Casey Anthony Used Money From ABC News To Pay For Legal Expenses

As the Casey Anthony trial progressed, many observers wondered how a twenty-two-year-old who lived at home with her parents could possibly afford so many legal experts. After all, convincing learned scholars in various fields to review evidence and then show up in court takes money, and based on her lifestyle, Anthony herself didn’t have very much of it. Initial guesses speculated her parents may have chipped in a bit, but we now know those theories were off-base. She got a whole lot of money, but it didn’t come from friends or family members.

It turns out Casey Anthony sold pictures of herself and her daughter to ABC News for two hundred thousand dollars. During an interview with Frontline, her attorney Jose Baez admitted the transaction was made specifically to “mount a proper defense”. In fact, her lawyers only spent two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars total, the bulk of which obviously came from ABC.

Technically, nothing anyone did here was illegal. Anthony sold something she had to another party that wanted it for money, which was then used to pay for a legal defense. It’s not like ABC paid the legal experts themselves, but based on the timing and the way the transaction went down, the network had to know exactly what its money would be used for. No doubt another network or a tabloid would have stepped up and offered some money had ABC not done so, but that realization still doesn’t make it all feel any less morally ambiguous.

Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.