Too Much Pre-Trial Publicity?

Does Casey Anthony's right to a fair trial trump public's right to know?
The Casey Anthony trial is still months away.

By Anthony Colarossi, Orlando Sentinel
8:05 a.m. EDT, August 4, 2010

With the Casey Anthonytrial still months away, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for every morsel of information in the case, journalists and bloggers must make do with the scraps of news they can find.

In recent days, we learned the young woman charged with her child's murder owed the Orange County Jail about $40 but then had her jail account replenished. Her parents appear to be emerging from the threat of foreclosure and keeping their home. Her defense, meanwhile, has billed the state about $3,800 in expenses, while her attorney struggled with his own financial issues.

Such details get served to a public hungry for information in the absence of true developments in the death-penalty case. And when real news breaks, the coverage only grows more intense in print, online and on television. And this has the defense team questioning whether it can get a fair trial when the public's right to know at times seems — to them — to trump their client's rights.

"At some point, a balancing of the First Amendment rights to report must be had against the eminently more important rights of the defense to effective counsel, due process and equal protection," defense attorney J. Cheney Mason wrote in a recent filing, one of several asking for certain case documents to be kept out of the public record. "This is a case of the state of Florida versus Casey Anthony. This is not a case of news media and John Q. Public."

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/caylee-anthony/os-casey-anthony-public-records-debat20100809,0,2020860,full.story

Poll: Too much Casey Anthony news?

Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010

The appetite for news in the Casey Anthony case has led to the reporting of even very minor developments, raising questions about how much is too much.

Poll: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-poll-casey-anthony-news-20100804,0,6815842.poll