How Long Will Casey Anthony Survive?

The Not Guilty verdict returned by the jury on July 5, 2011 spared Casey Anthony from the electric chair and Life Without Parole. That doesn’t mean the legally-innocent “tot mom” is out of the woods, however. Quite the contrary, I’m concerned about her life.

Many are comparing this jury’s verdict to the O.J. Simpson case, but that is patently ridiculous. The only valid comparison is that prosecutors in both cases were clearly incompetent and/or overconfident. Both teams of prosecutors made mistakes, but in the Simpson case they at least had physical evidence. The Casey Anthony prosecution was sorely lacking in convincing, believable evidence.

Let me stop right here and say loudly that I did not watch the trial on TV (I actually have a life of sorts). There may be evidence that I’m not aware of, but for the last five days I’ve heard the whole thing rehashed so many times that I don’t think I’ve missed a great deal. Let me also say that I don’t know who killed little Caylee—her mother may indeed be guilty—but actual guilt and legal guilt are two different things. Casey Anthony may not be “innocent”, but she is Not Guilty. Big difference.

Media Lynching

What worries me is the reaction of the crowd outside the courthouse when the verdict was delivered. That was a lynch mob which only needed a rope and a community organizer to get them mobilized. (Who spends the weekend outside a courthouse waiting for a stranger’s verdict, anyway? Are their lives that empty and shallow?)

People from coast to coast were outraged over the Simpson verdict, but the victims in that case were rich white adults. The victim in this case is a little girl, a toddler, the very picture of innocence. I’m sure there may have been people who would have liked to murder O.J., but he was a big man, a violent man, and had lots of big, equally violent friends. Casey Anthony, adjudged by the populace to be the very epitome of evil, will be hated much more than O.J., and is a much softer target. Whether she did it or not, I greatly fear for her safety. Once she is released from jail, her clock will start ticking, and sooner or later, some nut job out there may decide to make her pay.

But why should the public care so much? We all know of equally tragic cases; we’ve all seen perps we think should be brutally snuffed out. Why is Casey Anthony so high profile?

I blame it on the media, and one network in particular. This “news” network has dedicated all its resources to this case for months. This network has done nothing but stir up hatred for Casey Anthony; one anchor in particular, supposedly a former prosecutor, has gone to great lengths to condemn the accused mother from the very beginning, and seemed personally insulted when the verdict came back with an acquittal. For this former prosecutor, the presumption of innocence does not exist.

This network, and this one anchor in particular, has seeded a lynch-mob mentality across the nation, and if Casey Anthony should suffer violence, I blame it squarely on them.

Just the Facts

I didn’t watch the trial, though I did see clips from time to time. What I did watch was the closing arguments by the defense. Based on that and that alone, I came to the conclusion that the prosecution had left room for reasonable doubt. Even so, I was certain the jury would take close to a week to reach a verdict—instead, they returned in just over ten hours. Though I have no hard opinion on how the child died or who was responsible, I was gratified by the Not Guilty verdict simply because it appeared the defense had made their case and the prosecution had not. The system actually worked.

In the media rehash, during which every incompetent talking head in the country is treated as an expert, the lack of hard facts has been matched only by the lack of common sense. It seems that everyone thinks we should believe the testimony of George and Cindy Anthony, the defendant’s parents. Yet both committed perjury on the witness stand and both were impeached in court. Casey Anthony also lied (to the police—she never testified in court), changing her story repeatedly. So what do you have when everyone is lying? You have doubt. Reasonable doubt. Lots of it.

The aforementioned “news” network and its narcissistic anchor made much of the fact that, while George Anthony was testifying and sobbing on the witness stand, his daughter merely stared at him and shed not a tear. What kind of woman can do that? our former prosecutor bleated. Well, unless you’re a complete idiot, the answer is fairly simple—Casey Anthony hates her father. That hatred was written across every muscle on her face. Maybe he molested her when she was little, as the defense suggested…or maybe he didn’t. Maybe she just hates him because he was lying about her. Either way, she didn’t burst into sobs. If I hate somebody, it doesn’t make me cry.

Smell the Psychosis

On the same day, an expert witness apparently testified on how grief-stricken people should react. During that testimony, Casey Anthony did cry. The angry anchor railed on about that, too, but maybe Casey cried because it was the first time all day that anyone in the courtroom had spoken a kind word about her. When you’re being mistreated, or at least think you’re being mistreated, you tend to freeze up so you can endure it; a slender ray of kindness can melt that ice awfully fast.

After the verdict a number of “experts” carried on and on about how Casey reacted, how her parents reacted, and declared that “normal” people don’t react that way, and because of this “abnormal” reaction, she must be guilty. Well, wake up and smell the common sense—this is not a “normal” family. Defense attorney Jose Baez declared truthfully in his closing that this was an extremely dysfunctional family. What might seem normal for the average American has no basis in reality for the dysfunctional; there is nothing normal about them. You need an abnormal psychologist to even begin to understand them, how they think, how they feel, and what might be a reasonable reaction from any of them.

This carries over to the death of the child. If the death was an accident, some are asking, what kind of grandfather would make it look like a murder? Well, again, wake up and smell the psychosis—George is not normal, not in any way. He was a media whore from the very beginning, even before Caylee’s body was found. He has never missed an opportunity to step in front of a camera; even during two closing argument recesses you saw people filing in and out of the courtroom—most of them turned a corner somewhere and disappeared. Not George—both times he found a spot where a camera was aimed in his direction and just stood there, making sure the world could see him. No one else did that.

So don’t expect George Anthony to do the “normal” thing. And don’t expect his daughter to do the normal thing, either. She is her father’s daughter.

Closing Argument

When I first saw Jose Baez in news clips I wasn’t impressed. That changed when he delivered his closing argument. That was a brilliant presentation, very well laid out, very logical. He didn’t try to hide anything, made sure the jury understood that his client was a “slut” and a liar, but those facts weren’t proof of murder. Baez made a believer out of me (for reasonable doubt) when he pointed out the TEN FBI experts the prosecution failed to call. The defense called them instead, to prove that the prosecution’s case was based on what Baez called “phantom forensics”. In other words, the forensics were insufficient to prove guilt.

This case was troubling, to be sure, but why did we even know about it? Crimes such as this happen every week in one part of the country or another, yet we were riveted on this one. Why? Why this case and not every other similar case? The answer is that some network executive somewhere, or some former prosecutor, decided to shove it into our faces until we gagged. Caylee Anthony’s death became a marketing tool for exploitative television.

And now, because of the lynch mob mentality, Casey Anthony, Not Guilty before the law, could easily become the target of lynch mob violence. Hate her if you will, but don’t overlook the reason you hate her—save a little contempt for the media vultures who paraded her through your living room for month after month. They deserve it as much as she does.

—July 5, 2011

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