Musings on Justice #caseyanthony

Today, in the Casey Anthony trial, a jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty for all charges related to the death of little Caylee Anthony (other than the charges of lying to the police). The Twitterverse and Facebook world have gone nuts.

Many of us were, quite frankly, stunned--me included. How could any mother wait 30 days before reporting her child missing? That in itself convinces me of Anthony's guilt--if not of murder then of something. That just isn't right to me. The things I have heard on the media the past three years have not sounded like a mature, balanced woman. In my heart, she should've been convicted.

So many of my social media friends are decrying the lack of justice and are consoling themselves with the knowledge that Anthony will be judged by God at the end of her life.

Wait. What? I confess that the thought has crossed my mind, too--but it has me pondering the meaning of justice. Is justice a result or a process? Does justice have to mean that we catch the killer, and does it have to mean that the person we are convinced did it must be convicted? We focus on little Caylee, with the big, beautiful eyes, and we are certain that justice has not been served. Caylee's killer has not yet been convicted of her murder.

But doesn't Casey deserve justice, too? Justice for her is that she has gone through the legal process, with representation that showed enough reasonable doubt that she was not convicted. And what if, despite our conviction, Casey didn't do it? Isn't it remotely possible that she was not responsible for her daughter's death? The fact that she didn't report her daughter as missing for 30 days might simply tell us that she was a very scared young mother who didn't know what to do and that by the time she realized what she should've done she realized it was too late. Is it possible she left her child unattended and that neglect led to her death? Is it possible that someone else abducted her and killed her? While I don't think those scenarios are likely, they are within the realm of possibility. If Casey had been convicted and then, several years from now, we got a confession from someone else, would we all be decrying the lack of justice for Casey? And if that would turn out to be the case, what is our role in removing a young mother's opportunity to grieve her daughter's death?

She has been convicted by a jury of public opinion. Whether or not she killed her child, Casey will never be able to lead a normal life. She will always be under scrutiny--especially if she ever has another child. She has lost three years of her life and will have to try to rebuild from here. Her life will be difficult.

I just find it hard to say that justice has not been served. To me, justice is a process. Sometimes it renders a verdict that matches our gut feelings; sometimes it does not. Does justice heal? Does it return a lost child to its family? No. If the jury had come back with a verdict of Guilty, it would not cancel Caylee's death. Even if Casey had been convicted and sentenced to death, her sentencing and execution would not make anything better. The problem is that we want her to suffer. We are convinced she killed her child. It is one of the worst things we can imagine a woman could do, and we want her to suffer beyond imagination for doing the unthinkable.

But here's the thing: she will always know what she did, or did not, do. If she has lied to us and gotten away with murder, she will still know. Caylee will haunt her dreams. She will be on the fringe of her thoughts. Casey will be judged by others for the rest of her life. She will be in a figurative prison every single day for the rest of her life. So while I feel like she did the crime, our justice system's belief in reasonable doubt has provided her with the process of justice. We may not like the way it turned out, but reasonable doubt should matter.

I would rather have a murderer go free than an innocent person convicted. And if she is guilty in deed if not in court, we will just have to live with it. Justice has been served, even if we don't like its taste.