Casey Anthony defends her image

NEW YORK, June 13 (UPI) -- Casey Anthony, acquitted last year in the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in Florida, says she was rightly found not guilty.

In her first public remarks since her release from jail for lying to authorities about the girl's disappearance, Anthony told CNN's Piers Morgan she loved her daughter and didn't kill the child, whose skeletal remains were found in 2008 near her grandparents' home in Orlando.

"Obviously I didn't kill my daughter," Anthony said Tuesday in a phone interview on "Piers Morgan Tonight."

"If anything, there's nothing in this world I've ever been more proud of, and there's no one I loved more than my daughter. She's my greatest accomplishment," she said.

Anthony was acquitted of murder charges last year but was convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to authorities investigating the child's disappearance.

She is serving probation on an unrelated conviction for check fraud.

"I'm ashamed in many ways of the person that I was," she told Morgan, commenting on her past image as a party girl. "Even then, that wasn't who I am.

"I'm 26 now, and I've gone through hell," Anthony said.

Anthony said she has stopped drinking. "I've probably had a handful of beers since I've been on probation," she said.

"The caricature of me that is out there, it couldn't be further from the truth."