Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story (60 page)

I had already gone over these reports with a fine-tooth comb.

How could I have missed that?
I wondered.

I even objected. We went to sidebar, and while we were standing before the judge, Burdick gave me this smirk, as if to say, “We got you. Finally, we’ve got you. She’s going down.”

Of course, I wasn’t smiling.

Bradley’s testimony came at the end of the day. I wanted more time to cross-examine him so I asked the court for a little more time, and Judge Perry agreed.

The prosecution liked to put a strong witness on at the end of the day so when the jury went home, the prosecution could leave on a very high note. It was a great strategy.

I went back to the back room, and I questioned Casey.

“What the fuck is this all about?” I said. “Eighty-four times looking for chloroform? Did you know anything about this?”

“I have no idea what this is,” she said. “I’m telling you, I didn’t visit any chloroform website eighty-four times. That’s ridiculous, and it’s not true.”

I ended up believing her, because I looked at the page. It gave no information. This page had been clicked eighty-four times, but the page preceding it had only been clicked once. You needed to click the preceding page to get to the chloroform page. How could that page be clicked eighty-four times if the preceding page had only been clicked once?

It didn’t make any sense.

I called Larry Daniels, my computer expert, and asked him if he would help me. He and I stayed up all night trying to find a way to cross-examine the issue. We needed to cross-examine Bradley the next day in court, but Bradley had not prepared the report. Stenger had. Larry was very frustrated over that.

The next day, the one strong point I could bring out on cross-examination was that Bradley hadn’t prepared the report. The state called another witness to testify as to Stenger’s report, which made me raise a serious question about Stenger. I would have to wait until I put on the defense case to talk about that NetAnalysis report, which would have shockingly different results, and that’s when I would completely blow it out of the water.

We had to sit and wait on that for a while. It was unnerving.

Then they called Lee, who was there to testify that he wasn’t the one who deleted files on the computer. My intention was to admit testimony about the searches for prostitutes and escort services, to argue that the conclusion was that George was the one who had deleted the files, because the logic was that he didn’t want Cindy or anyone else to know about his philandering.

I wanted to say, “If you’re a married man, and you’re looking for whores on your computer, you better believe that from time to time you’re going to make deletions of your Internet history.”

But I couldn’t. It was outside the scope of the direct examination.

N
EXT, THE PROSECUTION
delved into the crime scene. Deputy Edward Turso and Deputy Pamela Porter were the first two officers to arrive on the scene when Roy Kronk made his 9-1-1 call to report he had found a body on December 11, 2008. Given the fact that Kronk had said to Porter, “Do I still get the reward even though she’s dead?” and the fact that Porter had been ordered by Internal Affairs not to say anything about Kronk, in effect keeping that little bit of information a secret, I didn’t expect the state to call her, and they didn’t. Instead they called Turso, who told the jury how he had arrived on the scene and found the body.

It was at this point we knew the prosecution wasn’t going to call Kronk, which I just couldn’t believe they were doing, but the reason they didn’t call him, it turns out, wasn’t just that they didn’t trust Kronk’s testimony. Worse than that, they flat out didn’t believe him.

They thought he was “untruthful.”

Here’s what offends me deeply. They were asking the jury to believe the veracity of the crime scene that he delivered to them, while at the same time refusing to believe his story.

It was a case of, “Believe everything at the scene that I found, but don’t believe me.”

This was bad enough in a criminal case. In a capital case, which this was, it was so much worse and is really one of those things that makes you question capital punishment in this country. If this could happen in a high-profile case that everyone is watching, imagine a quiet case where no one is paying attention … It’s scary.

A
FTER CALLING A COUPLE MORE WITNESSES
about the photographs of Caylee’s remains, the state called medical examiner Dr. Gary Utz, who testified there was no evidence of trauma to Caylee.

After Utz, the state called Dr. John Schultz, their forensic anthropologist, whose job it was to show the jury the gory details of the scene. They went so far as to show the jury photos of and testimony about animals chewing on Caylee’s bones.

I objected strenuously. We went to a sidebar, and Judge Perry allowed it because of my opening statement that the remains had been moved. I didn’t see how one thing had to do with the other, but that was his basis for allowing the jury to hear and see this prejudicial information that wasn’t probative in any way. All it did was introduce an element of gore to the scene.

Casey, meanwhile, had to sit in court and watch these horrible photos of the bones of her beloved daughter, and I could see her get upset. Dorothy Clay Simms would put her arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

Jeff Ashton then took the time to complain about it.

“I do think that counsel’s arm around the back, patting, needs to not be done in front of the jury,” he said. “So we would ask that Ms. Sims and all counsel be instructed that the consoling really needs to stop, because it has the potential to influence the jury and getting sympathy. So we would ask that counsel stay out of it and leave the consolation for the breaks.”

Judge Perry refused to do as Ashton asked, but he did warn me to watch myself, lest the court have to remove Casey from the courtroom.

Later in the day Casey became so upset watching those horrifying photos that she became ill, and Judge Perry called off court for the rest of the day. For all those bloggers who said that Casey didn’t love her daughter, that she killed her so she could go dancing—well, you should have been in the courtroom on this day. Her pain was evident and terribly sad. This was a tragedy anyway you looked at it, and I was sorry to be a part of it.

T
HE PROSECUTION THEN CALLED
to the stand Dr. Jan Garavaglia, the medical examiner. The prosecution was touting her as being their star witness.

What I found her to be—and the jury found her to be—was over the top. Meaning she gave much more than what she was qualified to discuss. And it all had to do with the cause and manner of death—how this was a homicide case. As before, she repeated her justification for this to be ruled a homicide:

A. Caylee’s disappearance was not reported to the authorities immediately,

B. her body was hidden in a wooded area, and

C. duct tape appeared to be applied to the lower face.

Again, these are not medical facts. These investigative facts say nothing about how Caylee died.

On cross-examination Dr. Garavaglia was very indignant, very abrasive, and yet I do really believe she felt she gave great testimony.

After the trial, she did something that really offended me. She made a documentary of the case, as we all knew she would. Instead of accepting the verdict, she commented that the jury had been made up of people who still believed Elvis was alive. She kept commenting about the defense’s spin and how strong the prosecutor’s case was. When I saw her say that, I wondered where she had heard all of this information.

She was a witness, which meant she wasn’t allowed to sit in on the trial. The rule of sequestration dictated that she not listen to the testimony. Either she was in violation of the judge’s order, or she was indicating her clear bias, when the medical examiner is supposed to be anything but.

T
HE NEXT WITNESS
was Michael Warren and his absurd, offensive video superimposition of the duct tape around a photo of Caylee. On the stand Warren said this was a “possibility” and was “speculative.” He failed to say it was entirely made up and sold to the public as reality.

I was offended on so many levels I don’t know where to start.

I moved for a mistrial.

“I think the overwhelming prejudicial effect was outweighed by the probative value and we would hereby move for a mistrial based on the fact,” I said.

Judge Perry asked me whether both sides had presented various theories about the location of the duct tape. And he asked me whether he had said there could be other possibilities, beyond the version of events implied by the video.

“The witness did,” I said. “However, it’s our position that it’s not outweighed by the video, about two minutes long, seeing a photograph of this beautiful child with duct tape wrapped around her face and her skeleton, skull, in the background.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I think that served only one purpose, to inflame the jury, especially since this witness said he could describe and explain that opinion without the video.”

Ashton argued that at one point Caylee did have duct tape over the area of her face, nose, mouth, or both, and that the exhibit was necessary to establish the state’s theory that the duct tape was the murder weapon and was admissible for that purpose.

“Motion for a mistrial at this time will be denied,” said Judge Perry.