New Member Of Defense Team Has History Of Fighting Death Penalty

For the new member of Casey Anthony's defense team, the fight against the death penalty is a family affair.

Jennifer Lyon and her sister, Rachel, have teamed up to produce controversial documentaries covering media, race and their relationship to the death penalty.

In two documentaries produced by her sister, Jennifer Lyon has taken the position that the media unfairly portrays African Americans, and that stereotype contributes to people of color being dealt death sentences unfairly.

In a pair of documentaries produced by her sister, the lawyer who will lead efforts to keep Casey Anthony out of Florida's death chamber, said blacks and people of color are over represented on television as perpetrators of crime.

"All of those things are being sold as actually representative of what most African American and Hispanic people are," Jennifer Lyon said.

At the same time, Jennifer Lyon said television over represents the threat of crime.

"Crime has been going down for years yet it gets reported 500 or 600 percent more because of the 24 hour news cycle and the need to feed that entertainment beast," she said.

Experts in filmmaker Rachel Lyon's documentary entitled "Juror Number Six" suggest potential jurors may be biased against blacks and people of color based on those media stereotypes, and those biases result in people of color more often being sentenced to death.

Casey Anthony is not a person of color, but her defense team has cited negative coverage as one reason to move the trial out of Orange County. Lyon said her first priority is to convince the judge the evidence is not there to warrant the state seeking death.