Casey Anthony Trial: The Verdict That Shocked The Nation

Monique Chavez
Professor Wenzell
English 100
8 April 2015
Paper #3
The Casey Anthony Trial: The Verdict That Shocked The Nation On July 5, 2011 Casey Anthony was found not guilty of killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee Anthony, in an Orlando, Florida courtroom. The Casey Anthony murder case became the Social Media trial of the decade, hundreds of people showed up each day to watch the case unfold. Many people arrived to the courthouse before 8 a.m. to secure the best seats. The case became popular because as millions of people viewed the trial on live-stream video feeds to see the mother, who was caught partying less than a week after her daughter went missing. Investigators found skeletal parts of the girl’s body that was dumped in the

She called Amy and asked where Casey was and Amy told her she was at Tony Lazzaro’s, Casey’s boyfriend where Cindy found Casey. Cindy asked repeatedly where Caylee was and that she wanted to see her. Casey’s replied over and over that she’s with the nanny. Cindy finally told Casey that she was calling the police. Casey then started to cry and told her family that Caylee had been kidnapped by Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, the nanny, and Casey was searching for her daughter on her own, and had been for the last 31 days. According to NBC News reporter Elisabeth Chuck, in “Casey Anthony Breaks Silence,”: ‘Obviously, I didn’t kill my daughter,’ Jose Baez, Casey’s attorney, said that Casey did not report her daughter missing because, “Caylee had accidentally drowned in the Anthony family’s pool, and she feared being accused of intentionally killing the toddler.” It was later shown that there was no evidence to support that theory. After Casey told her mother and brother about the kidnapping, Cindy told the police that her granddaughter had been kidnapped and she needed their help. On July 16, 2008 in Orlando, Florida Casey Anthony was arrested for child neglect, giving false statements, and

“DNA testing later revealed neither George nor Casey's brother, Lee Anthony, was Caylee's father” (Lohr). Leading up to setting her father up, Casey revealed a new theory of what happened to her daughter. Anthony told two doctors in different interviews that she suspected her father of taking Caylee out of her mother’s bed and having a sexual episode with the toddler, and then drowned her to cover it up. Casey believes he was abusing her, and he held her under water to cover it up. George Anthony attempted suicide and the defense attorney’s used that against him, saying that it was his way out of the guilt” (NG, McDonald). Furthermore, there were two sides to Casey during the trial as the public watched the case and besides the evidence they saw her motionless reactions even while her lawyers claimed she was sexually abused. According to Arelis R. Hernandez, in “Judge Belvin Perry says Casey Anthony had two faces,” he says “Judge Belvin Perry Jr. told host Savannah Guthrie that Anthony had two sides to her: the grieving mother and the manipulative defendant.” The judge also said that there was enough evidence for a first-degree murder conviction. “Perry said Anthony portrayed the wrongfully accused mother