By now, unless, as the Geico guy says, you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the verdict that was handed down in the trial of Casey Anthony, surviving mother of precious little 2 year old Caylee Anthony.

On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony called 9-1-1 in Orlando, Florida to report that her daughter, Casey Anthony, had stolen a car and some money. She called back later to report that her granddaughter, Casey’s daughter, 2-year-old Caylee Marie Anthony was missing and had been missing for more than a month.

Police interviewed Casey Anthony and arrested her for child endangerment after she told investigators several lies concerning the whereabouts of Caylee for the  31 days that Caylee had been missing.

On December 11, 2008, a water meter reader found the skeletal remains of 2-year-old Caylee, in a garbage bag near a small retention pond less than a half mile from her home.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the remains found at the site where those of a small child. Reports said a water meter reader picked up a garbage bag near Chickasaw Trail and Suburban Drive in the west Orlando area and a small skull fell out of the bag.

The bag was found 15 to 20 feet off a paved road. Tim Miller, founder Texas Equusearch, said he believes the area where the remains were found were not previously searched because the water level was too high.

Anthony, 25, was found not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child. She was found guilty of four charges of providing false information to law enforcement officers.

Caylee was reported missing in July 2008. Anthony told law enforcement her daughter had been kidnapped by a nanny, but during the trial, Baez said Caylee drowned in the Anthony family pool on June 16, 2008.

Anthony was judged by a jury of her peers. Media saturation of the jury pool available for the case in the Orlando area forced the judge to select a jury from Pinellas county, just south of Tampa on Florida’s gulf coast, an area represented in Congress by Debbie Wasserman- Schultz.

Every lawyer that had any sort of half-baked idea concerning what was going on in this trial, got their mug on one of the Cable News Channels, as a featured legal expert. Wall-to-wall coverage necessitated it.

After the trial was over, Casey Anthony defense attorney Cheney Mason blasted the media and the so-called legal experts in a news conference:

I hope that this is a lesson to those of you that have indulged in media assassination for three years. Bias, prejudice and incompetent heads saying what would be and how to be. I’m disgusted by some of the lawyers who have done this.

I can tell you that my colleagues from coast to coast and border to border have condemned this whole process of lawyers getting on television and talking about cases that they don’t know a damn thing about. They don’t have the experience to back up their words or the law to do it. And now you’ve learned your lesson.

After Mason was finished gloating, lead defense attorney Jose Baez also spoke to the media:

While we’re happy for Casey, there are no winners in this case. Caylee has passed on far too soon. My driving force for the past three years has been to make sure that there is justice for Caylee and Casey, because Casey did not murder Caylee, it’s that simple. Today, our system of justice has not dishonored her memory by a false conviction.

Perhaps, counselor. Or, perhaps there just was not enough evidence presented by the prosecution to convict your hedonistic client on the murder charge.

After their press conference,  Defense attorneys Jose Baez and Cheney Mason celebrated their client’s not guilty verdict with a champagne toast at Terrace 390, a restaurant on North Orange Ave in Orlando, Florida.

As word of their celebration got out, people gathered in front of the restaurant’s glass doors where scould watch Casey’s attorneys hanging out with about 20 other people inside, including…you guessed it…Geraldo Rivera.

You can throw up now. I did.

Local resident Wanda Tyler put it succinctly:

They shouldn’t be celebrating. A little girl is dead and they helped her killer go free.

Patrick Fowler, of Tampa, hanging out in the local establishment, shouted that Baez should leave the restaurant. He made sure that everyone there knew that he didn’t think justice had been served.

Baez, stopped drinking his beer long enough to look up and smile a few times.

One of guys whom he was drinking with, a tall, slender man wearing a plaid shirt, came close to the door and made a lewd gesture with hand.

A couple of minutes later, Mason moved closer to the door and made a lewd gesture at Fowler.

While I realize that this is the way that our legal system is supposed to work, that thought does nothing to abate my sadness over the senseless murder of a precious child. What fuels my anger over the situation more, is the actions of Casey herself.  In those first 31 days, before she reported the missing Caylee to the police, Casey was out partying with her friends, as if nothing was wrong at all.

We’ve all seen the pictures.

During her drunken debauchery, before she reported Caylee as missing, on July 2, 2008, she gifted herself with a tattoo, which reads:

Bella Vita

This translates as “beautiful life” in Italian.

Caylee’s was.  And it was horribly and irrevocably taken from her.