Category: People

I find it baffling there are people donating money to the recently acquitted Casey Anthony.  She’s even gotten a marriage proposal.  After all, while Anthony will be whisked away to a secure hiding place in the wee hours of Sunday morning, it isn’t as though the jury believed her innocent of killing Caylee.  It’s simply they lacked the hard evidence. 

Two days ago, legendary baseball pitcher Roger Clemens escaped a possible jail term for allegedly lying to Congress concerning use of steroids.  In a surprising turn of events, the judge ruled a mistrial because of prosecution miscues.  Outside, fans huddled around him, wanting autographs.  Some gave hugs.  In Twitter, he has a surprising number of supporters who just can’t bring themselves to believe the Rocket has done anything amiss.

In Italy, Amanda Knox is appealing her murder conviction of her roommate.  There’s a good chance she’ll walk free as well.  I can’t judge her guilt.  It’s just that neither can her fans, but that didn’t stop them from holding a rally for her back in her home town of Seattle.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  Back in 2002, there was Scott Peterson of Modesto, CA, who was found guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child while having an affair.  He’s been sitting on death row since 2005.  It hasn’t stopped him from enjoying an active correspondence with female well-wishers.

Of all things, even the notorious Charles Manson has enjoyed an epistolary harem of  female devotees. 

So what gives?

These people might ask, If I exercise kindness because it makes me feel good, am I any different from the criminal who kills for the same reason?

I’m aware of the power of groups, public opinion, and entrenched cultural mores to influence what we think and do.  This tendency may well be evolutionary, haling back to pre-history when we needed the tribe to enhance our surviving.  Weighed down by external pressures, many people live unhappy lives simply because they aren’t in touch with who they really are.  They don’t live authentic lives and, in the end, they pay the bill.  Perhaps we should admire this minority for standing tall and defying group-think.

Excuse me, I won’t go there.  Are these aficionados outside the mainstream more insightful than you and me; more courageous as well?  I contend they also need the group, but find the chance for greater solidarity, and for personal attention, in the sub, or defiant, group.  I saw the same tendency when I was a social worker dealing with troubled youth.  Almost always, they had problems with reading in their home schools and diminished self-esteem.  To cope, they found each other.

Some of us find taking the uncrowded path an easier way to garnish our need to validate ourselves.  When I was a child I played a very cunning game of getting attention by taking the contrary opinion.  If you called it “white,” I’d call it “black.”  I hope like the dickins I’ve grown out of it.  In college I was the terrorist in the classroom.

Cults are built on recruiting the disenfranchised, or those who think they’ve not been allowed to sit at the table.  Revolutions derive from resentment.

Can altruism sometimes be pathological?  I’m beginning to think so.  Studies exist indicating there are people who think wrong doing is rooted in bad upbringing or poverty.  Lavish love and you can right the wrongs and redeem a life.  Often sensitive and perhaps deprived of a happy childhood, they have a need to love those they perceive as victims.  Romantics, the true arbiters of social ferment, can walk perilously close to the edge here.   Likewise, co-dependency can also foster misuse of affection.  Love becomes an instrument of control.

I find myself wanting to say a lot more about the social phenomena of good will towards society’s miscreants; indeed, in some instances, cold-blooded murderers often masquerading as victims.  But let me end with a fascinating study focusing on the traits of gentiles who risked their safety to rescue Jews in the time of Hitler.  In his riveting book, When Light Pierced the Darkness (1986), Nechama Tec defines six characteristics shared by these rescuers:  

1.  Individuality or separateness, an inability to blend into their social environments. [See my earlier comments.]

2.  Independence or self-reliance, a willingness to act in accordance with personal convictions, regardless of how these are viewed by others.

3.  An enduring commitment to stand up for the helpless and needy reflected in a long history of doing good deeds.  

4.  A tendency to perceive aid to Jews in a matter-of-fact, unassuming way, as neither heroic nor extraordinary.  

5. An unplanned, unpremeditated beginning of Jewish rescue, a beginning that happened gradually or suddenly, even impulsively.  

6.  Universal perceptions of Jews that defined them, not as Jews, but as helpless beings and as totally dependent on the protection of others.

The altruistic, in other words, can take on a certain nobilty in courageously rescuing the needy and the victimized.  Not so when their recipients are themselves the victimizers.

Last week’s decision in the Casey Anthony trial has to be the worst since the OJ verdict back in ’96.  Some would say it was even worse, since there weren’t the pressures of celebrity, money and “the race card” defense with its famous charge to the jury to send a message.

What happened?

In looking at the case, supporters of the jury decision argue it had its hands full in a capital case where the caution of reasonable doubt has to apply.  Evidence was emotional and circumstantial at best. While Casey Anthony was proven to be a liar repeatedly, nobody could find the smoking gun.  I disagree.

I find it incredulous you lose your little girl in an alleged pool drowning, lie about her whereabouts and don’t call the police.  You put duct tape over her nose and mouth, thrust her body into a plastic bag and dump her in the woods.  Saying you panicked just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Do you go out partying, taking part in a Hot Body contest just after?

Then there’s that tattoo she got with its Bella Vida (“the beautiful life”).  Jury, you were looking for motive?
According to the medical examiner, though the body was so severely decomposed that it was impossible to detect the specific means of death, it was murder.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, parents who lose a child to an accident immediately contact the police.

For a month, Casey Anthony invented one scenario after another to account for her missing daughter.  Only when ultimately confronted by her mother did she acknowledge Caylee’s death.  It was Mom who called police.

The part that makes me reel with disgust and the closest to something strongly indicative of intent were the chloroform searches on the computer Anthony shared with her parents.  They should have led to a conviction, since the prosecution systematically tore apart defense arguments.

Anthony’s mother took the hit on this, claiming she did the searches, starting with “chlorophyll” in an attempt to discover if her little dog’s eating bamboo was causing him to get sick.  A computer forensics expert, however, testified that the search history, though deleted, had been recovered.  It showed a search for chloroform 84 times.  There was also the occurrence of “neck-breaking” and “household weapons.”  The mother claimed “neck-breaking” was a pop-up.  The forensics expert, however, said it had been deliberately searched.  No search was indicated for “chlorophyll.” Subsequent work records show the mother couldn’t have made the searches, since she was logged into a company computer at the time.

In short, we have perjury.  But it won the day.

A second piece to the puzzle was the finding of high levels of chloroform in the trunk of the Anthony car, indicating decomposition.  The defense countered that it came from a bag of decomposing garbage kept too long in the trunk.  One expert witness testified that the trunk had “the odor of death.”  The judge allowed it as evidence.

Just after the verdict, the chief defense attorney rebuked the media for trying his client in the press.  I find this ironic as he resorted to insinuation to mollify Anthony’s conduct.  Her father and brother had sexually molested her.  He gave no evidence.  He suggested the individual finding Caylee’s body was trying to cash in.  No evidence.  His remarks shouldn’t have been permitted by the judge.  Tellingly, he omitted these claims in his closing statement before the jury.

I’ve never been fond of lawyers, regarding them as a sometimes necessary evil.  Everyone’s entitled to a fair defense, but sometimes lawyers resort to the bottom of the garbage can to get a client off despite a heinous crime and overwhelming evidence.

In this case, legal chicanery prevailed as it did in the OJ debacle.  Though found guilty of four misdemeanors for giving false information to the police, Anthony was acquitted of murder.  Credited with time served while awaiting trial, she’ll be free late next week.

Even if you disagree with my previous arguments, had Casey Anthony been tried at the Federal level, things would have turned out differently.  Providing false information to police is considered obstruction of justice and carries a 5-year maximum on each count.  Moreover, judges can sentence according to the preponderance of evidence, even in a jury acquittal. At the Federal level we’d be talking of up to 20-years.

At the state level, it behooves us to press our legislatures to make non-reporting of a missing child a felony.  Had it been done in Florida, Anthony’s home state, she’d not be out on the streets next week, ready to sign movie and book contracts.