So... the media circus that was the Casey Anthony case finally ended with a verdict that, admittedly, is less than pleasing. Of course, this has many people up in arms over the whole thing, swearing up and down that the American justice system is screwed up, things of that nature. While I'm inclined to agree with them to a point, I really don't think that it's fair to blame the justice system.
I really don't think that many people have an actual clear understanding of how our justice system works. Granted, it's not perfect, but there are things in place to prevent somebody from manipulating it too badly. What it really comes down to is that you have to have the better lawyer than the other guy.
And at the end of the day, that's precisely what Casey Anthony had: the better lawyer.
If you all want to blame someone for her being able to just walk away from this, then blame the prosecution. Their case was not as cut-and-dry as they thought, presuming they thought about it all. I'm not entirely convinced that they did, because if they had, then they would have produced far more damning evidence that they did. As it stood, all of their evidence was entirely circumstantial. Any lawyer worth their weight in even piss could tell you that you can't build a successful case entirely on circumstantial evidence.
I'm sure a lot of you are currently thinking "Yeah, but she deserved to burn!" Those of you thinking that are also the ones who are saying that the system is broken and that there is no such thing as justice anymore. I don't think you really know what justice is. I even talked a bit about it last year. Just because it doesn't weigh in your favor doesn't mean that it isn't there.
Guys, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
You can easily sit here and throw stones and rage all you want to about how broken the system is, but it's designed the way it is to give you the chance to defend yourself if you are truly innocent, or to find a lawyer who is as corrupt and without moral scruples as you are if you're guilty.
Assuming that you're innocent of the crime you're accused of perpetrating, would you want to go to jail forever over it?
I do not believe that Casey Anthony is innocent of her accused crime. I do not condone her actions, or the outcome of the entire trial. However, I do have some understanding of how our system works, and it's not that it failed us.... At the end of the day, it was the prosecution for not doing their job properly, and depending entirely too much on human emotion to win the case.
Now, as far as how I feel about it... I don't think that the judge or jury did her any favors by letting her off the hook. After she serves her laughable one year in jail for lying to the police, she'll have to be back in the public. She is going to have to look everyone in the eye from now on, and that gaze back at her - even if she has never met the person - will be full of nothing but the deepest of loathing. She is not going to have a job, and nobody is going to want to be seen with her. As a society, we are going to ostracize her, and cast her out of our good graces.
Imagine: living a life where nobody will talk to you. You have no friends. No family that is willing to lend an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on. Everywhere you go, you're shunned, and there is nothing that you can do about it.
She may have been found innocent by the court of law, but the rest of us are not so forgiving.
We, the people, will be punishing her in ways that jail never could, and that's via isolation. My theory is that she will eventually go insane, having to live down what she did and then not being able to do anything, really, to take her mind off of it afterward. She will have all that time alone, the weight of it all bearing down upon her day by day, and the loneliness will only make it worse.
For those of you that are still saying that isn't bad enough, then I want you to imagine your life without being able to reach out to anybody. You have nobody and you are utterly alone. It is not something that any one person can live with... not without an exceptional hatred of people.
If there's one good thing that this media circus did, it's that it got everybody to know her face, and I can assure you that society will remember it always.