Casey Anthony, acquitted of murder in 2011, called for an end to the death penalty.

Anthony is arguing from a seat few death-penalty critics have sat in: a defendant the state asked a jury to sentence to death, who was acquitted of murder. Her post makes the policy case on cost, deterrence and the burden of proof, but its last line is personal. The 2011 verdict is the legal answer to the murder charge, and it stands. Her post is opinion, not a filing in any case.

Casey Anthony called for the abolition of the death penalty in a post TMZ reported on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026. According to TMZ, she wrote that state-sanctioned death as a punishment is inhumane and that there is no evidence it stops people from committing crimes. She pointed to Florida's executions, which she put at 17 so far in 2026 and 19 in 2025, TMZ reported.

TMZ reported that she also cited the cost of death-penalty trials and executions, and argued that the burden of proof should stay on prosecutors instead of falling on defense lawyers, who she said should not have to explain why a client does not deserve to die while also fighting for that client's freedom. She closed, TMZ reported, with a line that reads as a reflection on her own case: "What if the person you are condemning to death is innocent?"

Her own trial is why the post drew attention. Florida prosecutors sought the death penalty against Anthony in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. In July 2011, a jury at her trial in Orlando found her not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child. The jury convicted her of four misdemeanor counts of giving false information to law enforcement, and an appeals court later threw out two of those counts. TMZ noted that if she had been convicted of murder, a death sentence was possible. No one else has been charged in Caylee's death.

The post arrives during a run of death-penalty headlines. TMZ tied it to Tennessee's attempted execution of Christa Pike, which went wrong and left Pike in a hospital for nearly two weeks before she was released, and to plans to execute former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, by firing squad. TMZ did not report that Anthony addressed either case by name. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. In Anthony's case the jury answered the murder charge 15 years ago, and her post is an argument about policy, not a legal filing.