Now that the Casey Anthony murder trial is over, now that all the shouting has subsided and the verdicts have been bestowed, perhaps it's time for some context and perspective. While the television heralds were proclaiming the young mother's guilt, and while tens of millions of other eager beavers were leaping at the chance to be judgmental toward someone they'd never meet or ever know, the rest of America's criminal justice system just rolled on. And I mean, rolled on.
Although there is no centralized warehouse of online information about these sorts of cases, the raw statistics and anecdotal evidence suggest that hundreds of other parents around the country have been accused of murdering their children since June 2008, the month Caylee Anthony went missing. Some already have been convicted or have pleaded guilty. Others have been acquitted or are yet to face trial. Yet none have remotely achieved the fame (or notoriety) that Anthony achieved in a little less than three years, from the date she reported her daughter missing until Tuesday, the day she was acquitted of the murder and manslaughter charges against her in an Orlando, Florida courtroom.
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