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Joy Behar Page

Will Casey Sell Her Story; The Mind of Casey Anthony

Aired July 15, 2011 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on THE JOY BEHAR SHOW, HLN`s Jane Velez-Mitchell previews Casey Anthony`s release and weighs in on reports that Jose Baez is busy brokering Casey`s first post-jail interview.

Then forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner compares Casey`s acquittal to other high-profile female criminal cases.

Plus, Miss South Carolina tells Joy how she shed nearly half her body weight on her way to becoming a beauty queen.

That and more starting right now.

JOY BEHAR, HLN HOST: Come Sunday we know that Casey Anthony will be a free person. But where will she go, what will she do? And will she do an interview for potentially millions of dollars?

With me now to discuss that is Jane Velez-Mitchell, host of issues on HLN. Hi Jane; how are you?

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HLN HOST, "ISSUES": Hey, Joy. I`m good. By the way, brilliant, brilliant question to Dorothy Clay-Sims about whether she would allow her children to be babysat by Casey Anthony.

BEHAR: She had trouble answering it.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. She did.

BEHAR: There were a lot of reports out there saying that Jose Baez was in New York City this week working on deals for Casey. We kind of expected that to happen, right?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Absolutely. Of course he has been overseeing her life for three years, and he`s not going to abandon her now. He has said that as soon as she leaves her incarceration she is going somewhere out of the Orlando area, which is obvious people here -- she is despised here. So many thousands of people in the Orlando area actually took time off from work and searched the woods for a child they thought was alive when in fact Casey Anthony knew all along the child was dead. So she`s got to get out of town.

The big question is who is going to get her first big exclusive interview. You hear so much rumor and speculation about that. People offering a million dollars, things like that; but we don`t know. Suffice it to say that that would be her likeliest payday is a big exclusive for which let`s say a major media organization might pay licensing fees to get around paying her directly.

But then after that, you have to wonder. Would anybody really buy a book written by Casey Anthony? She`s a pathological liar. And as far as movies, well, most of the information is on the public record -- Joy.

BEHAR: Yes. Ok. Let me ask you. The rumor is that NBC might get the interview. I don`t know if that`s true or not.

But you know what? Let me ask you this. So many people are disgusted by her. Do you think they`d tune in for an interview for which she`s being paid or even an interview that she`s not being paid?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I do feel that people are so curious about her. I feel she`s a charismatic individual. I think she has actually mesmerized her own defense team. She mesmerized a psychologist who came on and spent 20 hours talking to her. And I think she mesmerized the jury.

And I do think people will watch. They will say they won`t watch, but I think when it comes time, when that interview hits the airwaves, they will turn on the TV and they will watch because we`re all so curious.

BEHAR: So it`s your -- it sounds as though you think she`s guilty. Without a question, even though -- even though they didn`t find her guilty.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I would say that she is guilty of something more than lying. I don`t know that it`s first-degree murder. I think the prosecution may very well have overcharged. I think that the jury became gun shy because it was a death penalty case. Some of them have even said that that was a big mistake by the prosecution and the prospect of her going to get lethal injection sort of hung like a cloud over the entire case.

Had they reduced the charges and charged her with something that was maybe just manslaughter and made it simpler instead of all these different charges with the lesser includeds that were confusing everybody, I think that it might have been a different outcome.

BEHAR: So maybe she didn`t mesmerize the jury. Maybe they just didn`t prove the case sufficiently.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, I think that the defense has to be given credit, and they haven`t been given credit. Everybody says, yes, they had a terrible case but they won anyway. No. The defense presented a case in easy-to-digest sound bites, in easy-to-understand charts and graphs.

And I do believe the prosecution fell in love with its rhetoric, and they were carrying on and on about the 31 days, and they really did not get to the specifics of what happened the day this child died and laid out in an easy-to-understand format what they think Casey Anthony did.

For example, unanswered questions -- if she poisoned her with chloroform, how did she make the chloroform? After watching the trial, I still don`t know what are the ingredients to make chloroform. I know acetone is one of them, but where did she get it. So I think they could have gone more in depth in the details and done a little less with the rhetoric and focus on her bad behavior.

BEHAR: Ok. Now, let`s go back to the money for a minute. If she does make a lot of money from an interview, will she have to pay it back to the state of Florida?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, she owes the IRS $70,000. We know that Zenaida Gonzalez is suing her. Tim Miller is suing her. Leonard Padilla, the bounty hunter, says he`s thinking of suing her. And also we know that the investigative team is saying that now that she`s admitted that she knew the child was dead all along, they want to recoup all the costs that they incurred in this case thinking that it was possibly a living child and all the investigative costs that came after that.

So she could literally make a million dollars and have to pay it all back.

BEHAR: Well, that would be fine by a lot of people.

Jose Baez reportedly said an interview would not happen for months. I mean what are they going to wait for? If they wait too long, will she get the deal? That`s what -- from his point of view?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I think that`s a very good question, Joy, because you know how short a shelf life even the most notorious celebrities have.

BEHAR: Right.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: And so yes, they`ve got to keep her under wraps a little bit, I think, for her own safety if nothing else. But if they wait too long, we`re going to move to the next crazy scandal, the next outrageous case.

While I`ve been down here in Florida, there have been so many horrific cases. I read the paper every morning, and I`m like, oh, my God, another terrible tragedy involving a toddler who died. It`s only going to be a matter of time, although they may not have the charisma, the looks, and the dream team that this particular defendant had.

BEHAR: Ok, you know, the other thing about it that`s interesting is that she -- since she`s going to be free this weekend, people are saying that she`s going to have to disguise herself and change her name. Do you think that will help at all?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, I think it has to. Everybody -- there was speculation she might go to Puerto Rico, Jose Baez is Puerto Rican. You can leave and get to Puerto Rico very quickly from Florida.

BEHAR: Right.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: And yes there are many islands in the Caribbean where she could -- and there was a Facebook immediately started in San Juan and throughout Puerto Rico saying we don`t want her here.

So yes, I think anywhere she goes she`s going to have to wear a big hat and sunglasses at the very least.

BEHAR: Ok. Let me ask you about Florida -- this Florida lawmaker has proposed a law considering the jurors. What is that law? Do you know what it is about?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. They held a news conference saying they would like jurors to wait nine months before they can sell their story. And if they do before nine months that it would be a third-degree felony because there were reports that one of the jurors had actually gotten representation and was pitching himself for the highest bidder.

And Marcia Clark, the famous prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson case, says she`s seen evidence that jurors now get -- stealth jurors get on a case and then they try to influence the verdict because they know that a shocking verdict will raise their payday. And that`s absolutely outrageous. It perverts the criminal justice system, and I think they should do something to stop it.

BEHAR: Wow. That`s very interesting. I didn`t -- wow. That has to stop. That does not help the system at all.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes.

BEHAR: Now let`s talk about Cindy for a second. Apparently she`s not going to face any perjury charges. Is there a legal reason behind that, or they just don`t want to -- she`s a grieving grandmother after all.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes, I think that they`ve thrown up their hands, all the investigators held a news conference where they essentially said, look, they accused us of fraud, they accused up of sloppy police work, they accused us of lying. We didn`t do any of that. But we want closure, we want to move on.

This has been an embarrassment for the state. And I don`t think they want to now come off as petty on top of it, chasing down this woman and prosecuting her. She has been through hell. Her torture has been just living over the past three years this unbelievable agony and doing it with the entire world watching her.

BEHAR: Uh-huh.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I have compassion for her, and who knows what we would do if we were in her shoes.

BEHAR: What about the father? I feel bad for the father, too, if he`s not Chester the Molester. You know what I mean? Now they`ve put this out there, and the guy has to live with this for the rest of his life. If he`s innocent, it`s not fair.

And I think -- I even said it on this show, I thought that Jose Baez went over the line when he brought that out without any substantiation. I mean I think he should be sued for that. Where -- how --

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well --

BEHAR: Go ahead.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Now we`re getting the inside story on why and how that happened. It turned out that the dream team had a jury consultant who had about five people all working pro bono, probably law students, and they studied and analyzed 40,000 tweet and Facebook postings and blogs, and they came up with themes of how the general public was perceiving this case. And one of the major themes that they came up with is that people do not like George Anthony.

And so they let the defense know this. They were working in coordination with the defense, and the defense then tailored, tweaked its strategy. And of course, we found out when we watched the trial that they went after George big time.

And it`s very possible it`s because they realized studying the social networks out there that people didn`t like him and that`s a very good way to go. And it did work apparently.

So it may be something that we don`t like, but it is the future of -- of lawyering. And just like people probably were gasped when the first trial consultants came out, the first jury consultants, and now we`ve got these social media experts.

BEHAR: There`s something so dangerous about what you just said that I can`t even absorb it.

Ok. Of course for the latest on this story, watch "ISSUES with Jane Velez-Mitchell" every night on HLN.

Thank you, Jane.

More on the Casey Anthony case in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: It`s been one full week since Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her daughter Caylee. But believe it or not, every day I have more and more questions about this case.

So today I want to talk to one of the nation`s top psychiatrists to try to get some answers.

Here now is Dr. Michael Welner, Chairman of the Forensic Panel and associate professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. Welcome to the show, I love your qualifications.

DR. MICHAEL WELNER, CHAIRMAN, THE FORENSIC PANEL: Thank you. NYU is a great school.

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: And the Forensic Panel is wonderful.

BEHAR: I mean, I have so many things that are still bugging me. Like this is going to break someone reminds me that Baez -- he opened his statements with an accusation. The father molested her and da, da, da. Shouldn`t he be accountable for that accusation?

How come a defense attorney can just throw something out like that and get away with it? I mean it doesn`t seem right.

WELNER: Well, this brings to mind the question that people had of why was she acquitted? Why was she found not guilty and then people would come back and say you have to create reasonable doubt.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: How do you -- how do you create reasonable doubt? Three ways: taking the prosecutors off the high road by doing risky things, forensic science, taking chances. Two, creating distractions; taking people`s attention off the bottom line issue so that they`re thinking about odors and aromas and -- and this and that.

BEHAR: Right.

WELNER: And the third is theater. Theater, and that`s part of the theater, whether it`s Baez or whether it`s Johnnie Cochran saying it`s --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Oh yes.

WELNER: -- you know, Hitler, invoking Hitler. So -- so theater is an essential part of arguments.

BEHAR: And poetry.

WELNER: And poetry, whatever it takes. So he`s doing his job.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: He`s doing his job. Some people may feel that it`s unorthodox, but that`s what he`s supposed to do.

BEHAR: Well then, you know what, why doesn`t Cindy Anthony -- not Cindy -- George Anthony sue him? Why not sue the defense attorney? You threw that out, you make me look like a child molester when I don`t know if you are or not -- I`m sure he would deny it, there`s no proof. Why can`t he sue him from putting that out there? He`s ruined that man`s reputation.

WELNER: You know, of course, George is going to wrestle with these things. But one of the things that he`ll confront is if there`s a lot of pain associated with this case, whether it`s his pain, whether it`s others` pain, whether it`s even Casey Anthony, they`ll get more mileage by putting it behind them as far and as fast as they can.

BEHAR: Ok, I figured that.

Ok. Now let`s talk about Casey. Have you ever seen this type of behavior before in other people? What you observed in this particular girl?

WELNER: Well, mothers who kill their children, it`s an unusual event, but it happens. Sometimes it happens in a setting of confrontation. And sometimes, if we believe Casey Anthony and it happened in an accident, that the child died; the level of regret, the level of grief, the level of guilt, the level of emotion --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Right.

WELNER: Is obvious for all to see. I remember a case in which --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: And wait, we didn`t see that.

WELNER: And what we saw --

BEHAR: We didn`t see that.

WELNER: -- was 30 days of the police not being called and hot body contests and shacking up with a boyfriend. And if she didn`t have parents to raise concerns with her, she might never have brought it to anyone`s attention. Why did she bring it in the first place is because her parents were pressuring her.

So what we saw was indifference, detachment; and detachment and alienation is what you see from parents who kill their children who were anticipating doing it and getting to that place where they decided to finally go forward with it. And they were comfortable with the decision before so they were comfortable with the decision after.

BEHAR: So I mean -- the girl was found not guilty. But your implication is that it was premeditated.

WELNER: Never mind what I think. Never mind if I think she`s guilty. I`ll tell you what the problem is.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: The fantasy of mothers to kill their children is a lot more common than we recognize. I will tell you there are thousands of women in the United States who have that fantasy, and they`re horrified by it so they don`t do it.

But what they see --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Thank God.

WELNER: Joy, they believe she`s guilty. And they recognize that she was not held accountable. And so that barrier --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Uh-huh. Because they have those fantasies themselves. Is that what you`re saying?

WELNER: No, no, no. They have those fantasies, they recognize -- they recognize that she`s guilty. But the message to them is that a woman who kills her child -- the concept is so unusual --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: -- unfathomable to a jury that if they aren`t absolutely positively beyond, beyond a reasonable doubt that they`ll acquit her.

And the idea that they could do it and not be held accountable is something for them to think about. It becomes an option. How many people consider the unthinkable because they think maybe I won`t be held accountable? Maybe people won`t believe that it`s possible --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Yes, yes. A lot of people, I think.

Ok, now these other cases like Andrea Yates. That woman killed her five children by drowning them. And she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Do you think that you have to be insane to kill your children?

WELNER: There are women who kill their children who are laboring under mental illness. There are women who kill their children who are drug addicted, and who may be depressed but who are overwhelmed. They can`t bear. And even in the Yates case, there was a lot of conflict between her and her husband.

BEHAR: Right.

WELNER: And she killed her children as soon as he withdrew the support of his mother saying, "You know, it`s time for you to take care of these kids on your own." Mother leaves, boom. First opportunity that Andrea`s alone with them, she drowns the children.

And then you have cases like Susan Smith.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: And others who --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: Opportunistic.

WELNER: Well, they -- they -- they feel that it is an opportunity for them to perhaps have a different life.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: And they see their children as a hindrance.

Now, of course, what Casey Anthony`s motivation has been is a mystery. And that`s why we don`t really know what happened.

BEHAR: We don`t know. We don`t know.

WELNER: But we know that she said she was there and she was comfortable with the idea -- consider this -- of going off and living her life as if nothing was changed while maggots were eating the flesh of her child.

BEHAR: Ok. On that note, we`ll take a break. We`ll have more with Dr. Welner in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: I`m back with noted psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner.

You know, Doctor, there was a motion filed to release this video of Casey where she`s reacting when she learned that the child`s remains were found. She doubles over, she hyperventilates; she becomes hysterical before she knows that it`s Caylee.

A lot of people saying that suggests guilt. What do you say?

WELNER: You can`t tell.

BEHAR: You can`t tell?

WELNER: You can`t tell. You just can`t tell. Those are the kinds of things that an evaluation actually sits down -- in an evaluation, you sit down with someone, you go through a video, and you say can we talk about this, and what were you thinking then? And what were you thinking then.

Look, I`m the first person to point out --

BEHAR: But she thought that the kid -- she says that the child died by accident. So then what was she so upset about when they found the remains? Ah.

WELNER: Well, I`m with you on that. How can you not --

BEHAR: That`s very suspicious.

WELNER: You know, again, I had mentioned before about this whole maggot issue. The attachment of a caring mother, accident, even on purpose to a child, burial, respect, not discarding like yesterday`s trash. That`s the detachment. That`s the indifference. It isn`t just the idea of whether she killed the child or not. She seems to be comfortable having signed on to the account that she simply discarded this child.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: And that`s unsettling.

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: At the very least.

BEHAR: It makes me think about movies that I`ve seen where people are doing ethnic cleansing or things like that, where they just willy-nilly will shoot somebody, shoot the whole family, have no affect whatsoever, go along, have no guilt.

It`s interesting that some -- a whole country, whole groups of people could be in that kind of lacking in empathy, sort of a psychotic break with themselves.

WELNER: Well, you`re on to something. What you`re tapping into is the notion that these people who will kill complete strangers --

BEHAR: Yes.

WELNER: Genocidalyists (ph) and ethnic cleansers, they cease to look at them as people. They detach. And for some people who you would never expect to kill, they`re only able to kill because they detach from the victim.

BEHAR: Right.

Do you think that her relationship with her parents could ever be repaired? She doesn`t seem to want to talk to her mother at all. And as I said before, her mother really helped her because her mother gave that whole cock and bull story about the -- about the chloroform that she was looking into it, and they now say the mother was at work that day.

WELNER: Here`s the only thing that someone who hasn`t examined Casey Anthony can say. How much does attachment matter to her? Let`s say that she didn`t --

BEHAR: Exactly, apropos of the other conversation --

WELNER: Let`s say she didn`t kill Caylee. Even if she didn`t kill her, if attachment is so unimportant to her that she could be indifferent without her, how important indeed is her attachment to her parents?

BEHAR: So what`s the future for this girl? She can`t attach to anybody, it sounds like. She can`t attach to another man. God forbid she has another child. She won`t be able to attach to another child.

WELNER: Well, there are plenty of people who have attachment problems and they find a way because they get their needs met and they go about their life and she has to go on.

She`s going to be reminded of this because of a public sense of suspicion. In a way it`s like O.J., only she doesn`t have O.J.`s supports, she doesn`t have O.J.`s charm. She doesn`t have O.J.`s connections. She doesn`t have O.J.`s history.

BEHAR: Doesn`t have the celebrity.

WELNER: Oh, she has a perverse kind of celebrity. But she doesn`t have the personal qualities of people and hangers on who will shield her. So she`s going to find and have to find a way to start a life where her past won`t come to her because she`s so visible and people are aware of where she`s been.

BEHAR: Ok. And we`ll continue in a minute with this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: Kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard is sharing with the world the horrifying and traumatic details of her 18 years in captivity. Her book is out this week, and in it she talks about her captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, being sexually abused by both of them and giving birth to two children as a teenager, and while she was in captivity.

Joining me to talk about this horrific case is Dr. Michael Welner, chairman of the forensic panel and associate professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. He`s also the developer of the depravity scale, which uses evidence to measure depravity of the most heinous of crimes. Welcome to the show, doctor.

DR. MICHAEL WELNER, NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Thank you.

BEHAR: This to me is one of the most heinous stories that I have ever heard. You know, 18 years in captivity, being raped on a regular basis, being, you know, abused verbally and physically, being left in the back in horrifying conditions. And while I was watching Diane Sawyer`s interview with her the other night, it dawned on me that it was 18 years. I was married to my first husband, my only husband, for 16 years. And when I got divorced, I thought, oh, my God, that was such a long time to be married. Of course, now I realize, so many years later, it isn`t. That`s how personal it hit me like that, it was like, my God, 18 years in that situation. I mean, is this one of the worst crimes you`ve ever encountered?

WELNER: Well, the purpose of the depravity scale search -- and your audience can actually participate in it at www.depravityscale.org -- is to actually look at intent, victimology, actions and attitude of specific crimes to say, well, what about this crime makes it so awful as opposed to just our kneejerk reaction which we`re all vulnerable to.

But say you`re on a jury, what would distinguish it by virtue of the depravity scale research is you have a vulnerable person. She was a child, A. B, he involved another person in order to carry out the depravity that he did. He couldn`t have done this without his wife`s complicity.

BEHAR: Right.

WELNER: Further more, he involved his wife to keep from getting captured. He even involved Jaycee to keep from getting captured. Then as you said before, the amount of suffering, getting raped countless times over such a period --

BEHAR: Having babies without any medical assistance, to just give birth to children in a backyard.

WELNER: Yes. To be in a position where she`s helpless, and the idea of being ripped away from your family with no hope of being restored. Those are actions that cause a grotesque amount of suffering.

BEHAR: Grotesque.

WELNER: And what we can find from his attitudes are a relish in what he did. He had no problem sexually violating her. And an indifference to his impact on her life. So you have a variety of different examples of intent, victimology, actions, and attitude. And the research is aiming to give courts an evidence-based consistent way of fairly distinguishing the severity of crime. So the theater or people being overcharged or the system where some evidence doesn`t get in and other evidence doesn`t get in, it`s evidence-driven on intent, actions, attitude, and victimology. And the public has a say in it.

BEHAR: Let me talk about the victim for a second. There were opportunities for her I guess to escape, and she just couldn`t do it. And I`ve heard this about Elizabeth Smart also. With -- you worked on that case, right?

WELNER: Yes.

BEHAR: What happens to a child when she feels she can`t escape?

WELNER: Well, the -- Elizabeth Smart, who`s been quite open with me and others, that she was terrified of Brian David Mitchell, that he menaced her enough and at the right times and with the help of his dependent wife to keep her from taking risks. She hoped he would die before --

BEHAR: Elizabeth?

WELNER: She hoped that he would die at some point and then she would be free. It was different with Jaycee Dugard. When you are captive for 18 years, your relationship with your captor gets into your DNA. It`s all you know. It becomes your life. Elizabeth Smart was very well routed into her earlier life before she was kidnapped. She was away for nine months. She endured unspeakable terror, but she remembered that life.

Jaycee Dotard`s life was taken over. When you`re -- it`s like you said with your husband, it`s a lifetime. What do you even remember from your childhood as a point of reference? You lose your point of reference. Your point of reference is your tormentor, that`s unbelievable.

BEHAR: How about in the beginning, though, when it first happens? Is there no thought -- or was she just fearful that he would kill her or something, because there is that.

WELNER: She was a child.

BEHAR: Yes. My God.

WELNER: She was a child. And what child expects to be in a situation where, again, she wasn`t down the street, she was in a place completely unfamiliar to her, where he controlled the environment and menaced her with a stun gun.

BEHAR: What`s so appalling is that the police and the social workers went there 60 times and they could not help this child. And the neighbors -- it`s just -- it`s the most despicable case. I just -- I don`t think these people should be walking the earth anymore.

WELNER: Joy --

BEHAR: These two, Nancy and Phillip. Let me show you something that Jaycee said about Nancy. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAYCEE DUGARD: In some ways she`s just as manipulative, because she would cry and say, I can`t believe that he did this. I wish he would have got a headache that morning that he took you.

DIANE SAWYER: And she knew everything?

DUGARD: Yes. She knew everything. Everything. What makes somebody do that in the first place? Take somebody else`s child just to satisfy your husband? And I don`t know, she`s just as evil as Phillip.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BEHAR: It`s interesting, the wife -- and you talked about Elizabeth Smart`s case was a similar -- remember these, Head Nussbaum (ph), remember that case? That was another one.

WELNER: You have a dominant person who smells someone with a dependent personality, recognizes that she`ll get so attached to the relationship that he can do anything, and he can have her do anything. And he pushes it as far as his fantasy will take him. That`s what Brian David Mitchell did. And that`s what Phillip Garrido did.

BEHAR: And Nancy just had no mind of her own?

WELNER: She had a mind of her own, but she had her priorities. And she was so desperate emotionally to stay in the relationship that she would consciously -- not as a byproduct of mental illness -- she would consciously follow his directives, because he was dominating and driving the relationship.

BEHAR: The other part about this story is that she`s had these two children. The girl is remarkable, if you watch her, I mean what do you make of all that? That she seems to have her act together in some ways, and she raised these two kids. She taught them what she knew. She was only 13, so she knew how to read and write at that point. And she gave them whatever she could give them. How is this family going to survive this trauma?

WELNER: She has remarkably found a way to surround her relationship with these children with love. It defines that relationship. It is the totality of that relationship. So everything around her that made no sense and was evil and was disgusting is separated. There`s nothing disgusting about how she relates to her children.

BEHAR: Right.

WELNER: Now consider this -- last night we were talking about Casey Anthony and the phenomenon of the disposable child. How many relationships in this country are divorced, there`s a child, the child lives with the mother, the mother hates the child because the child looks like the father or the child`s close to the father.

Here is a woman with two children. She has every reason to be disgusted by her children, and she immerses them in love. That is an example for others to get over their pain, because the children never asked to be born. Those two kids never asked to be born. If you love the children, you detoxify the evil that`s in their past. He may be evil, but she isn`t. And she can define the children and their destiny that way.

And someone has to speak for the children because they`re not disposable. Casey Anthony proves the opposite. And Jaycee Dugard proves that very point, that children are precious, even when they have unspeakable baggage.

BEHAR: Do you think that between zero and 13 she must have gotten so much love from her own family that she was able to give it to the children?

WELNER: It`s hard to tell. Hard to tell.

BEHAR: And let`s talk about her mother`s guilt. Her mother was saying that she felt guilty that she didn`t kiss the girl goodbye that day because she was running to work and she was -- I mean, imagine the guilt. I don`t think I could survive it as a parent. As Jaycee`s mother, I do not believe that I could survive it. I would be waiting for the day that I would be dead. That`s what -- I know that sounds dramatic, but I can`t imagine living for the rest of my life knowing that my child went through that. And that these two evil mongers are still alive on this planet. I couldn`t do it.

WELNER: I sat with the mother a week and a half ago in New Orleans. Her 14-year-old walked to the store five minutes away, five minutes away, and was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered. And I sat with the mother 15 years later. And she`s broken. And you see it in her face.

BEHAR: Can`t survive it.

WELNER: It wasn`t her fault, and she had no control. But that`s the nature of the way attachment should be. It`s the murder that makes no sense. It`s the attachment that is all that is right with this world and should guide all of us.

BEHAR: OK. On that note, I must thank you again for being so brilliant. Thank you. We`ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: I now want to turn to one of Casey`s defense attorneys, Dorothy Clay-Sims. Welcome to the show, Dorothy. So it seems as though the defense feels that Casey is a misunderstood girl. That, you know, people don`t like her, they still say she`s guilty even though the verdict was not guilty, the jurors are under the gun. People are furious.

What is it about -- what do you know about Casey that would go against that? Which would fly in the face of all of that criticism?

DOROTHY CLAY-SIMS, CASEY ANTHONY`S DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, actually what I saw, what was compelling to me was the testimony of the people that spent time with her. The guards in the jail were testifying at the request of the defense, and they were talking about how they observed her. She was in lockdown 23 out of 24 hours.

BEHAR: Yes.

CLAY-SIMS: And she was still respectful to them. She was kind to them. They were describing her behavior, and I think that you may be perhaps seeing a couple of hours out of somebody`s life, and that can`t define them. And the people that were watching her day in and day out for years were getting up and taking the stand and saying this woman was kind, this woman was respectful. We`d wake her up, she would not be angry. That`s the person that I saw.

BEHAR: I see. Do you really believe the whole story that Jose Baez presented in the beginning? Do you believe that Caylee drowned? That George found her, that George disposed of the body, that Roy Kronk moved the body, that George molested her? All of those things that he brought up, do you believe those things?

CLAY-SIMS: I think there were a number of things -- well, if you look at the testimony that took place, you look at the photographs of the child going in -- going up the ladder, you see the child with her hand -- you see Caylee with her hand on the door. She loved to swim. I think there was compelling evidence, compelling evidence that Casey did not murder her child. The burden was not on the defense --

BEHAR: I know that.

CLAY-SIMS: The burden was on the state to prove that she had motive. I don`t think they did that. I don`t think that they were able to do that, and that`s why that jury came back with a not guilty verdict. That was their responsibility, and they were not able to do that.

BEHAR: What was the idea of throwing out that George molested her? I don`t get that part. I know he threw it out to raise reasonable doubt, but then again, he never brought it up again for the rest of the trial because there was no way to prove that either.

Do you think that that`s really -- is that a kosher thing to do, really? To just bring up something like that and ruin the man`s reputation even though it`s probably not true?

CLAY-SIMS: Well, I think when a lawyer gives an opening statement, what that lawyer does is he explains to the jury what he believes the evidence will show. No lawyer can predict what`s going to be said, what the responses are --

BEHAR: Yes.

CLAY-SIMS: Et cetera. I think that the jury did struggle, from what I understand from watching some of the television shows, some of the jurors, when they discussed the evidence, they struggled with George`s testimony and his responses to things and the way in which he answered the questions.

BEHAR: But they made it look like he was guilty, like he was on trial for something.

CLAY-SIMS: I think that the defense`s job is to hold the state to the burden that they have. They have that burden, the defense doesn`t have a burden, and if there are weaknesses in the state`s case -- and there were a lot of weaknesses. For example, tremendous problems with those forensics. Why they would bring in some of the people they brought in, I really don`t understand, but I think that that might have been one of the reasons that the jurors --

(CROSSTALK)

BEHAR: They had their experts and you guys had your experts and they conflicted, isn`t that what happened?

CLAY-SIMS: Well, there`s a difference. For example, the botanical (ph) expert that testified for the defense talked about how she estimated that Coyle`s remains could have been there as little as two weeks. She wasn`t saying how long they were there. She was not going to be that specific. And an air potato vine which has a heart-shaped leaf can grow eight inches in a day.

So I think the defense`s witnesses weren`t going so far out on a ledge. They were not going to say that taking a can of air from a trunk is going to allow you to conclude an odor of decomposition. I think that that -- that was --

BEHAR: Obviously they didn`t prove the case well enough to convict the girl, they did not.

Let me ask you one thing that`s been bothering me. There was a tape of her when they told Casey that the child`s remains were found, and she became hysterical -- she was so upset and weirded and crazy and like that, acting -- in response to the tape that they had found the child.

If she -- the child was dead and she accidentally killed her or the child died of an accident, why was she so upset that they found the remains?

CLAY-SIMS: See, that`s the point that --

BEHAR: That doesn`t make sense to me.

CLAY-SIMS: That`s what the trauma expert I think was talking about. You can`t predict how anyone`s going to respond to any event at any time.

BEHAR: I see.

CLAY-SIMS: There is really -- there`s just no way to do that.

BEHAR: Now, after the verdict, you guys were all caught on camera celebrating, which I mean some people can understand that. You had won the case. And other people -- especially on this network -- people were saying that it was kind of unseemly to be celebrating at that point when there is a dead child in the picture. How do you respond to these critics?

CLAY-SIMS: There wasn`t any planned celebration. We went through that restaurant every day on the way to our cars. What had occurred is on the way through the restaurant we looked out and the owners of the restaurant locked the doors because they could see a crowd forming, and I think they were concerned for our safety. They then offered us food and drink.

There was a toast, but the toast was to the Constitution. And we felt very strongly about our client`s innocence, and we were so grateful that she was not going to be executed for a crime that we believe very strongly she did not commit.

BEHAR: Let me ask you something -- do you have children?

CLAY-SIMS: Yes.

BEHAR: Would you let Casey babysit your kids? You say she`s innocent.

CLAY-SIMS: Well, you know, my kids are older.

BEHAR: Well, let`s say they were younger. Would you leave her with your children?

CLAY-SIMS: I -- I liked Casey Anthony. I came to trust her. And that`s a really -- I felt the Casey Anthony that I knew, I felt very comfortable with her. I felt that the person that I became close to during that trial, I felt comfortable with her.

BEHAR: Well, I guess if you believe she`s completely innocent, then you would.

CLAY-SIMS: Well, again, my children are grown. I don`t quite know how to answer that question.

BEHAR: Your grandchildren -- how about your grandchildren?

CLAY-SIMS: I think Casey Anthony has been so unfairly represented in the press, the person that I know I felt very comfortable with.

BEHAR: Do you fear for her safety?

CLAY-SIMS: I do, I do.

BEHAR: Does she have any protection now?

CLAY-SIMS: That`s being taken care of.

BEHAR: Oh, yes. That`s good. OK. Thanks very much.

CLAY-SIMS: Thank you very much.

BEHAR: OK. We`ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BEHAR: Three years ago Bree Boyce was a 234-pound deli worker who felt like a misfit. Today she is Miss South Carolina. She is with me now. Congratulations, Bree, to you.

BREE BOYCE, MISS SOUTH CAROLINA: Thank you, Joy. I`m so excited to be with you.

BEHAR: Quite an accomplishment. How did you lose all that weight? Tell our audience how you did it.

BOYCE: Before I answer that, on behalf of the Miss America family, I wanted to thank you for doing a job well done at Miss America last year judging. So we were just excited to have you there last year.

But I lost the weight the good old-fashioned way. I wanted to get healthy. I went to the doctor and I had been having many knee problems, and he just looked at me and he told me it has to come off, the weight has to come off. Your body cannot take it. And I`m only 17 years old sitting in a doctor`s office having this horrific conversation as a teen. And I knew at that moment I wanted to make a change, so I made a change for the good. And I educated myself and I learned all of the nutritious facts that I needed to know and physical activity part of it.

It`s just so important. And I think people need to make sure that they`re getting fun and exciting exercises in because you don`t want to feel the need that, oh, here comes another day at the gym. It must be exciting and fun and something that you enjoy to do to keep up with it for the rest of your life.

BEHAR: That`s true. You have to like a sport of some sort, which I don`t.

BOYCE: Yes. I love zumba (ph). It`s a dance class. I can`t dance, Joy, but I do love -- I love to pretend like I know how to dance.

BEHAR: How about bowling? I think I could bowl. Should I try bowling? What do you think?

BOYCE: Yes, you could bowl. Yes, I definitely think you should take it up.

BEHAR: What do you make of this suggestion by this Harvard pediatric professor that says that severely overweight kids should be taken away from their parents for their own safety? What do you make of that?

BOYCE: Well, I think that is completely crazy, because as humans, we should take responsibility for ourselves and for our children. Our school systems should take responsibility as well, because the things that they`re feeding our kids are horrific. There are things that kids are eating that are so high in caloric intake that they`re not getting enough physical activity to burn it off. And so many processed foods, and the schools aren`t really taking notice of that.

But kids are in school eight hours a day. They should be aware of what they`re feeding the kids and how they`re educating them on their health.

BEHAR: Absolutely right.

BOYCE: Just like math and science, they`re taking that through the rest of their lives, and health is a big, important issue that kids should be educated on.

BEHAR: Yes, I think so. And I think it`s a little bit severe to be taking kids away from their families. Thank you very much. Again, congratulations to you, Bree.

BOYCE: Thank you so much, Joy. Thank you.

BEHAR: OK. Thank you all for watching. Good night, everybody.

END