Hyperaware

Part of how I knew this would be a multi-part post is that I saw a post calling for a new law to be passed called “Caylee’s Law.”  This law linked to a page on Change.org with the following petition:

Create Caylee’s Law, Not Reporting Child’s Death Should Be a Felony
Greetings,

On July 5, 2011, at 1:15 pm CST, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of first degree murder in the death of her daughter Caylee Anthony. The only charges she now faces are four counts of falsifying police reports, each of which only carries a 1 year prison term. Since she has been in jail since August 2008, she will be out of jail ENTIRELY too soon.

I’m writing to propose that a new law be put into effect making it a felony for a parent, legal guardian, or caretaker to not notify law enforcement of the death of their child, accidental or otherwise, within 1 hour of said death being discovered. This way there will be no more cases like Casey Anthony’s in the courts, and no more innocent children will have to go without justice.

Also, make it a felony for a parent, legal guardian, or caretaker to not notify law enforcement of the disappearance of a child within 24 hours, so proper steps can be taken to find that child before it’s too late.

The case of Caylee Anthony was tragic, and there is no reason for another case like this one to hit the courts. Let’s do what is necessary to prevent another case like this from happening.

I understand why people feel the need to do things like protest outside of the Orlando Courthouse or try to have new laws passed. People are outraged and doing things like this make them feel like they are somehow helping the country. Maybe a law like this would be a good thing, they might think and they could be right. I don’t know that it is appropriate to pass this law, though.

In order to encourage a federal law to be passed, you would need to prove how this will help society. Though it might make us feel better for parents and guardians to have to do prison time for not reporting their child’s death, this kind of law might put people behind bars that do not deserve to be there. Jails and prisons are only so large, and people who are being imprisoned by the federal government should be guilty of something that has some kind of negative impact on society.

A person not reporting a child’s death or disappearance is not actually something that damages the country. If we imprisoned everyone who didn’t think to notify authorities in the first hour after discovering their child’s body, then we might be putting grieving parents who are simply too distraught to call police. We might imprison a parent who was so afraid of calling the police because they feared that they would be accused of committing some kind of abuse or neglect of their child or that they might be accused of murdering their child. We might be putting a parent behind bars for trying to protect another one of their children, if one of their other children accidentally or intentionally caused the death of the child. We might be putting someone who has some kind of disease or defect that might cause a person to not be able to realize that they need to call an emergency responder.

As for imprisoning someone who does not notify law enforcement of the disappearance of a child within 24 hours, we must first remember that because of many television shows talking about the 24-hour waiting period with missing people, some parents might think that they too have to wait 24 hours. There is also the fact that sometimes kidnappers instruct families to not call authorities and use threats against their child as an incentive. A parent might feel it necessary to keep this from the police in order to make sure that their child is safe. If you were a parent, would you want to potentially put your child in more danger by contacting law enforcement? No. Most parents will try to do what they think will keep their child safe.

The thing that is such a tragedy with this situation is that people think that Caylee’s case is unusual. Family members involved in disappearance of children is not rare, nor is murdering a child in one’s care. There are parents who have also hidden their child’s body because they thought that police might suspect them of harming their child when they didn’t. Nothing about the case is all that extraordinary, unfortunately. The worst part of this case is that there are so many others where you don’t know about and that most people so upset about Caylee’s case have no clue about the other children out there that this has also happened to in this world.

It is important to also remember that Casey got the maximum for what was charged of her. The 1-year term a piece and $1000 fines were the maximum punishment that she could get for misdemeanors. Usually, people wouldn’t have gotten more than a year, even with multiple guilty verdicts, because the terms would be served concurrently instead of consecutively. It is also important to remember that the reason that there was no guilty verdict in the case was that the case wasn’t strong enough. Perhaps, encouraging court systems to wait to file charges until they have proper evidence or have them only file charges that they can actually prove would be a better thing for folks to do. Passing this law would only cause a greater burden to the criminal justice system than they already have.