The Trial.
Yesterday, my co-workers were sent into a tizzy when the Casey Anthony verdict was read.
I sat in my office oblivious.
I didn’t follow the trial. To be completely honest, I know very little about the case.
Given my emotional state, the pregnancy, and the fact that I myself am mother to a female toddler, I just couldn’t do it. Be aware of the details. Even just the brief snippets I’ve caught through social media, blogs and news headlines have my stomach churning and heart reeling.
People keep asking my opinion about it.
People are furious. Outraged. Appalled.
I am too.
But because a little girl is dead.
Not because the jury found Casey not guilty.
A brilliant friend who is a lawyer, and thus better positioned to make commentary on the trial than myself, made the following analysis: Shocked that a jury actually held a prosecutor to meet its burden of proof. They had nothing but a good story with minimal evidence… I wish there was this same level of outrage when the prosecution DOESN’T meet its burden of proof and an innocent person is sent to jail. Happens far more often than what happened today.
While people may not like it, our legal system did in fact work the way in which it was designed. The jurors held the prosecution up to the high standard of “reasonable doubt”.
As I said, I didn’t follow the trial, and I am not in a position to comment on the quality of Casey Anthony as a mother or my thinking as to whether or not she is guilty (which are two distinct things and one is not indicative of the other), but in seeing some of the language used by the public and the media about Casey, I’m struck by the visceral, cultural woman-on-woman hate, the mother blaming and shaming, the way in which we condone this kind of behavior and commentary of fellow females (Case in point: Nancy Grace). It seems to me that people feel as though Casey deserved punishment based on her qualities as a mother. Whether or not she was guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt was beside the point. The public feels as though she is guilty of being a bad mother and that is apparently enough to warrant a death sentence.
Mothers are under the microscope in this society. Held to unrealistic standards. Vilified and demeaned when they don’t live up to those standards. And this strikes me as an extreme example of acceptance of this kind of treatment. No one asks what societal factors were at play that might overwhelm or cripple Casey as a mother. How we might go about addressing the structural aspects of our culture so that they could better support women, children, mothers.
Also, need I point out that I don’t see men as fathers being held to the same standards?
And don’t get me started on the media hype about this one particular child (read: white) when there are children everyday who die or go missing in our country and don’t receive a sliver of the media attention.
Yes, yes I’m angry. My stomach is in knots. But not because of a jury’s verdict.
