7:25
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Occasionally, you'll see the same construct -- nominative-pronoun transitive-verb objective-or-reflexive-case-of-the-same-pronoun direct-object -- in a humorous or mock-rural context. For example:

  • Goin' down to South Park, [I'm] gonna have myself a time!
  • She was starving so she sat down and had her some grub.

That said, yeah, probably a typo.

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As all the others have said, its probably a typographical error, but I'd like to point out that the correct form would have been:

As Casey faced the jury/ not "As Casey faced her jury."

It's more correct.

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    I think there would be a good case for describing it as "her jury" - the jury of her peers, assembled to pass judgement on her. It's acceptable from a usage point of view, at least.
    – pavium
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 2:48
  • @Ham and Bacon. True. My mistake. There'should be no her jury, though there is (are) her own attorney (attornies).
    – Yoichi Oishi
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 3:28
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    Calling it her jury is not an error. It was the jury charged with judging her guilt out innocence, so calling it "her jury" doesn't mean she owned it; it just means it was connected with her. You can call the school you went to "your" school without implying ownership.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 4:18
  • @Robusto: Nice example.
    – Jimi Oke
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 4:24
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    I would think it's more common to call only participants in a trial who are directly connected to the defendant "hers". So "her lawyer" and "her witnesses" (called by the defense), but "the jury in her case", "the judge in her case" and so on. Calling a neutral party "hers" might suggest that you believe that party was biased. Probably it was the original writer working out this subtlety that led to the typo; typing in one then the other, maybe vacillating a bit, and ultimately forgetting to delete the disfavored option.
    – Michael Lorton
    Commented Jul 8, 2011 at 10:46

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