you will want to read her latest column from The Patriot Ledger: Below. Thanks to Wendy Murphy for her work for children and women.
NOT GUILTY VERDICT WAS THE RIGHT RESULT - BUT WE'RE NOT DONE YET!
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| Wendy Murphy during a vist to K-State |
By Wendy J. Murphy For The Patriot Ledger July 7, 2011
"People outside the courthouse in Orange County Florida, and across the country, are outraged by the acquittal of Casey Anthony in the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee, and they have every reason to feel angry. But their energy is misplaced. Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file - including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view.
Release of the presumably sexual photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed "under seal" by the court would be a good place to start. Many people are not even aware that a lot of evidence in the case is under seal, which itself is problematic. But the simple fact is, there's far more to be said about what hasn't been revealed in this case than what we've seen thus far.
Search warrants, including those that would have authorized law enforcement to look for child pornography, are also under seal.
The public may have had no right to see any of this evidence while the case was pending because it might have prevented Casey from getting a fair trial, but now that she's been acquitted, everything should be released. And if the photographs can't be released lawfully because of what they show, a description of what they reveal is an acceptable substitute. Courts describe inappropriate photographs of children all the time without releasing the images.
Among other things, full disclosure will help explain why the prosecution's case had so many gaping holes.
As I said right after the trial started a couple of months ago, if the prosecution's best case is that which they laid out in their opening statement, they had no hope of winning. Even a casual observer would have noticed how weird it was that the prosecutor spent no time talking about when Caylee died. It was widely reported in the early stages of the investigation that cops obtained cellphone records and "ping" evidence which would have shown who Casey called and where she went in the hours and days after Caylee was last seen alive, but the prosecutor made no mention of this highly relevant evidence. Why not?
And while the state opined that the child was killed so that Casey could go out partying, didn't it seem a bit of, um, overkill that a mother would seal her child's entire face shut with three levels of duct tape, then put her in a trunk, as a way of keeping the child quiet so she could have fun? If it was an accidental killing, wouldn't it have been enough to put her in the back seat with one piece? The prosecutor said Casey intentionally killed Caylee so she could be free to go out partying, but on the day the child was last seen alive, Casey stayed home all night watching movies. Where was the party?
The style of Caylee's death was more mob hit than parental homicide. And though the state claimed that Casey was the only one who could have killed the child, which is a compelling argument that often proves murder beyond a reasonable doubt in cases where there is no reasonable basis for believing that anyone else was involved, there were too many gaping holes in the timing of the state's theory of what happened to sustain that idea in this case.
Why Baez didn't pursue the obvious weaknesses in the evidence in favor of nonsense about an accidental drowning is perplexing and proves that he won not because of his skills but in spite of his failings. Any reasonable defense attorney would have defended the case by pointing out the myriad ways the evidence showed how someone else could have killed Caylee. Whatever one thinks of the kidnapping theory, there was at least evidence to support it - unlike the ridiculous story about the child drowning. No surprise that Casey's lawyer had a whopper of a Freudian slip during his closing argument when he said: "The truth stops here".
Since the verdict, virtually every defense attorney pundit has blamed the acquittal on the District Attorney's decision to "overcharge" the case as a death penalty prosecution. But this criticism is silly. Anyone who tapes a toddler's mouth and nose shut, wraps the body in multiple layers of bags and dumps it in a car trunk for a few days before tossing the remains in a swamp, is guilty of first degree murder. There's nothing accidental about any of it and if the jury had come back with a manslaughter verdict, the judge would have overturned the verdict as irrational and not based on actual evidence. In fact, while a child might die after having her mouth taped shut, the most rational view of the duct tape evidence suggests the child died before the duct tape was applied and that the tape was meant only to hold in decomposition fluids. When a dead body beings to decompose, fluids emanate from places like the nose and mouth, and they emit putrid odors. The best way for a killer to delay detection is to seal the nose and mouth.
It's certainly possible that at age 19, a high school dropout like Casey with no experience as a killer, nonetheless knew how to seal a dead body like a master murderer. And it's trued that her failure to report Caylee missing for more than a month is powerful evidence of her consciousness of guilt. The question is - guilt about what? It's just as possible Casey did not kill her child; that she was afraid to call the cops - and that her fear was related to those sealed photographs of Caylee.
As Casey's brother Lee testified at trial, Casey was told that Caylee was taken from Casey to "teach her a lesson". If, as I wrote in an earlier column, Casey knew the people who had Caylee, and stayed quiet in the hope they would give her child back, her failure to report Caylee missing makes sense.
All of this provides some explanation for the not guilty verdict, but it also leaves us with the new responsibility of demanding immediate and full disclosure of the case file. When a child is killed, her mom or dad can be expected to lead the fight for justice and demand that state officials tell the truth about what they know. But when a parent is involved, the rest of us have to step up. Millions of people have watched this case unfold from day one, riveted by the story of a little girl who was tossed away like trash and a mother who didn't seem to care.
If we paid attention because our concern is sincere, we will keep fighting for Caylee until the whole truth is known. If we watched, instead, out of some sadistic voyeurism or need to feel better as mothers and fathers by jabbing a judgmental finger of blame at a worse parent, there will never be justice for Caylee - or any child - and it will our fault."
Sociopaths-- read more HERE
