So I recently watched this documentary about Casey Anthony which is on Peacock. It’s called Casey Anthony, Where The Truth Lies (nice little bit of double-meaning in that title if you think about it).

If you’re reading this, I’m just going to go ahead and assume that you know who she is and you know the story of what she was accused (and acquitted) of, and if you don’t then there’s this amazing site called GOOGLE that you can check out to get caught up.

My first thought when I saw this is why in the holy f**k would she agree to do this? If I were here, whether I was innocent or guilty, I would do whatever I could to stay out of the public eye, no interviews, no social media, nothing. I’d be a ghost.

Nevertheless, I did find it interesting. Let me state upfront that I went into this without a really strong opinion of her. I knew of this case as it was happening but I really didn’t follow it. I didn’t watch any court footage during the trial, and didn’t watch the news shows about it. I know that, in particular,  Nancy Grace was having a field day with this trial. But this was nothing new, I’m older than I look, so I’ve lived through my share of sensational crimes, including some that went to trial and had controversial verdicts. The Rodney King Trials, William Kennedy Smith’s trial, O.J. Simpson, The Menendez Brothers, Jon Benet Ramsey, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson and others. By the time little Caylee turned up dead, I was long burnt out on this sort of thing.

I do remember the day the verdict came in, I was at work and I saw it online just before my lunchbreak started, and went I went to the breakroom at lunch there were three of my female coworkers sitting at a table and I said that Casey Anthony had been found not guilty, and these three women, all of them mothers, were outraged. To them, there was no question, she was guilty and this verdict was a travesty of justice. And I guess my general assumption was that she was probably guilty, but I still didn’t have a strong feeling about her acquittal.

But after watching this documentary I’m not sure what to think. I mean, there is no doubt that her behavior in the 31 days between when her daughter was killed and when her body was found is extremely suspicious, to say the least. She gives her explanation for what likely happened, which is blaming her father, whom she claims abused her when she was growing out. And I have to say she makes a convincing argument.I honestly can’t say 100% that it’s not possible that she is innocent.

One of the things that struck me the most is how close she became to her legal team. One of her lawyers actually had Casey move in with her, and she lives with them and works for one of them to this day. This was necessary because after the trial she was forbidden from moving out of the state of Florida, so she needed a place to live and had to work, but with her notoriety, it’s not like she could just become a cashier at Walmart. But they’ve essentially become her surrogate family, and that says something. These people, who are experienced lawyers, must really be convinced of her innocence. And they were able to convince a jury that would have no reason to be biased in her favor of her innocence as well. So they saw something that we civilians didn’t.

And that’s the other thing that was most fascinating about her case, they go into a deep exploration of the media coverage, and show how so many in the media exploited this case for ratings, which served to influence the general public. All Nancy Grace and her ilk cared about was ratings, they didn’t give a damn about Caylee. As Malcolm X once said:

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

So obviously everyone knows she’s guilty, but maybe, just maybe…she isn’t?