The jury just announced that Casey Anthony has been found NOT GUILTY on all murder and manslaughter charges!!!
Is this real? Is this true? Is this just a bad dream???
I'd been watching Casey Anthony on trial for murdering her child for six weeks. I was hooked. A beautiful child turned to bones in a bag.. HOW had this happened? Is this pure evil?
Watching the trial every day, hearing almost every word the jurors heard, as the trial neared its end, I assumed most of the jurors were leaning toward 1st Degree Murder, possibly the death penalty. Although if they went with 1st degree murder not 2nd, I was pretty certain they'd give her Life in prison.
The other charges of note, Aggravated Manslaughter and Aggravated Child Abuse, didn't sound as "serious"...unless you knew, as the jury would, that finding Casey guilty on both those charges would mean a 1st Degree Felony Murder Charge. If the jury did not find multiple counts of child abuse, they could find her guilty of a single count of child abuse along with child manslaughter, which had a recommended sentence of five years, and a max of 20 years. I hoped Judge Perry would lean toward 20 years if that was what they chose.
The other four charges were misdemeanors. Lying to the police in various forms. Interfering with a police investigation. Interestingly, lying to the police in the course of an investigation is merely a misdemeanor, in contrast to lying on the witness stand (perjury), a felony, which carries a ten-year sentence. It seems to me lying to the police in a matter like this, i.e., the investigation of a missing child, should have a more serious penalty. But that hardly seemed to matter. The question here was, would she get life or death? Mostly for George and Cindy Anthony's sake, I hoped she'd get life. It seemed too much to have to watch George and Cindy deal with the impending execution of their daughter.
As I sit here now, I know I expected 1st Degree Murder, but assumed the jury would not sentence her to death. That was really all I could imagine.
On Day Two, just after the 10th hour of deliberation, the jury announced it had a verdict. This was quick, and quick usually means guilty. Usually. That could only mean one thing. The went with 1st Degree Murder. Would they be reasonable and not give her the death penalty? I hoped so.
When the jury began to deliberate, In Session put a "jury clock" on the right hand corner of the screen. It ticked away, one hour, two hours, three hours. Vinnie Politan, In Session commentator and former prosecutor, said that he usually estimated about one day for every week of trial, or one hour for every day of trial. That would mean four to six days. Florida juries, said several legal experts, like those in Texas, tended to come back much faster than those in other states, so two to three days was one estimate.
About noon on the second day of trial, I was watching In Session and that jury clock was gone. Instead, VERDICT REACHED was flashing across the screen. Verdict reached. I kept looking at the two words. Verdict Reached... VERDICT REACHED???? It took several minutes for this to sink in. I don't think I've ever felt the kind of anticipation I felt right then during a criminal trial. After all those days, all those videos of Caylee playing, singing, dancing, laughing... I was invested. I had "friends" on Twitter who were invested. It seems odd to explain how deeply I felt about this case of a young mom charged with killing her nearly three year old child. It was as if she were my neighbor, and the Anthony family too.
Verdict Reached. My heart was pounding. I took to Twitter and Facebook: Verdict reached. Announced in 45 minutes. Mobs surrounded the courthouse, with police keeping the crowd under control. People were making phone calls, texting, tweeting. It was unreal.
The judge looked at the verdict, handed it back to the bailiff. I'm not sure right now who read it, but I don't think it was the jury foreman. Maybe it was.
Deep breath. I could hear someone saying.. (maybe it was the foreperson..) "On the count of first degree murder, we find Casey Anthony... NOT GUILTY." Wait.. what? What? Not guilty...? This was HUGE. The jury had found Casey Anthony Not Guilty of First Degree Murder. It took a few moments to register that this meant she'd been found NOT GUILTY of 2nd Degree Murder too.
I guess they went with the Aggravated Child Abuse- Aggravated Manslaughter charges. Both were needed for a First Degree Felony Murder charge.
Next charge being read. "On the Count of Aggravated Child Abuse, the Jury Finds Casey Anthony Not Guilty." I was stunned. Stunned.
Next Charge: "On the Count of Aggravated Manslaughter, the Jury finds Casey Anthony Not Guilty."
Stunned silence filled the courtroom. I did not hear this right. I know I didn't. What was I missing...?
Charges continued to be read, the misdemeanors. I knew they'd find her guilty on those, as the defense admitted to those. She lied to everyone including the police. Surely they were going to say, The Jury Finds Casey Anthony Guilty of 2nd Degree Murder. But only silence filled the courtroom.
George and Cindy Anthony did not smile. They did not embrace. They got up and exited the courtroom. George's name had been dragged through the mud, but no one would be reading a verdict clearing him. There would be no, George Anthony, NOT GUILTY of CHILD MOLESTATION. There would be NO, George Anthony, NOT GUILTYof covering up the death of his granddaughter. Those accusations would stand on the record, and he and his wife would have to live with that.
This was July 5, 2011. After 31 days of trial, six weeks. Three years of reading about this case. Months of reading about the search for Caylee... Here it was. OVER. Over. And Casey Anthony had gotten away with it. Maddeningly, no one-- except Casey Anthony-- knew exactly WHAT it was she had done. But we all knew she'd done something. And we all saw she was not being punished.
I knew then, in a moment, that not knowing what had happened... not knowing at ALL what had happened... that was what it was. That is why the jury didn't convict here. Before deliberations that never even occurred to me. But I knew now. With all there was, there wasn't a cause of death. It was, as someone from the prosecutor's office said, a "dry bones case." And "dry bones' cases," he said, are extremely tough to win.
It's now four days later... and that verdict still echoes in my head. I feel shaken to my core. Is it real? Is it a bad dream? I can't say. I can say that I now know how badly I wanted justice for Caylee Anthony, a child I didn't know, but feel I did. I've never known anyone who was murdered, and never knew anyone who's child had died that way. For the first time I know what it feels like..just a little...just a little.. to know of a child who was murdered...and to watch her murderer walk away scot free.
I think all of us who watched the trial in depth, we came to know Caylee, the subject of MANY many a home video. A child full of life, full of promise.. as children are... a child whose bones were found, in a bag, in a swamp, with duct tape over her face, or rather, the skeletal nose and mouth. Caylee Anthony, a child whose life touched so many, is a child whose death touched even more. She joins the ranks not just of murdered children, but of murdered children whose killers walk free.
Somehow George and Cindy Anthony must find a way to live with this. I'm not quite sure how they will. I'm not quite sure that they will.
Somehow the rest of us must find a way to make sense of it all. One of my fellow trial watchers Susan kept saying she just wanted to make sense of it all. But how? Without the guilty party punished, how can that happen? How will it? I'm not sure it will. Not sure at all.
But those of us saddened, shocked and outraged.. we must take that pain and must use it to do something good. In honor of Caylee Anthony. In honor of all murdered children. Help a child. Help a mom. Become a big sister or brother. Visit a children's hospital. Do something for a child. Do something good. It's the only way I know to make this matter.
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