Everybody Must Get Stoned

Okay I can't resist.......I will be the 100 millionth person in America to blog about Casey Anthony. Hopefully there's at least a Dunkin Donuts gift card in my near future or something. I admit that I wasn't paying much attention to this whole circus trial until about a week ago and mostly it's people's overwhelming, visceral hatred of her which has gained my attention. But I now realize why people were so fascinated by this story. It has every soap opera element imaginable: a lost child, a mom who may have murdered her child in the woods, sex, drugs, tattoos, and Myspace postings! Lifetime Network executives have died and gone to Heaven.

Of course I have no clue what actually happened. I will admit from the outset that I WANT to believe that she didn't do it. Call it the natural contrarion in me. I can't help it. I've seen the movie 12 Angry Men and I've read To Kill A Mockingbird and The Brothers Karamazov: stories where an OBVIOUSLY guilty person turns out to be innocent and it took a thoughtful, open minded person to settle down the lynch mob and the jackals and get them to see the facts more clearly. Do I fantasize about being such a voice of reason? Has it caused me to believe what I want to believe in this case? Maybe, but I've learned to be naturally at least skeptical over what everyone else assumes is obvious when it comes to guilt or innocence. Or with anything else for that matter. Conventional wisdom is often wrong--or at the very least a half-truth.

Also---full disclosure here--Casey Anthony is a surprisingly attractive girl. Is that influencing me here JUST a bit? Is there a part of me that wants to believe this pretty girl who has been living in solitary confinement for 3 years and will be freed into a world foaming at the mouth to stone her to death is actually innocent and misunderstood? Notions like that do bring out the protective side in me. But is my"protectiveness" just a case of Don Quixote syndrome in reverse: seeing a gentle windmill softly swaying in the breeze which is actually an evil and deadly monster?

Many have compared this to the OJ Simpson trial and the outrage people felt over his acquittal, but I think it's an apples and oranges comparison for two reasons:

1. An alternative explanation of events. To me OJ's guilt was beyond a reasonable doubt in part because no attempt was even made to explain who else might have murdered Nicole and Ron What's-His-Name. (Ah! Goldmann. I just thought of it). If OJ didn't do it, who did?? SOME piece of evidence should have surfaced that at least pointed to the possibility of it being someone else, shouldn't it? None did. And random strangers simply don't knife people to death. At least in this case you had the possible--unlikely perhaps?, but possible--explanation that Caylee drowned and Casey decided to cover it up instead of fessing up to the police like any reasonable person would have.

2. Motive. OJ had a very plausible motive to kill Nicole and Ron. Unfortunately, crimes of passion are not uncommon. I'm sure we've all read plenty of stories about jealous ex-husbands or boyfriends who murder their estranged wives and girlfriends and their new boyfriends. It's that whole "if I can't be with you, no one can" psychotic, women-as-property male thinking. But a mother murdering her 2 year old daughter so she could party more?? Offing her toddler so she could do more keg stands? I'm having a really hard time swallowing that one. In my job, I've read tons and tons of psych evaluations of young moms very similar to Casey Anthony: drug and alcohol abusing, promiscuous, compulsive lying gals. Not wholesome church going girls. Not exactly June Cleaver. But I must say I've never formed even the faintest impression that these girls have ever even thought about killing their child to go to all-night raves and do tons of E. Never. Even when they lose custody of their kids to the state they seem depressed rather than thrilled to be rid of the burden of their children. My general impression is that even bad moms want to be moms. ESPECIALLY if the child is two years old and maternal instincts have been allowed to grow. Maternal instincts are chemicals in the brain which are real and seem to impact--albeit some more than others--every single mother. It doesn't always result in them morphing into Mom Of The Year or PTA members, but it seems to at least remove the possibility of murder from the equation. To many people the thinking seems to be, "Well! If she was a lying, partying slut, I can EASILY see how she could have taken her daughter to the woods and suffocated her!". As if that's somehow a small leap to take. Irresponsibility and immaturity are vastly different from stone cold evil. It's a huge, monumental leap to take which I'm just not sure she could have taken--at least not for that reason.

But I realize that doesn't prove her innocence. Even if my hunch is correct and the prosecutions' "girls just want to have fun even if it means a dead toddler in the trunk"" argument is utterly ridiculous--an argument that plays into people's worst nightmarish paranoid "Satanic Mommy meets Wicked Witch Of The West" fantasies and may work brilliantly as a Lifetime movie teleplay but flies directly in the face of the realities of human nature, even if that's the case............she could have still done it for reasons the prosecution never uncovered. Maybe Casey's psychological problems ran deeper than a personality disorder. Maybe she was a full blown schizophrenic too scared to let anyone know? Maybe she heard command auditory hallucinations telling her to kill her daughter? If so, now we might have a plausible motive.

Or maybe the family issues run even deeper than we realize. There's been unproven accusations that Casey was molested. I guess you never know the truth about these things, but that's something else I've learned from my job: incest is more common than some might want to think. Could Caylee have been the product of that? Probably not, but the desire to erase a family history of sexual abuse by killing the daughter she saw as symbolic of the abuse could be a plausible motive.

But not partying.

And if either incest or full blown schizophrenia was the motive to kill, why didn't either the defense or prosecution prove it? I didn't watch the whole trial, but it looks to me like the lawyers from both sides pretty much sucked. And that is why I suppose the jury felt compelled to acquit her.

So why all the rage? I realize there is a chance she got away with murder, but unless I've completely drunk the Casey Kool Aid, it seems like there's a also a somewhat reasonable chance she didn't do it. If I'm right, we should be happy to live in a country where the government can't put someone to death unless they have overwhelmingly proved to a jury that the accused did what they're being accused of doing. OJ? That acquittal was a joke. This one? I'm less sure .

But then again...........if Caylee drowned why spin such an elaborate web of lies to cover it up? Apparently Casey had been a compulsive liar her whole life. (I guess her lawyers linked that to her supposed history of sexual abuse). People who get into that habit seem to revert to lies as a knee jerk reaction to almost anything even mildly embarrassing or shameful. For some people, lying becomes as natural and effortless as breathing. Let's say you're such a person and you weren't watching your daughter--maybe you were passed out on the couch after too many bong hits and PBR's--and your little girl drowned in the swimming pool. Does it seem totally implausible that such a person would revert to lies instead of facing the shame and humiliation like a well adjusted person would?

Again, I'm not saying she's innocent. I am saying I don't know how so many people are SO positive she's guilty. It does seem like it can reasonably be argued either way.

Oh.....and as to her partying. Getting drunk and high can be labelled "partying", but for many people it's more like self-medication. Does anyone believe that everyone who shows up at a bar or a keg party is a happy-go-lucky guy or gal just celebrating the thrill of living? For some people, yes. But many, many people use substances and the fog of temporary papier mache happiness they bring as a desperate attempt to escape guilt, shame, and depression . So isn't it conceivable that Casey's "partying" followingg Caylee's death was not a celebration of her emancipation from the burdens of motherhood but rather symptomatic of a scared, guilt ridden, miserable young woman desperately trying to convince herself she was having fun?

Or......not. Maybe she is the heartless monster everyone thinks. But why did this evil witch break down in tears so often in the courtroom? We don't know. Like so much else, it's a Rorschach test and we can project our feelings however we want. We could say they were crocodile tears, we could say they were tears simply because she was sorry she got caught, or we could say they were genuine tears of remorse because she failed to protect her daughter from dying and this cruel reality was being exposed for the world to see---and exposure of any kind is the ultimate fear of any person who's lived their life behind a wall of self-protecting lies. Can anyone say they truly know?

Plus this case hang heavily on chloroform. Per Wikipedia, "Chloroform is the organic compound with the forumula ChCl3. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane and is considered somewhat hazardous". It can be used to subdue your child before suffocating her to death. The problem is it IS used as a sleep aid and it IS used in swimming pools. Is chloroform really the smoking gun proof of guilt or do its many uses simply add one more layer of reasonable doubt and ambiguity? Chemical compounds are more versatile than smoking guns. Should we blame the jury for that?

Does every mother in America want to believe she's guilty because they can always say, "I may not be the perfect mom, but at least I'm not THAT evil biatch". That's the psychological comfort scapegoats bring. This psychology was on full display at the Salem witch trials. People filled with unconscious guilt are often the first to pronounce others guilty. But I can't really be judgment about this. I had a conversation with a girl on an online date over the winter. She wanted desperately to give Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlesberger the benefit of the doubt despite rape accusations. Me? Not as much. Do I somehow want to believe Big Ben is a rapist because despite my flaws, I can at least point to guys like him and say, "At least I'm better than THAT loser"? Was Big Ben my psychological sacrificial lamb the way Casey Anthony seems to be for so many moms?

But then again............not to sound like a broken record---but if she's a child killer and she got away with it, this is one of the worst travesties of justice in American history and people are right to be sickened and outraged. But we do have a legal system rooted in medieval legal scholar Maimonides' maxim: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death". Do all Americans truly believe that? It seems like many today believe the reverse: "It is better and more satisfactory to convict a thousand innocent persons than to let a single guilty one escape death". Do many people--ironically enough--want to get more medieval on the ass of apparently guilty persons than a medieval person himself?