MARILYN PENN: THE AFTERMATH OF CASEY ANTHONY’S ACQUITTAL
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9898/pub_detail.asp
After watching one of the lawyers on Casey Anthony’s defense team jump up and down like a giddy schoolgirl, I realized how damaging an adversarial legal system can become when it sacrifices professional respect for justice to the baser glee of winning, a la Charlie Sheen. High profile criminal trials have assumed the same mantle as sporting events with long lines of spectators wanting ringside seats and many extra hours of media time devoted to stirring our passions on the small screen.
This particular case had phenomenal heartbreak appeal – an adorable wide-eyed toddler, dead and discarded, had her image flashed before us every time the news reported on the trial. Her hot-blooded, club-hopping mother was photographed grinning widely as she partied on after the child’s mysterious disappearance. We learned that Casey had her body tattooed with the mantra for her newfound freedom – bella vita, beautiful life. We heard that she had lied about an imaginary nanny and a fabricated kidnapping, had never mentioned the newly departed child to her boyfriend or other friends, had repeatedly lied about the little girl’s whereabouts to her parents and the police. This was a disturbing perversion of the image of a young mother, as heartless and cold-blooded in her reaction to the child’s death as we have ever witnessed.
The case took on the aura of a fairy tale as the child’s body was eventually found buried in the woods, the proverbial place of ultimate danger for other fabled children. Because the body was badly decomposed, forensic evidence was uncertain about the cause of death. But there was plenty of evidence as to the mother’s happiness at her sudden change in circumstance and no evidence of the anguish one would normally expect at the death of a vibrant little daughter. Jose Baez, the lead defense attorney, would have us believe that Casey Anthony lied to cover up an accidental death because she was an abused child for whom lying was a modus vivendi. Aside from being an insult to other abused children who don’t grow into conniving sociopaths, there was no accounting for Stacey’s euphoric and celebratory behavior after her daughter’s death – Is this also a by-product of abuse? In his post verdict statement, Mr. Baez hoped that his client would now have the opportunity to get on with her life and to grieve. It was an odd insertion, as hollow and contradictory as if the months spent partying after her child’s death were somehow not the appropriate occasion for such expression. As if this narcissistic woman, so distorted and disconnected from normal maternal emotions could suddenly turn into someone else – a person of character who neither lies, cheats, dissembles or possibly kills.
We may never know who killed Caylee Anthony or exactly how. We do know that her mother’s acquittal of all charges except for lying shouldn’t make us feel comfortable, much less victorious. A child either drowned or was murdered; her mother either committed an act of violence or was complicit in covering up an accident or a crime; the media capitalized on the trial, sensationalizing it for profit; the defense behaved towards a heartless mother as if she were the victimized child. Our system demands that the defense do its job – it should not exonerate them for celebrating in plain sight while one life has been extinguished and no one pays the price that is mandatory in order for justice to be served.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Marilyn Penn is a writer in New York who can also be read regularly at Politicalmavens.com.
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