I Don't Care About the Casey Anthony Trial

My wife cares a great deal about the Casey Anthony trial, and her sympathy and empathy are among her most enviable traits. By osmosis, because she was riveted to it, I have become relatively familiar with the details, having sat in the room reading or playing on the computer while she hung on as many words as she was capable of taking in.

I don't care about the trial. I care that a young child was killed, and I care that her mother was not held very accountable for taking care of that daughter. I just don't care about the theatrics and the media circus of the trial.

In fact, I object to very many things associated with it. A heinous incident occurred. Because I didn't engage on an emotional level, I can't say that I have an opinion on whether her mother did it or not. I don't care about that either. My caring begins with the notion that a parent is supposed to take care of his or her children. This mother didn't. She should be held responsible, on some level, for what happened.

To my wife and the others who engaged and invested - please don't hold ill will toward the jurors, who in my opinion, reached the only verdict they could. The prosecution may have proved that the mother considered killing her daughter; they may have proved that she is a lying, conniving monster who was willing to cast suspicion on anyone she could, including her parents and sibling. From my vantage point, since they don't know exactly the manner of death, or the cause of death, and since they can't put mother in the room when the death occurred, they can't convict for murder.

Now the real source of my annoyance is the ridiculous coverage of the trial. At least five Nancy Grace's sprouted when this trial commenced, all of them yelling at the TV audience in one manner or another, and none of them apparently capable of providing one scintilla of information that matters. Like many of the riveted audience members, they were incapable of dong what a journalist ought to do - provide some insightful thoughts.

The problem is with the coverage itself. I contend that the general public's inclusion in the trial subverts the justice system. Jurors need to be harvested from another area so that they might be found unbiased. Then, all of the yelling faces insert themselves into the mechanics of the trial. We all know that the lawyers, the witnesses, the police themselves have been influenced by what the screaming faces have said. Sure, they pretend to be unaffected, rising high above normal human behavior to maintain their objectivity, but none of us would really be able to do so. I therefore don't blame them. I blame the notion that the general public has some right to know the case on an intimate level, which is what the screaming faces purport to provide.

I don't know that the outcome of the trial was affected by all of the hullabaloo; in fact, that's my point. I don't want that to be a consideration. I want the court to summarily reject all requests for TV or radio, or computer access. If the screaming faces are going to scream, let them do so on the basis of having sat through the tedium themselves, or let them rely on professional reporters to go in and sift through the mountains of factoids.

Get the cameras out of the courtroom. Allow no obvious external obstacles to objectivity or clarity. Audience, since my preferences are not going to be met, stop watching the screaming faces unless they do their jobs and augment the audience's understanding of the situation.

Quite simply, the prosecution did not prove the mother guilty, as I see it. They tried to rely on the juror's expected emotional response to the odious circumstance of the little girl's death. Their case should have been laid out as I noted above. Parents should take care of their kids. They should have been able to prove that this one didn't.