One of these things is not like the other...

Amanda Knox                            Casey Anthony

If you pay attention to the news or pop culture at all you know who these two women are. They have both been through very public trials, each one having been charged with a murder. They both have had their entire lives - their families, their childhoods, their 'partying' days, their lifestyles, their secrets, their mistakes - revealed to the world and picked apart in microscopic detail under the unflattering light of a bare bulb. They both spent time in jail. And they both have recently been exonerated. 

The difference is that one of these women came home to a hero's welcome and is expected to quickly become a millionare; the other has been declared a villian by the public and will probably spend the rest of her life hiding out in Florida somewhere.

It leaves me wondering about the two similar women, the two similar stories, the two similar verdicts and the two drastically different outcomes.

Both of these young ladies were aquitted because, according to a judge, there were enough holes in the prosecution's case to cast a reasonable amount of doubt. The exact details at the time of death are sketchy in both cases. A lot of the evidence is circumstantial.

Let's take a bird's eye view: 

Although she did provide conflicting statements, Casey swears she wasn't there the day her child died, that she has no idea what happened that day.

Did Casey Anthony have something to do with it? Yeah, probably. 

Where was she when it happened? Nobody knows for sure.

Is she lying to protect herself? Prosecutors felt they could prove that she was. 

Although she did provide conflicting statements, Amanda swears she wasn't there the night her roommate was brutally assaulted, raped and murdered, that she has no idea what happened that night.

Did Amanda Knox have something to do with it? Yeah, probably.

Where was she when it happened? Nobody knows for sure.
 Is she lying to protect herself? Prosecutors felt they could prove that she was.

These women have both been found innocent.

It seems to me like public opinion hinges on how the media chose to present each of them. For the masses, Amanda Knox is fashioned in the media as a mistreated victim, a beleaguered hero and so that is how she will be treated, while Casey Anthony is painted as a selfish, irresponsible, unfit mother and deserves to be treated as a social pariah for the rest of her life.

How can audiences be outraged by one and not the other? Or sympathetic enough to look the other way in one circumstance, but not the other? Do audiences do whatever Nancy Grace tells them to because they just want her to stop yelling? Does no one take a step back and actually utilize some critical thinking skills?

Maybe we will never know what really happened. I'm sick of hearing about both of them. All we know for sure is that the life of a young Meredith Kercher and an even younger Caylee Anthony was tragically cut short. Why isn't our focus on them? On offering support to the families of the real victims here?