Has television turned Anthony case from titillating trial to sleepy saga?

I am aware that some people in our society are getting all worked up over that criminal trial currently taking place in Orlando, Fla. – that of Casey Anthony, the 25-year-old who faces the possibility of spending the rest of what could be a long life in a Florida prison.

ANTHONY: CNN made her trial deadly dull



We’re talking about a dead girl. Her daughter, as a matter of fact. Caylee wasn’t quite three years old when she died back in 2008.

THIS CASE ALSO has a young, attractive woman as its source of venality. It even gives us the possibility that this woman tried to pull a scam on police by initially reporting her daughter as a missing child.

That status lasted for some five months, until her body eventually was found. Casey was arrested a couple of months later – although she continues to insist, “I didn’t do it!”

She’d have us think that the real injustice here is that she has been put on trial in Orange County, Fla., circuit court, rather than have police continue to try to find the “real” killer of her kid.

Not that many people are that sympathetic to her. Just a few weeks ago, I had various relatives in town for a memorial service for my late mother. At one point, several of my aunts engaged in small-talk, and it turns out several had been following the trial up to that point.

THEIR CONSENSUS? CASEY did it. She was a young “party girl” who was tired of being a mother and wanted her “freedom” back. For all I know, that may well be what a majority of the nation thinks.

I really don’t think anything.

Because I have to admit that I have grown to detest this case. Not Casey Anthony. But the case itself. I want the trial to end, and I really don’t care what the verdict is.

Perhaps it is BECAUSE of the fact that Cable News Network has been providing live coverage of the courtroom activity, ALONG WITH pundits EVERY single evening.

THAT DAY’S COURTROOM activity will be dissected for every minute detail no matter how little actually happened that day. As if the legal analysts who get interviewed by the CNN news anchors during courtroom breaks don’t provide enough superficial analysis of what is happening.

A part of me really believes that this live broadcast coverage is taking what could be a sordid criminal trial and turning it into legal mush. Maybe part of it is because we’re seeing all the technical analysis that is turning a titillating tale into deadly dull dreck. If this is what broadcast cameras do to a criminal trial, perhaps we in Illinois are better off without them.

This coverage has managed to make this trial ever so boring. I have tried forcing myself to watch. But I just can’t take it anymore.

I’ve given up. I’ll wait until I read a newspaper headline with the verdict before I pay any further attention to this case.

WE’RE AT THE point where I’m literally watching significantly less of CNN (and I didn’t really watch much of them to begin with) because I don’t want to have to endure their coverage of this criminal trial. So I’m missing out on their news coverage in general.

I don’t care. I just want it to end.

This amidst the reports coming out of Florida on Friday that there may well have been perjury during the testimony.

Who’s to say just what the jury itself believes? It will be interesting to see how much of all this legal drivel they are taking in. And also how they will feel about their work schedule.

FOR IT SEEMS that Judge Belvin Perry has decided he doesn’t care if we’re entering a holiday weekend. Jurors will get Saturday off, but will have to sit through closing arguments on Sunday.

That makes it 99.9999999 percent guaranteed that jurors will be locked in a backroom at the Orange County courthouse on Monday, deliberating Casey Anthony’s fate.

Wouldn’t it be ironic (or maybe stupidly sad?) if jurors were able to return a verdict on that date? Casey Anthony could learn on Independence Day whether or not she will continue to have her personal freedom.

  -30-

EXTRA: It’s all about appearances

During a criminal trial, prosecutors are going to toss out so many factual tidbits meant to make the defendant look like so much of a monster that the jury will feel it is their obligation to reach a “guilty” verdict.



YANG: With "jailhouse" hair?

Which is why defense attorneys often go to great lengths to make their client look like someone so unlike the person being described by prosecutors that perhaps the jury will think it is a case of mistaken identity – NO way that guy/girl could have done those heinous acts!

I GOT A first-hand reminder of such tactics during a trial I recently covered in Will County Circuit Court. The defendant, a 23-year-old barely-more-than-a-kid himself who faced aggravated DUI charges for an auto accident that killed a 5-year-old boy, was dressed up every day in a dark grey with blue pinstripe suit and high-collared dress shirts that covered up as much as possible the tattoos he had on his neck.

That outfit was complimented with a different tie every day of the two-week-long legal proceedings of varied colors and patterns that the jokes among the trial observers was that the defense attorney (who himself is a sharp dresser) was getting a chance to show off his whole collection of $200 ties.

Of course, the defendant had to dress in the courtroom, since he was being held at the county jail and was literally brought to the courthouse each day in his prison “blues” (if this were Cook County, it would be khaki) in chains.

But letting the jury see the defendant in chains and jailhouse garb would have been inappropriate. It would have created a prejudicial image against a man who is to be presumed innocent unless prosecutors can prove otherwise.

BUT IT SEEMS there are limits as to how far the courts will go to let a criminal defendant clean him/herself up to try to look like a “typical” human being.

The Chicago Tribune reported about the case of Marni Yang, who is on trial in Lake County Circuit Court. Prosecutors say she shot and killed a pregnant woman who was seeing the man whom she thought was her boyfriend – former Chicago Bears cornerback/safety Shaun Gayle.

According to the Tribune account, Yang on Monday showed up in court in a blue blouse and grey slacks with her hair worn on a pony-tail.

Prosecutors think they are ready to pick a jury of Yang’s “peers” to decide her legal fate. Yang’s attorneys wanted a day’s delay.

FOR THEY WANTED her to have her hair done properly – maybe something more reminiscent of her days as an aspiring fashion model. I guess jailhouse life in Waukegan is just so unconducive to maintaining style and fashion.

But a judge wouldn’t allow the delay. Which now has attorneys talking about legal appeal.

This case could wind up centering around whether or not prosecutors were unfair in allowing her to be seen in a courthouse setting (about as un-fashionable a place as one will ever see) with “jailhouse hair.”

Don’t laugh.

IT MAY SOUND trivial. But it can be these trivial points upon which a court case can collapse. As though a dead woman and an unborn baby are of less importance than what color her hair was at the time of trial.

Now I have covered court proceedings off-and-on for some two decades. I often have wondered just how significant all this staging of a defendant’s appearance truly was. Does it come across as too phony – as in, the jury sees through the act and realizes this person never dressed like that before in his life? Does it actually sway? I have never served on a jury, so I can’t say first-hand.

CONNER: Tattoo cover-up?

All I know is that in the most-recent trial I covered, the defendant, Cecil Conner, Jr., wore that sharp suit (that was starting to get rumpled from two week’s worth of daily wear) with a peach-colored paisley tie the day he took the witness stand on his own behalf, and wore a blue-ish, purple tie with orange trim on the trial’s final day.

Somehow, I don’t think it softened the blow for him when the judge twice said the word “guilty” in announcing his verdict to the courtroom, with sentencing scheduled in May.

  -30-