The Murder Trial of Casey Anthony
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The Murder Trial of Casey Anthony
CRJ 204(Week #11 Worksheet)
The Defense Makes an About Face
Defense attorney Jose Baez
On May 24, nearly 2 weeks after jury selection with great publicity, Casey Anthony’s trial for the murder of her daughter, began
For the prosecution, the story remained the same. Casey Anthony was an habitual liar, who had killed her daughter Caylee to regain her carefree, single life by drugging her, putting duct tape on her mouth and dumping the body in the woods. According to the state, she had spent the month between the murder and the 911 call partying and living a single woman’s life, even getting a tattoo that read “bellavita,” or “beautiful life.”
But as the trial got under way, it quickly became clear that the official story—at least for the defense— had been changed—again.
Gone was the timeline that Casey had originally given police: that on June 15 her daughter had disappeared under the care of a woman named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez; gone was the notion that she’d spent a month searching for Caylee in vain before calling the police.
Instead, Casey Anthony’s defense now presented a very different story, one that made the defendant—by this point, a media pariah—a more sympathetic creature. It was a defense focused on reasonable doubt, on poking holes in the prosecution’s case.
Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick
The prosecutor who delivered the opening statements, Linda Drane Burdick, did not help the state’s case by doing so in the slowest, dullest way possible, punctuating her sentences with long, pregnant pauses that seemed designed to put jurors to sleep. That they were still awake by the time she reached her less-than-scintillating conclusion was little less than a miracle. The prosecution hewed to the established line: Casey Anthony wanted a single woman’s life, wanted to party in clubs with her DJ and promoter boyfriend. She hadn’t had a job in years, but had lied repeatedly to her family, posturing as if she had been going to work, when she had been going nowhere. The prosecution argued that Caylee was becoming too old, and would soon be able to speak and tell on her. It was a shocking theory, but people have committed murder for far less.
Casey Anthony’s defense attorney Jose Baez had a harder job: He had to convince the jurors that the woman on trial, who’d been found guilty in the court of public opinion years before her trial, was not a murderer, that the story was completely different. To do so, he dropped a bombshell in the jury’s lap: Casey Anthony hadn’t failed to report her daughter missing because her daughter had never been missing at all. Instead, she had died in a tragic swimming pool accident, one that the entire family was complicit in covering up.
The ‘Dysfunctional Anthony Family’ Defense
Caylee Anthony
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He alleged in his opening statement: “How in the world can a mother wait 30 days before ever reporting her child missing? That’s insane. That’s bizarre. Something’s just not right about that. Well, the answer is actually relatively simple. She never was missing. Caylee Anthony died on June 16, 2008, when she drowned in her family’s swimming pool. As soon as Casey came around this corner and went back, she saw George Anthony holding Caylee in his arms. She immediately grabbed Caylee and began to cry. And cry. And cry. And shortly thereafter, George began to yell at her, “Look what you’ve done. Your mother will never forgive you, and you will go to jail for child neglect for the rest of your frickin’ life.”
Caylee Anthony hadn’t been murdered, he maintained, but rather had died in an all-too-common way, drowned in the family pool. Baez noted, “In the state of Florida, the number one way children die is drowning in swimming pools.”
The only thing, said Baez, that had been unusual was the “dysfunctional” Anthony family, a family that harbored dark secrets. Baez alleged that Casey’s father, George Anthony had molested her as a child, which had given Casey an odd and detached way of dealing with her reality, pretending nothing was wrong at all in the most alarming situations. Baez was trying to lay the groundwork to explain Casey Anthony’s strange behavior while Caylee had been “missing.”
Casey Anthony in court
And he took the prosecution’s main weapon, Casey’s tendency to lie, and made it a part of her defense. Had Casey, as the prosecution contended, dressed up as if she were going to work, wearing a Universal badge, and gone nowhere, for two straight years? Yep. Had she lied about having a nanny that didn’t exist? Yes, she had. But, Baez contended, she had done so out of self-preservation, to keep her child away from her father: “It’s true for two years she pretended she had a job and pretended she had a nanny. Is that normal? Is that what normal people do?” Baez explained, “There was a reason behind this; something is not right here. Anything Casey could do to protect her child, living alone, making up a nanny. She forced herself to live in a world she wanted to.”
Jose Baez’s statement was a grand performance—but would the facts hold up?
Blaming George Anthony
George Anthony
Her father, George Anthony was called to the stand and over the course of his testimony, showed his temper and became angry and frustrated with Baez. But he spoke lovingly of his granddaughter, and wistfully remembered what he said had been their last morning together, which he said was June 16th.
“It was a great morning to have some fun together,” he said. “Dance around or watch a video.” He described Caylee as a smart little girl who was able to open up the pantry and find out what she wanted, that she was able to put own her own videos on the television, a girl who was verbally intelligent.
He testified that Caylee had left with her mother when she had been going to “work,” and Casey had said they might be staying out late and staying at “Zanny’s” house. But, he said, he never saw her again.
He was put on the spot and directly asked about the child abuse allegations, which he denied. He also denied helping with disposing of the body or knowing then that Caylee had died. He denied keeping duct tape in the house.
Casey Anthony in court
The defense during cross-examination, focused on the cagey relationship that the family had had. As he had put forth in his opening statements, Baez, asked how it was possible that the family hadn’t known their daughter was seven months pregnant, even though she had been living with them. It was also brought to light that George Anthony hadn’t known who the father of the child was, although George had been present for Caylee’s birth. The elder Anthony was also asked about an alleged affair with a woman known as River Cruz (aka Krystal Holloway). Holloway had told television reporter Tony Pipitone of Local 6 that Anthony had told her that Caylee’s death had been an accident gone horribly awry. On the stand, Anthony acknowledged knowing her, but only as a search volunteer, and denied having any affair.
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It was revealed that George Anthony had tried to commit suicide in January 2009, a month after Caylee had been found. The suicide note was revealed, and the defense tried to frame it as a case of George thinking law enforcement had been closing in on him. But the note showed a grieving grandfather. “She was so close to home, why was she there, who placed her there, why?
The prosecution continued to point out that Anthony actions indicated he hadn’t had knowledge of what had happened: he had bought a gun and had been going force people around Casey to tell him what happened.
The defense’s aim was to discredit the grandfather and create doubt of his statements. They aimed to show that the family, though outwardly appearing to be happy, was in fact, dysfunctional. Baez seemed also to be working to raise the question in the jurors’ minds whether Anthony himself had been the father and an habitual liar.
Cindy Anthony Changes her Story
Casey mother’s testimony was even more controversial. In the beginning, she testified that the day she had made the 911 call, on July 16th, George had brought home the car from the tow yard, which had a foul smell. “He opened up the windows and the hood and the trunk of the car.”
The car, Cindy recounted, had sat in the garage with the trunk and all the windows and doors flung open, while George had been gone to work. Cindy had removed Casey’s work purse and Caylee’s backpack from the trunk of the car. She had sprayed an entire bottle’s worth of Febreze in the car and had put dryer sheets in the car and trunk in attempt to get the foul odor out.
Cindy Anthony testifies
But, on a cross examination, the prosecution nailed her on inconsistent testimony. During her deposition, she had been asked about the dryer sheets, and had said, “I don’t know why a dryer sheet would have been back there. I don’t remember doing that.” Now, on the stand, she claimed that she had been put on new anti-depressant medication and had not been able to recall all the details. Cindy excused herself,”It was very traumatic to me.”
The prosecutor continued, “The reason that you sprayed Febreze was because of the unimaginable stench of that car. It stunk like, ‘nothing you’d experienced in my life. Worse thing I had ever smelled in my life,'” they said, quoting her earlier deposition.
Another hole was punched in Cindy Anthony’s testimony when she was questioned about the searches for chloroform and chlorophyll found on the family computer a few months before Caylee’s disappearance. For the first time, she insisted that it was she who had performed those searches. “I also ran a few other searches, for acetone, hydrogen peroxide,” she said.
She said she had also searched for “neckbreaking,” because, she testified, she had seen a reference to a skateboarding video regarding a “neckbreaking feat.”
The prosecution jabbed at her testimony: The timeframe during which she had been supposedly doing the searches didn’t line up, as she had been recorded at work during that time. And, furthermore, they pointed out, the chloroform searches were done back to back with logins to a MySpace page. Cindy Anthony hadn’t had a MySpace page and wouldn’t for several months, until after Caylee had been pronounced missing.
Forensic Experts
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Dr. John Schultz
The testimony that was probably the most difficult for the jury to process came from the forensics experts. Dr. John Schultz, a forensic anthropologist who had canvassed the crime scene, described what he had seen in the photos of the bones found—they had been found in the woods, scattered 15 feet apart—as evidence of the bones having been “chewed on by animals.”
Dr. Jan Garavaglia, the Orange County Medical examiner who had ruled Caylee’s death a homicide by unknown means, was a star witness for the prosecution, despite the fact that she had very little scientific evidence to go on.
She said that “some roots had grown through the hair, holes through the hair mat that indicated insect activity.”
Dr. Jan Garavaglia
She testified that she had seen the worn baby blanket from the scene—and that it contained very faded images of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Caylee’s room had been heavily decorated in Winnie the Pooh memorabilia. The faded quality was consistent with the notion that Caylee’s body had been in the woods for a long time; she hadn’t been found until December 2008.
The prosecution also made much of the duct tape found on the skull.
Dr. Jan Garavaglia, testified: “There is no reason to put duct tape on the face after they died.”
The prosecution even showed a video animation of Caylee’s face with duct tape on it, morphing into a skull, which the defense rejected outright as a “fantasy.”
The Defense Goes on the Offensive
Casey Anthony
The defense went on the counter-attack, particularly over the method of Caylee’s death.
Because the body had been so decomposed, there really was no scientific evidence to determine how she had died or even if she had been killed, which the defense successfully got Dr. Gary Utz to admit. When asked if he knew how Caylee had been killed he said, “I do not. I did not make the determination of cause and matter of death in this case.”
And they grilled Dr. Garavaglia on her ruling of “homicide by unknown means,” claiming it to be little more than an opinion, however educated.
She defended her decision. “The fact that it was tossed in a field to rot in bags is a clear indication that the body was trying to be hidden,” she said. “The fact that there is duct tape anywhere attached to that child’s face is to me an indication of a homicide.”
The defense challenged that the duct tape was the cause of Caylee’s death. The duct tape was not found encircling the skull, but was merely attached to the hair mat.
Other testimony left traces of doubt in the jurors’ minds.
Dr. Arpad Voss
Roy Kronk, the meter reader who had discovered the body, was put on the stand and testified that he had seen a skull and tried to notify police four different times, once as early as August. The defense tried to raise the possibility that Kronk had staged the scene himself to get reward money for the body’s discovery.
The evidence of chloroform, presented by the prosecution’s witness Dr. Arpad Voss from the University of Tennessee’s Oakridge Laboratory, was challenged by the defense as being experimental. Juxtaposed with the testimony of Dr. Marcus Weiss, a chemist and a colleague of Voss’, it was less clear that the levels of chloroform were so unusual, indeed, they could even have come from a household cleaning agent, such as Febreze.
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Weiss proposed that the rotting car smell could have been from garbage left in the trunk of the car when the car had been towed after running out of gas. For every person that had smelled “the smell of death” in the car, Baez put up two pictures of people who had testified that there was no foul odor coming from the car who had been around it when it should have smelled rank.
Closing Arguments
The prosecution stuck to its strategy. Casey Anthony was an habitual liar who had killed Caylee and then covered up the murder because she had wanted to be free. They recapped the presentation of their evidence, but were unable to prove how Caylee had been killed.
- Cheney Mason
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton appealed to the jurors’ emotions. “We can only hope the chloroform was used before the tape was applied, so Caylee went peacefully without fear,” he said. “But go she did, and she died because she could not breathe. She died because she had three pieces of duct tape over her nose and mouth. She died because her mother decided the life she wanted was more important.”
“When you have a child, that child becomes your life,” he said. “This case is about the clash between that responsibility, and the expectations that go with it, and the life that Casey Anthony wanted to have.”
By the end of the trial, the defense had all but abandoned the theory that Casey Anthony had been abused by her father, who had flatly denied it on the stand, and focused instead on creating reasonable doubt in the juror’s minds. The defense called the prosecution’s case a “fantasy.” “Fantasy searches, fantasy forensics, phantom stickers, phantom stains … and no real, hard evidence,” he said.
In his closing statement, Baez argued, “The one question will never be answered, the key question, it can never be proven and that is, ‘How did Caylee die?’ That is why we are all here. There’s no dispute that she’s passed on. The key question as it related to all manslaughter, child abuse, and murder charges is how did she die? Those questions were never answered.”
“She had no motive. Casey treated Caylee well. She loved that child.” No witnesses, he reminded jurors, ever testified that Casey Anthony had been anything other than a loving mother.”
The Verdict
On July 5, 2011, the jury returned a verdict that shocked the armchair jurors of the world. Casey Anthony was found not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter or child abuse. She was only found guilty of four misdemeanor counts, which dealt with her lying and misleading police officers; she was released a few weeks later with time served, having been in jail for three years before trial.
Anthony family and defense team rejoyce at the verdict.
After the case ended, a few jurors came forward to explain why they had ruled the way they did.
Jennifer Ford told ABC News, “I did not say she was innocent. I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be.” Ford said they were all “sick to their stomachs,” but had no choice to render the verdict not guilty.
In the court of public opinion, it seems like Casey Anthony will be guilty as charged. After her release, she was expected to disappear, as someone of such notoriety might.
What were the forensic and evidentiary issues do you believe led to Casey Anthony’s acquittal?
