Death penalty inequity on trial in the United States

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Carol Forsloff - Casey Anthony was declared innocent of killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee in Florida, despite a host of incriminating, circumstantial evidence, according to experts, while Troy Davis was executed in Georgia for killing a policeman, as  the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) report released in July concluded that “race, geography, money, and other arbitrary factors continue to make receiving the death penalty as random as being “struck by lightning,” as Justice Potter Stewart observed in 1976.

Although Casey Anthony became a hated public figure, given the descriptions of how two-year-old Caylee’s disappearance was not reported by the mother until more than 30 days had passed and that the condition of the child’s body revealed horrific circumstances related to both the death and disposal of the body. Legal experts and others took turns proclaiming how clear the evidence was in pointing to Casey Anthony’s guilt. Objections to the verdict of innocent came from every part of the culture, when Casey, a young, white mother in Florida, was found innocent of killing her child. Even George Anthony, Casey’s father, told Dr. Phil in an interview after the trial he believes that his daughter was somehow involved in Caylee’s death, perhaps through an accident, but an accident that involved an extensive cover-up.

Troy Davis was executed on Wednesday night, following years of appeals and more than a million signatures on a petition requesting the courts to reconsider the death penalty in his case. Seven eyewitnesses at the trial recanted their testimony years later, while another man actually confessed to killing the policeman for which Davis was sentenced to death. Davis was a black man in Georgia who was found guilty of killing a white policeman.

While there are deviations from the DPIC report with respect to some of the specifics involved in comparing these two cases, eyewitness reports, that were recanted, had been the evidence used for the death penalty to be ordered for Davis. Circumstantial evidence of numerous types along with a lifetime of lies as background, with respect to Casey Anthony’s character, were underlined as insufficient for a guilty verdict, especially in a capital murder case.

The DPIC report states, “Many of those who favored the death penalty in the abstract have come to view its practice very differently. They have reached the conclusion that if society's ultimate punishment cannot be applied fairly, it should not be applied at all. The report then goes on to tell us that most of the nine justices who declared the death penalty did not violate the Constitution agreed the experiment had failed. Justices Blackman, Powell, and Stevens changed their minds and would have agreed with Justices Marshall and Brennan that capital punishment was unconstitutional.

The report goes on to review the inequities in capital punishment cases, especially that those defendants who are African American and kill white victims are more likely to receive the death penalty than those who kill members of other races, especially white victims.  Most executions occur in a handful of states, largely in the South. Costs figure greatly in the quality of defense one receives. Finally, the states have different ways of reviewing cases so that in some states virtually all death sentences are upheld by state courts while in others they are overturned.

Troy Davis was executed in Georgia on September 21, 2011, after a state court upheld his execution on a vote of 3 to 2 and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.

The 'bad seed’ diagnosis and the Casey Anthony case

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Carol Forsloff - Years ago a famous movie called The Bad Seed depicted a girl seemingly without conscience whose  bad behavior pervaded her relationships, including those with her family, the kind that Casey Anthony is compared to now; but is there such a thing as “a bad seed" in a legal case involving the killing of a child?

The storyline of the film, The Bad Seed, is this, according to the description provided by the creators of the film: “Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband and the most "perfect" daughter in the world. But since childhood, Christine has suffered from the most terrible recurring nightmare. And her "perfect" daughter's accomplishments include lying, theft and possibly much, much worse. Only Christine knows the truth about her daughter and only Christine's father  knows the truth about her nightmare.”  The film was made in 1956.

Today Casey Anthony is on trial, accused by the prosecution in a death penalty trial in Florida, of killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee.  Numerous talking heads from law, psychology and the media analyze the elements of the case as it has unfolded in the trial and point to details that mirror the Bad Seed movie script.

But Casey Anthony’s trial is not a movie script, although the screaming “fans” were shown fighting for position to get into the courtroom where the drama of the trial took place.

Cindy Anthony, mother of Casey, is accused of lying to protect her daughter.  Both the defense and the prosecution also point to deceitful ways of Casey’s father, George, as part of the family problems.   Experts from various fields have looked at patterns within the family and report on its dysfunction.  Furthermore the defense in the case maintains that only Casey’s father, outside of Casey herself, knows the truth about what really happened to Caylee.  The details replicate much of the movie’s outline, so what is the nature of “bad seeds” and are there people with inherent tendencies that produce the type of behavior that would lead to killing a child?

The notion that some children are inherently bad is one some mental health professionals support, while others strenuously disagree and maintain dysfunction occurs because of specific types of behaviors a child models in the environment and the constellation of the family.

Amy Webb, Ph.D., examines Dr. Richard Friedman’s contention that some children are badly behaved “because everyday character traits, like all human behavior have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment.”  Dr. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry who was interviewed by the New York Times in 2010 to discuss whether or not there is such a thing as a “bad seed.”  He uses the example to show how all other children in a family can be well-behaved but one may stand out as “bad.”

Webb takes exception to Friedman’s argument and says, “I strongly disagree with this idea and I think much of the child development research does too. Yes, children have genetic predispositions towards a lot of characteristics, both physical and psychological. However, this is just a predisposition, not fate. Much of what determines how a predisposition is expressed depends on how parents, teachers, and others in the environment react to the child.”

One of the most prevalent explanations for the type of behavior that leads to  a“bad seed” is one advanced by Dr. David Lykken.  He maintains that psychopaths are distinctly different than other people beginning in childhood and don't respond with normal inhibition.  He also says that most antisocial behaviors where the child seemingly has no conscience and exhibits antisocial behavior is actually caused by poor parenting, absentee fathers and inadequate mothers as a usual pattern.

Parents with poor child-rearing abilities will respond inadequately or inappropriately during the time the child is being socialized.  Lykken suggests the child often irritates them, and the child then acts out.   Although there have been research studies using twins to assess criminality,  Lykken acknowledges that it is true twins raised separately  may each have a criminal-type behavior, showing aggression and sensation seeking, but that these behaviors can be channeled into doing good or bad things.  It is up to the parents to guide the child in making the right choices.

In addition to the psychological and psychiatric debates, neurologists point to brain activities that suggest psychopaths have brain activities that are abnormal.  Consequently those afflicted with this neurological pattern end up doing things that excite the nervous system, thus becoming involved in thrill-seeking activities.

Bad seed theories examine  the various mechanisms that are intertwined in creating violent behavior.   A cogent explanation on how a Gary Gilmore or a Dennis Nilsen, both serial killers, can become seriously violent is through a process that seems to most promote antisocial behavior is advanced by Psychologist Lonnie Athen.  She tells us that such a person,"is a victim of violence and feels powerless to avoid it. Then he is taught how and when to become violent and to profit from it. Then he acts on that. If a person from a violent environment does not become violent, it is because some part of the process is missing.”

The Anthony family has been outlined by experts following the trial as having serious dysfunction and patterns of deception, while the defense maintains the father, George Anthony, molested his daughter throughout her childhood, a type of violent behavior that is conducive to developing antisocial  behavior.   The lack of coherent testimony about various details related to the death of two-year-old Caylee reflects the differences within the family core.

Experts differ on the specifics of how antisocial behavior develops and the bad seed theories that proliferate in cases like that of Casey Anthony, but they all agree that there is such a thing as an antisocial person seemingly without conscience who can have an outwardly normal appearance and a family the face of propriety that can lead to violence and murder.  The clinical enumeration of those “bad seed” behaviors can be found here, in a summary of the traits defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the text used for diagnosing and classification of mental disorders.