Court records have shown that the judge in Casey Anthony's Florida murder trial Tuesday denied Anthony's motion to remove the possibility of the death penalty.
The Orlando Sentinel has reported that Orange County Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr. denied the defense team's motion to remove the death sentence based on gender bias.
Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Caylee Marie, her daughter. Anthony was indicted by a grand jury in October 2008, three months before Caylee's remains were discovered near the family home.
The defense, adding that the state often does not seek the death penalty against men accused of killing children, said, "Societal biases against women provide the state with a way of deflecting attention away from the insufficiency of the evidence in Miss Anthony's case."
Elizabeth Rapaport, a University of New Mexico law professor who testified about her research on gender and the death penalty, said that white middle-class mothers get more intensive media coverage compared with defendants in other cases. The media often concentrates on other issues, such as a woman's clothing or whether she has a tattoo or goes to see male strippers, none of which has anything to do with the criminal case.
