My dad was the first one to hand me an article about her in the spring of 2007. I kept hearing her on the radio. “They tried to make me go to rehab and I said ‘No! No! No!’” What a catchy song, I thought. She looked like nothing I’d ever seen: sporting a raven beehive, 8 mile long winged eyeliner and the striking face of a young woman who’d somehow already seen to much. She seemed mythical. “Who sings like that?” I wondered. My adoration of Amy Winehouse has spanned the past four years in a major way. Her albums “Frank” and"Back to Black" got me through my summer in South Africa. My rollercoaster of a senior year in high school. My loneliest of nights throughout college and my happiest of times while I lived in the UK. She was my all-purpose safeguard wherever I found myself and in whatever situation I encountered. When my friend texted me the simple but devastating phrase “Amy Winehouse is dead” my brain went blank.
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard of the woman or at least knows she popularized a song called “Rehab” that Amy had been troubled for years. She faced every issue one could imagine: not only was she addicted to hard drugs and alcohol but she suffered through eating disorders, self mutilation, and bipolar disorder. While many dismissed her as a wreck, I never could. I’ll admit that sometimes I wondered if her distress was all part of a tortured artist act that she’d made herself believe was a necessary part of being a famous singer. But whether she tricked herself into it or would’ve been as self-destructive had she stuck to small jazz shows in London, her work itself was incredible because it hit so deeply.
When she said “I brought you downstairs with a Marlboro Red” or “Yea, you know I’m no good” it made sense. Or “you should be stronger than me” and that “I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself” I got it. In spite of not having gone through many of the things she wrote about or having felt exactly as she did, her voice and her lyrics managed to transcend that disconnect between her experiences and my own. How could a person’s voice move you to hear them out in spite of not having been where she has?
Amy’s now a member of the “27 Club” of infamous and amazing artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Kobain who all died at this young age. As soon as I learned she died, I thought about her age and I thought back to my fear from a few years ago that she would die at this age either accidentally or deliberately (as I suspect in this case) because it’s a perverse part of being known as one of the greats who are gone too soon.
Aside from the great loss I feel for her as a human being and as an artist, I feel most troubled by the fact that this is all the result of addiction and mental illness. Her death, in some ways, serves as a reminder of the power of substance abuse and the constant struggle that Winehouse and millions of others face. What is it about brain chemistry, life circumstances, and cultural attitudes that destroy lives and leads people to early graves? Is there anything that could’ve been done to help this bright, talented and innovative young woman before it came to her being carried away in a body bag a few years prior to her 30th birthday?
It always seems to me that part of the issue surrounding the link between mental illness and addiction is that aside from the genetic predispositions people have towards these conditions, there is little social recognition of the seriousness of these topics. It’s obvious that there’s got to be a societal shift in the way we understand these issues. That instead of throwing the word “crazy” around regularly (which I’m guilty of) and seeing being unstable as laughable, we learn to alter our language and educate ourselves more generally about what these diseases mean. They don’t mean that Amy (or anyone in a remotely similar situation) is weak. It’s not a question of willpower alone or toughening up. No one wants to be dependent on a substance to get him/her through the day. We need to realize that shaming someone doesn't fix the problem, either.Though I don’t know enough about non-Western societies’ attitudes towards addiction, it does seem to be an unfortunate international trend to assume that this disease is a moral failure.
If Amy’s death can illustrate anything, it’s that substance abuse is a devastating thing that can destroy those with promise at any time. I don’t believe for one second that people shouldn’t learn to take accountability for their actions and that they shouldn’t seek help from others when they need it (as she often tried to through her multiple rehab stints), but it’s clear that one way to avoid losing people is to open up a social dialogue about where addiction comes from and about how to respect the challenges that people like Amy face. If any of us looked around, we wouldn’t have to look for very long to find someone close to us who’s hooked on something. It could even be you. Why haven’t we found a way to be more socially responsible about these issues? What’s up with that? R.I.P Amy Winehouse 1983-2011.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Justice or Skill?: A Perspective on the Casey Anthony Murder Trial
When I was little, I always had a hard time distinguishing between someone being found “not guilty” and being “innocent.” “Guilty” was clear to me: it meant a bunch of random people on a jury all came to the same conclusion that an accused person ought to be punished for his or her crime. The ideas of crime, court, lawyers, and the law itself have always swirled in my head. It might have something to do with the fact that both my parents are lawyers or that I grew up in a household with the nightly news always blaring. While my parents sat on our old gray-checkered couch, I’d do my little girl thing and bounce about on the carpet. But clearly the message that criminals existed infiltrated my mind and it was at this early age that I began to think, in the way a six year could, about the American legal system.
In fact, as I look back on it, one of the most frightening but necessary realizations I came to in second grade was that, unlike I had previously gathered, there wasn’t a 50/50 split between those who died of old age and those who died by gunfire. It took me a long time to realize that gun violence, while a reality, wasn’t a part of daily life for most people in the U.S. With all these things in mind, I can’t help but think now about what major cases mean for American society and for all those who watch them progress. How do we live in a world where a woman can murder her child, a jury can all suspect as much, and she ultimately escape conviction and be found “not guilty”?
I remember hearing about the disappearance of a little girl named Caylee Anthony a couple years back in 2008. At the time, I was wrapped up in college decisions, leaving a school I’d attended for 13 years, and generally just accepted this missing child as another young girl who’d met an unfair ending. Attention is always paid to the deaths of little girls of particular backgrounds (read: non-minority) and the hyper focus on her disappearance seemed no different. It wasn’t until this spring, though, that I began to pay any serious attention to the case. Her mother, Casey Anthony, seemed by all accounts to be at least partially responsible for her child’s death. It’s all too disturbingly perfect: her 2 year old goes missing and she doesn’t bother to call the police for 31 days (which, by the way, is a month for those who might be counting), chooses to go out and party instead (because what better way to help find your kid than downing a couple cranberry and vodkas), pretends the kid is with a nanny named Zanny (c’mon, please get more creative next time, Casey), there’s evidence of searches for ways to suffocate a human being and the child’s body is found with duct tape across her mouth, and the smell of a decomposing body in the trunk of a car is explained away as a bag of rotting garbage. If all of these pieces together don’t make a strong case for this woman’s guilt, what would?
After hearing that she was found not guilty, two things crossed my mind. The first was horror. The second thing I thought of, though, was my experience as a juror last summer. I couldn’t get out of it. I’d been summoned twice since I graduated high school and unlike everyone in the jury lottery who couldn’t serve because they had to stay home to feed their turtles, were 99 years old or couldn’t make it mostly due to disinterest, I had no real excuse. I was gainfully unemployed for the summer and it seemed like a good opportunity to see what court was like. Without breaking my oath to protect the details of the case, I can share that I had to judge whether the accused was guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder. In my head and according to the evidence presented both by the defense and the prosecution, I believed the man was not guilty. But more than that I trusted that he was indeed innocent, that, outside of the limitations of legal framework and binary guilty vs not guilty, he had not actually committed a murder. My peers didn’t feel the same way, though. We ultimately found him not guilty but hardly any of them believed he was innocent and had not killed a man. Here’s the distinction: there are two legal categories that purely access guilt or not guilt. The law requires jurors like the ones on the Anthony case to assume that the only thing that matters is whether or not guilt can be established by the lawyers in court. There’s no room to convict someone or exonerate them based on what they’ve actually done. Instead, jurors must muse about whether the prosecution proved its case.
This irks me because it means that the legal system isn’t designed to handle the truth but rather what representatives (i.e. the defense and prosecution) manage to present to the jury. A man could murder 15 people but if his defense lawyer can wring his or her hands to come up with ways to diminish the strength of the prosecutor’s presentation, the accused can walk free. Doesn’t matter that he’s torn however many communities and lives apart by his violence. The law isn’t concerned with that. It’s about how clever a lawyer is at evading or shaping or even misrepresenting what’s occurred. None of what I’m saying is new or groundbreaking but it’s important to ask if we can call what we have a justice system. If Casey Anthony can, at the very best, be apathetic to the loss of her daughter (as evidenced by her failure to report the kid missing for an entire month) and at the very worst, be responsible for her death and ultimately walk free after serving a few short years jail time, why do we bother with pretending that this is a fair allotment of justice? Why can’t we inquire about innocence and guilt rather than dolling out prison time according to how skillful a lawyer might be at casting or re-casting the accused's role in a crime? Why don’t we have enough room for truth in the American legal system? What’s up with that?
In fact, as I look back on it, one of the most frightening but necessary realizations I came to in second grade was that, unlike I had previously gathered, there wasn’t a 50/50 split between those who died of old age and those who died by gunfire. It took me a long time to realize that gun violence, while a reality, wasn’t a part of daily life for most people in the U.S. With all these things in mind, I can’t help but think now about what major cases mean for American society and for all those who watch them progress. How do we live in a world where a woman can murder her child, a jury can all suspect as much, and she ultimately escape conviction and be found “not guilty”?
I remember hearing about the disappearance of a little girl named Caylee Anthony a couple years back in 2008. At the time, I was wrapped up in college decisions, leaving a school I’d attended for 13 years, and generally just accepted this missing child as another young girl who’d met an unfair ending. Attention is always paid to the deaths of little girls of particular backgrounds (read: non-minority) and the hyper focus on her disappearance seemed no different. It wasn’t until this spring, though, that I began to pay any serious attention to the case. Her mother, Casey Anthony, seemed by all accounts to be at least partially responsible for her child’s death. It’s all too disturbingly perfect: her 2 year old goes missing and she doesn’t bother to call the police for 31 days (which, by the way, is a month for those who might be counting), chooses to go out and party instead (because what better way to help find your kid than downing a couple cranberry and vodkas), pretends the kid is with a nanny named Zanny (c’mon, please get more creative next time, Casey), there’s evidence of searches for ways to suffocate a human being and the child’s body is found with duct tape across her mouth, and the smell of a decomposing body in the trunk of a car is explained away as a bag of rotting garbage. If all of these pieces together don’t make a strong case for this woman’s guilt, what would?
After hearing that she was found not guilty, two things crossed my mind. The first was horror. The second thing I thought of, though, was my experience as a juror last summer. I couldn’t get out of it. I’d been summoned twice since I graduated high school and unlike everyone in the jury lottery who couldn’t serve because they had to stay home to feed their turtles, were 99 years old or couldn’t make it mostly due to disinterest, I had no real excuse. I was gainfully unemployed for the summer and it seemed like a good opportunity to see what court was like. Without breaking my oath to protect the details of the case, I can share that I had to judge whether the accused was guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder. In my head and according to the evidence presented both by the defense and the prosecution, I believed the man was not guilty. But more than that I trusted that he was indeed innocent, that, outside of the limitations of legal framework and binary guilty vs not guilty, he had not actually committed a murder. My peers didn’t feel the same way, though. We ultimately found him not guilty but hardly any of them believed he was innocent and had not killed a man. Here’s the distinction: there are two legal categories that purely access guilt or not guilt. The law requires jurors like the ones on the Anthony case to assume that the only thing that matters is whether or not guilt can be established by the lawyers in court. There’s no room to convict someone or exonerate them based on what they’ve actually done. Instead, jurors must muse about whether the prosecution proved its case.
This irks me because it means that the legal system isn’t designed to handle the truth but rather what representatives (i.e. the defense and prosecution) manage to present to the jury. A man could murder 15 people but if his defense lawyer can wring his or her hands to come up with ways to diminish the strength of the prosecutor’s presentation, the accused can walk free. Doesn’t matter that he’s torn however many communities and lives apart by his violence. The law isn’t concerned with that. It’s about how clever a lawyer is at evading or shaping or even misrepresenting what’s occurred. None of what I’m saying is new or groundbreaking but it’s important to ask if we can call what we have a justice system. If Casey Anthony can, at the very best, be apathetic to the loss of her daughter (as evidenced by her failure to report the kid missing for an entire month) and at the very worst, be responsible for her death and ultimately walk free after serving a few short years jail time, why do we bother with pretending that this is a fair allotment of justice? Why can’t we inquire about innocence and guilt rather than dolling out prison time according to how skillful a lawyer might be at casting or re-casting the accused's role in a crime? Why don’t we have enough room for truth in the American legal system? What’s up with that?
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