Casey Anthony Sentenced to 4 Years
Casey Anthony, who earlier this week was found not guilty of killing her daughter, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in jail, not including the nearly three years she has served for lying to investigators, though the precise time she will spend in jail has not yet been determined.
Judge Belvin Perry said that he would have to meet with lawyers for at least an hour or so to decide how much time Ms. Anthony should be credited with serving. A decision is to be reached sometime Thursday. She was also fined $1,000 for each of the four counts of lying she has been convicted of.
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How the Casey Anthony Murder Case Became the Social-Media Trial of the Century
Like many other popular attractions in Orlando, the Casey Anthony trial requires tickets. Hundreds of people show up each day to watch the murder case unfold. But only those who arrive well before 8 a.m. and wait in June swelter can get a pass allowing them into the soaring, chilly top-floor courtroom where Anthony is trying to avoid the death penalty.
Anthony is accused of murdering her 2-year-old, Caylee, in 2008. In December of that year, investigators found parts of the girl's duct-taped corpse near Anthony's parents' home. Bugs and vegetation had colonized the remains, which had been dumped roughly six months earlier. The sheer horror at the act — and the idea that a mother committed it — catapulted the case from local live-at-5 sideshow to tabloid sensation ("Monster mom partying four days after tot died," one recent report said) to national preoccupation. The case is being followed by millions on live-stream video feeds and constant cable-news reports. In the past few days, the Washington Post and the Miami Herald have become the latest major outlets to begin offering live streams of the case. CNN and NBC air so much coverage of the trial that the networks each decided to erect a two-story, air-conditioned structure in a lot across from the courthouse. The broadcast village around the court often grows to hundreds of media vehicles. (See TIME's photo-essay "Moms Who Kill.")
And yet they are relative latecomers to what is the first major murder trial of the social-media age. The first public mention of the case appeared on MySpace on July 3, 2008, when Cindy Anthony, Casey's mother, posted a distraught message saying her daughter had stolen "lots of money" and wasn't allowing her to see her granddaughter. (A few days later, Cindy called 911 to report a "possible missing child.")...
