The Casey Anthony Trial: The Case that Fascinated America

Not guilty. The verdict in the Casey Anthony case was relayed on Tuesday July 5 in Orlando, FL. The trial of the 25-year-old woman accused of killing her two-year-old daughter fascinated America for the past month, reminiscent of the interest aroused by the O.J. Simpson case in 1995 and far exceeding that of the DSK affair.

Since May 24, each day of the Anthony trial was followed by millions of television viewers and commented on tirelessly on social networks. As reported by The New York Times, the Orlando courthouse also became a popular tourist destination with the 60 seats in the hearing room being fought over by people starting to line up at 5:30 in the morning.

The case had all the characteristics of a Hollywood movie, starting with an inexplicable death. The skeleton of Caylee Anthony was discovered in December 2008 in the woods near the family’s home, five months after the child had been reported missing by her grandmother. Casey Anthony had left her parent’s home on June 16, 2008 with the child. After a month, she prevented her parents from seeing their granddaughter, saying that she did not have time to visit them or that Caylee was with her nanny.

When they finally picked up their daughter’s car at the impound on July 15, 2008 and smelled the odor of a decomposing corpse in the trunk, the grandparents suspected the worst and decided to notify the police. During the trial, Casey Anthony’s lawyer argued a theory of accidental drowning in the pool. Panicked, the mother had, according to the defense, concealed the daughter’s body with her father’s help.

All lies, according to the prosecution, which, without having irrefutable proof or knowing precisely how the child had died, tried to convince the jury that Casey Anthony had intentionally killed her daughter, Caylee.

A Record of the Hearing on Television

A young mother suspected of killing her baby, the sexy photos of the accused partying several days after her child had disappeared, a grandmother who denounced her own daughter, a grandfather accused of sexually abusing Casey: all the ingredients to keep the public in suspense.

“This is scarier than the average murder case because there’s a sacredness that we assign to motherhood,” explained Los Angeles Times Stuart Fischoff, senior editor of the Journal of Media Psychology, a magazine specializing in the study of psychology in the media. “The idea that a mother could kill her child flies in the face of every archetypal notion we have. It’s monstrous. And we’re revolted by that, but we’re also fascinated. And we want revenge.”

“We live in the ‘United States of Entertainment,’” deplored columnist Bernie Goldberg, on Fox News. “Here you have a case where the American people are watching a reality TV show. That’s the fascination. They’re watching a reality TV show with real characters and the possibility that, at the end of the show, the star may get sentenced to death. This wasn’t — from a journalistic point of view, this was not an important story. It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about the clash of class in this country. It wasn’t even about fame. And yet we were drawn to it, because in the United States we crave — and I mean crave — entertainment.”

The media was not actually trained to scoop up the case. Anticipating large audiences, all the American news networks continued to dedicate numerous hours of direct coverage to the trial. Among them, HLN, an affiliate of CNN, clearly played the sensationalist card with head of affairs and former prosecutor Nancy Grace. She worked tirelessly to convince viewers of the guilt of the woman she nicknamed “Tot Mom,” the mother of the toddler. “But in the end, Tot Mom’s lies seemed to have worked,” Nancy Grace said with regret after the verdict was announced, adding, “somewhere out there, the devil is dancing tonight.”

Despite failing to see Casey Anthony condemned, the editorial strategy of the cable channel paid off. On Tuesday July 5, from 2:15 to 3:30 p.m., at the time the verdict was announced, 5.2 million people were watching HLN, a 1,700 percent increase from its usual audience at that time of day, according to The New York Times. Moreover the channel had already planned a special entitled “Justice for Caylee” for the upcoming weekend.

“Social Media Trial of the Century”

The public appetite for the Casey Anthony trial was particularly highlighted on social networks. The trial was also nicknamed by Time magazine “the social-media trial of the century.” For the cause, thousands of people became “fans” of the numerous pages dedicated to little Caylee on Facebook, while an uncountable number of messages were exchanged on Twitter, a large majority of which reflected the opinion — widely held in the United States — that the accused was guilty without doubt.

The microblogging site was inundated when the verdict was announced because, according to CNN, nine of 10 of the most active users listed across the Atlantic at the time referred to the case used hashtags like “#notguilty” and “#shocked.” This frenzy would be repeated on Thursday July 7 with the awaited decision of Judge Belvin Perry to release or hold Casey Anthony.

Ms. Anthony was in effect declared not guilty of murder in the first degree, aggravated homicide and of abusing her daughter, but was judged guilty of four counts of lying to the police. Each count could earn her a maximum of one year in prison. But since the young woman had already spent three years behind bars, Judge Perry could decide to let her go free. If such is the case, several experts believe that Casey Anthony could take advantage of the opportunity to sign a book or movie deal. After all, as attorney Drew Findling commented on CNN, “Why can’t she make money off of her story? Look at the O.J. Simpson case and how the prosecutor, who lost the case, wrote books and made money afterward.”