"She is a virtual Hester Prynne of our society with a scarlet letter, a well-known face. So she is still in many ways confined."
"There was a crowd of several hundred people," she recalled. "We were facing the front of the jail. The booking and release center, which is where she ultimately came out of. And I had just averted my eyes from the door to sort of move along the crowd and watch when she came out and jumped in a car. And I saw the caravan passing and I just stood back as I watched the crowd surge toward the caravan of cars. They were barricaded by a fence; they couldn't actually get to the car. But people went out into the street and there were mounted police officers keeping the crowd back. And some people in the crowd were yelling 'killer, killer.' People had signs. And it was just surreal as I saw this reaction to this woman who, you know, is trying to get her life back. It was strange."
***
July 5th, 2011, the day the jury found Casey Anthony not guilty of first degree murder was the same day I waited all afternoon to be released from Georgia Regional Hospital after finally speaking with a doctor, Dr. Needly, for the first time time that morning after spending seven days being worked through the system after first involuntarily admitted to DeKalb Crisis Center.
That afternoon was also the same afternoon I observed a young black woman/nurse who seemed extremely frustrated/agitated and in a hurry trying to finish her job responsibilities so she could leave and rushing out of the hospital she finally did without looking back; me wondering if a single mother needing to pick up a child from daycare or something like that; it being about the right time of the day.
Eventually I sat down and thought I would try watching whatever was on the television set the others were watching. Although my hearing aid battery had been dead for 3 days, didn't matter, the volume on these TV sets were never loud enough for me anyway. And closed caption me and a transgendered ordained minister/mortician named Leslie Fields had already tried unsuccessfully requesting for me the previous day.
And this is when breaking news announced the jury's verdict regarding the Caylee Marie Anthony Murder Trail. Everyone from nurses, patients, doctors, and other staff members stopped what they were doing and all stood in stunned silence looking in disbelief at each other.
But not me.
I was jumping all over the place shouting with joy,
"YES! YES! YES!"
When asked by one of the nurses,
"Why?"
"No one had seen Caylee for 30 days!
And I refuse to believe Casey... ALONE... should be held... RESPONSIBLE... for that child's death.
THAT WHOLE FAMILY IS FUCKED UP!
The clues were there, I'm sure! Plenty of them! Shouldn't have happened!
It's called...
DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY!"
~(Simply Jim: Truly Blue Bleeding Heart Liberal)~
Soon after this breaking new, they put me in a taxi and sent me on my way home.
Not only did I find my house locked just like the DKPD told me they had no choice doing when requesting, twice, they leave the doors unlocked the day they lead me out of my house in handcuffs, found the house extremely hot! They had turned off the AC at the unit in the basement instead of using the thermostat in the hallway.
Relieved to see that my two cats still had water and dry cat food in their bowls; I then walked over to the stove and lifted the lid off a pan sitting on top.
Almost fainted from the stench that rose out of that pan like a cloud overwhelming me.
Immediately grab the handle of the pan and rushed out the sun room door onto the deck with it.
And this is when I notice one big carpet of mold growing inside the pan;
the prettiest royal blue I've ever seen.
But...
"it smelled like a dead body had been in it!"
That pan stayed outside for several days before I was willing to near it again.
***
Death of Caylee Anthony - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Caylee Marie Anthony (August 9, 2005 – 2008) was a two-year-old American girl who lived in Orlando, Florida with her mother, Casey Marie Anthony, and her maternal grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony. On July 15, 2008, she was reported missing to 9-1-1 by Cindy, who said she had not seen Caylee for 31 days and that Casey's car smelled like a dead body had been inside it. Cindy said Casey had given varied explanations as to Caylee's whereabouts before finally telling her that she had not seen Caylee for weeks. Casey told detectives several falsehoods, including that the child had been kidnapped by a nanny on June 9, and that she had been trying to find her, too frightened to alert the authorities. She was charged with first degree murder in October 2008 and pleaded not guilty.
On December 11, 2008, Caylee's skeletal remains were found with a blanket inside a trash bag in a wooded area near the family home. Investigative reports and trial testimony alternated between duct tape being found near the front of the skull and on the mouth of the skull. The medical examiner mentioned duct tape as one reason she ruled the death a homicide, but officially listed it as "death by undetermined means".
The trial lasted six weeks, from May to July 2011. The prosecution sought the death penalty and alleged Casey murdered her daughter to free herself from parental responsibilities by administering chloroform and applying duct tape. The defense team, led by Jose Baez, countered that the child had drowned accidentally in the family's swimming pool on June 16, 2008, and that George Anthony disposed of the body. The defense contended that Casey lied about this and other issues because of a dysfunctional upbringing, which they said included sexual abuse by her father. The defense did not present evidence as to how Caylee died, nor evidence that Casey was sexually abused as a child, but challenged every piece of the prosecution's evidence, calling much of it "fantasy forensics". Casey did not testify. On July 5, 2011, the jury found Casey not guilty of first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child, but guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer. With credit for time served, she was released on July 17, 2011. A Florida appeals court overturned two of the misdemeanor convictions on January 25, 2013.
The not guilty murder verdict was greeted with public outrage, and was both attacked and defended by media and legal commentators. Some complained that the jury misunderstood the meaning of reasonable doubt, while others said the prosecution relied too heavily on the defendant's allegedly poor moral character because they had been unable to show conclusively how the victim had died. Time magazine described the case as "the social media trial of the century".
Opinions varied on what made the public thoroughly invested in the trial. Safon argued the Anthonys having been a regular and "unremarkable" family with complex relationships made them intriguing to watch. Frank Farley of CNN described the circumstantial evidence as "all over the map" and that combined with "the apparent lying, significant contradictions and flip-flops of testimony, and questionable or bizarre theories of human behavior, it is little wonder that this nation [was] glued to the tube". He said it was a trial that was both a psychologist's dream and nightmare, and believes that much of the public's fascination [had] to do with the uncertainty of a motive for the crime. Psychologist Dr. Karyl McBride discussed how some mothers stray away from "the saintly archetype" expected of mothers. "We want so badly to hang onto the belief system that mothers don't harm children," she stated. "It's fascinating that the defense in the Anthony case found a way to blame the father. While we don't know what is true and maybe never will, it is worth taking a look at the narcissistic family when maternal narcissism rules the roost. Casey Anthony is a beautiful white woman and the fact that the case includes such things as sex, lies, and videotapes makes it irresistible."
When the not-guilty verdict was rendered, there was significant outcry among the general public and media that the jury made the wrong decision. Outside the courthouse, many in the crowd of 500 reacted with anger, chanting their disapproval and waving protest signs. People took to Facebook and Twitter, as well as other social media outlets, to express their outrage. Traffic to news sites surged from about two million page views a minute to 3.3 million, with most of the visits coming from the United States. Mashable reported that between 2 pm and 3 pm, one million viewers were watching CNN.com/live, 30 times higher than the previous month's average. Twitter's trending topics in the United States were mostly about the subjects related to the case, and Newser reported that posts on Facebook were coming in "too fast for all Facebook to even count them, meaning at least 10 per second". Some people referred to the verdict as "O.J. Number 2", and various media personalities and celebrities expressed outrage via Twitter. News anchor Julie Chen became visibly upset while reading the not-guilty verdict on The Talk and had to be assisted by her fellow co-hosts, who also expressed their dismay.
Disagreement with the verdict was heavily debated by the media, lawyers and psychologists, who put forth several theories for public dissatisfaction with the decision, ranging from wanting justice for Caylee, to the circumstantial evidence having been strong enough, to some blaming the media. UCLA forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman, said, "The main reason that people are reacting so strongly is that the media convicted Casey before the jury decided on the verdict. The public has been whipped up into this frenzy wanting revenge for this poor little adorable child. And because of the desire for revenge, they've been whipped up into a lynch mob." She added, "Nobody likes a liar, and Anthony was a habitual liar. And nobody liked the fact that she was partying after Caylee's death. Casey obviously has a lot of psychological problems. Whether she murdered her daughter or not is another thing."
There was a gender gap in perceptions to the case. According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll of 1,010 respondents, about two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) believed Casey Anthony "definitely" or "probably" murdered her daughter; however, women were much more likely than men to believe the murder charges against Anthony and to be upset by the not-guilty verdict. The gender gap has partly been explained by "the maternal instinct". The idea of a mother murdering her own child is a threat to the ideal of motherhood.
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