Why We Dislike Lawyers

by Diane Dimond

Question: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a shark? Answer: Nothing.

Okay, look, right off the bat I want to say that I work with a lot of lawyers and I count many of them as good friends. But we’ve all heard the old jokes, and, let’s face it, the public’s general perception of lawyer’s honesty and integrity is pretty rotten. The latest Harris poll on the subject puts attorneys way down at the bottom of the list with members of Congress, car salesmen, and, yes, journalists.

But since lawyers are the crux of our justice system I think it is important that we take a closer look at the way some of them operate. Why is it so many of us curl our upper lip at the very mention of dealing with a lawyer? Maybe it’s the sheer number of them these days. Maybe because we believe they make so much money on other people’s misery. Or maybe it is that so many of us are forced to turn to lawyers these days to handle things that used to be settled with a hand-shake and someone’s good word.

Despite what we see on TV in dramas like Law and Order and The Good Wife, most lawyering goes on in a stealthy way. It is done out of plain sight – in board rooms and depositions, in front of secret grand juries or in the confines of a prosecutor’s office. When engaged in their profession lawyers speak a different language than we do and they follow a set of rules most of us will never understood. It is human nature not to trust what we don’t know or what we can’t see or hold in our hands.

Casey Anthony Murder Defendant

I’ve spent the last few months closely covering a capital murder trial taking place in Orlando, Florida. And it struck me as I watched the defense lay out its presentation in the case of Florida vs. Casey Marie Anthony that there is another more basic reason why we think the way we do about lawyers. They often destroy innocent people in the name of defending their clients.

To watch defense attorneys Jose Baez and Cheney Mason conduct their case on behalf of Ms. Anthony was painful. Of course, they had every right (and a duty) to do what they could to insure their client got a fair trial, especially since she was facing a possible death sentence. But they did not have the right to vilify and destroy bystanders to the murder of 2 year old Caylee Anthony. The scorched earth, take-no prisoners behavior should not be allowed.

Defense Attorney Jose Baez in Action

During the defense’s opening statement Baez promised the jury they would hear evidence that there was no murder and that the little girl had drowned in the family’s back yard pool. He blamed Grandfather George Anthony for discarding her body. There has been no evidence presented to back up that claim.

Baez told the jurors that repeated sexual molestation of his client by both her father, George, and her brother, Lee, had turned her into a trained liar who naturally kept secrets. He promised evidence to explain why his client let 31 days go by before finally admitting her daughter was gone. At first, jurors heard exactly the opposite – clear denials that any sort of sexual abuse ever took place. The jury also heard testimony from more than a dozen of Casey Anthony’s friends and co-workers that showed she was a known liar and thief long before her daughter went missing.

Roy Kronk Found Caylee Anthony's Remains

Baez’s opening statement also smeared the reputation of a man named Roy Kronk, a county meter reader who found Caylee’s skeleton remains in the woods six months after she was last seen. He reported the tiny child’s skull was still wrapped in duct tape which had snarled in her long hair. The defense lawyer called Kronk a “morally corrupt individual” and promised evidence that would show he had stolen Caylee’s remains after she drowned in the Anthony’s backyard pool and waited for the reward money to grow. Kronk came and went from the witness box and no such evidence was presented against him.

I’ve highlighted the Casey Anthony case, but it is far from the only trial in which lawyers have made reckless claims on behalf of their clients leaving human despair in their wake. Believe me, it happens all the time in courthouses across the country.

The question for all of us–including honorable lawyers who read this now–is what do we as a society do with attorneys who deliberately demolish the reputation of others in their quest for their client’s acquittal? If they make promises to a jury at the expense of others and don’t follow through shouldn’t there be some sort of penalty? If you or I repeatedly lied about important issues at our job, wouldn’t we face consequences?

Most other professions have a code of behavior. I submit that criminal defense attorneys should be held to one as well.

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Was a Fraud Perpetrated Not Just by Casey but by George and Cindy too?

By Michelle Golland, Psy.D.

I begin this article being very clear that I am not a lawyer and I do not look at cases or tragic situations within families from the perspective of examining evidence for trial.  As a Clinical Psychologist I observe behavior, actions and narrative to get underneath the story that is unfolding before me whether in my practice or as a media psychologist.  I have been working with victims of trauma and sexual abuse for over 2 decades.  My experience and clinical intuition told me as early as September 2008 that there was something deeply and characterlogically wrong not only with Casey Anthony but also with her parents George and Cindy Anthony.

Many solid clinicians have been able to see that Casey Anthony meets all the characteristics of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.  Which is a chronic personality disorder that impairs functionality and has a negative impact on all relationships.  These individuals are manipulative, charismatic, lack empathy and create chaos in their lives as well as those around them.

The question is how did Casey Anthony become the person she is today.  For some by simply asking this question we clinicians are seen as terrible evil people blaming the poor parents of this crazy psychopathic person/murderer.  This is the problem with the media and the sound bite culture that really doesn’t want to hear the long tragic truth of how a vulnerable innocent child becomes the Casey Anthony we have seen in the courtroom.  We want to only pity George and Cindy, who of course are in pain and have tragically lost their granddaughter Caylee.

This is what we, as psychologists, know about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The most critical factor in developing this disorder is poor or uniformed parenting.  These include repeated emotional, physical or sexual abuse by someone within the family or outside the family itself.  Also, inconsistent care and unsupportive care or early separation from one or both parents can contribute to the formation of this personality structure.  We also find a parent who has failed to protect the child from repeated abuse by the other parent, another family member or an outsider.

In watching George and Cindy in front of the media they seemed either coolly detached from their daughter Casey or ragingly connected in a defensive posture.  I had no doubt that Casey Anthony had severe emotional problems when she lied about her daughters disappearance and because of her strange and immature responses around where she was during those notorious 31 days.  I also noted odd behavior by her parents, and it felt to me that they knew more about Caylee’s disappearance than they were revealing.  

The facts that came out in the case regarding George and Cindy’s denial of Casey’s pregnancy, as well as the perfect persona that Cindy Anthony seemed to want to show to people around her, as well as her undercurrent of rage which bubbled to the surface on many occasions showed me that she was a narcissistic mother who was self-involved and lacked empathy.  

The jailhouse letters in which Casey began to reveal the possibility of sexual abuse made sense in the reporting of the incidents and also her hedging around them as well.  Often with victims of sexual abuse when they begin to reveal the shameful family secrets it is let out a little bit at a time to see how they will be responded to before they keep going on to say what the whole truth is for them.  What really made it clear that something was not right in the Anthony home was Cindy’s response to Casey, “So that is why you are a whore?”  This is sadly a classic response by a mother not wanting to face what she may actually already know herself.  This was also reinforced by Lee Anthony’s testimony about the extremely conflictual relationship between Casey and their mother.  Lee’s testimony also reinforced to me clinically that this was a deeply disturbed family with each person struggling for power and control wrapped with rage, anger and confusion.

George and Cindy Anthony's various interviews in the media while “looking” for Caylee felt contrived, confusing and strangely self-focused (but not on their granddaughter) with a martyrdom quality that didn’t sit right with my clinical gut.  In watching the interviews with Tim Miller, who investigated Caylee’s disappearance early on in August 2008, his reactions appear to be the most convincing that something was being covered up and not only by Casey but by George and Cindy as well.

It is my impression that George did know that Caylee was dead close to when either the “accident or murder” occurred in June 2008.  His actions around deflecting Cindy and her brother seem odd and show me a consciousness of knowledge and also a desire to keep distance from the truth of her being dead.  His actions when her car that smelled of a “dead body” at the tow yard, which he testified under oath that he did believe it smelled like a human decomposing body, also seemed suspicious to say the least, and guilty of trying to hide evidence at it’s worst.  George, a seasoned former detective, did not call the police worried and sick that something has happened to his daughter or grandchild.  George drove that car home and parked it in the garage.  It was Cindy who called the police hysterical.  George had gone into work.  

It seems to me from the variety of interviews before and after Caylee’s remains were found in December 2008 that George, Cindy and Casey were all possibly spinning a variety of stories to try to keep themselves and the Anthony name clean of any wrong doing.  George and Cindy appear to be in part fighting for the image of themselves and their family.  As with narcissistic and possibly an incestuous family dynamic within the Anthony home they are doing just what that type of family does, which is to deflect the obvious (like Casey’s pregnancy), protect their own image as good parents all the while trying to maintain that they are actually looking for a live Caylee.  

In part, what the Anthony’s may fear the most at this point is an investigation into the fraud that there daughter perpetrated in keeping the “Caylee is Missing” story going until her remains were found and identified in December 2008.  If my clinical observations are correct about George and Cindy and what seems to be their own knowledge of and active participation in this enormous lie and manipulation upon the police, investigators and the country maybe, just maybe they will be held accountable financially and morally as much as Casey is at this point in the eyes of the public.

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