Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony (25 page)

The testimony of the witnesses was sealed, as per standard procedure. The media camped outside the courthouse was certainly speculating about the witnesses, making a brouhaha about anybody involved in the case who was coming up the sidewalk. In all, six witnesses entered the grand jury room that day, and what they said in the two-hour proceeding has been kept secret, by law. All the witnesses had been subpoenaed to testify. They were Casey’s father, George; Corporal Yuri Melich; canine handler Jason Forgey; FBI hair analyst Karen Lowe; FBI agent Nick Savage; and computer forensics investigator Sandra Cawn. Each witness was called forth separately to testify in private. While I cannot discuss the proceedings in this case, I can tell you that besides the six witnesses, Linda, Frank, and I were all there for the prosecution team. The state attorney was present and, of course, the courtroom reporter. George Anthony was accompanied by his lawyer. Though Casey was invited to testify without immunity, she declined through counsel. There was no judge involved, only the nineteen grand jurors.

The grand jury reached its decision within two hours of the hearing’s conclusion, handing down the primary charge of first degree murder and supplementing it with six other charges: aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. After getting word of the grand jury’s decision, my boss, State Attorney Lawson Lamar, addressed the press. “The investigation contains intricate forensics that are on the cutting edge of science. We are used to complex forensics, and are ready to manage this evidence at trial.” I appreciated the words of confidence and knew I was already doing everything possible to get my experts in order and be prepared for the trial date.

Jose Baez had alerted us that Casey would be spending the day at his law office in Kissimmee. In order to waste no time taking Casey into custody, Melich was on his way to Baez’s office the minute the indictment was unsealed. Casey was reported to have been cool, polite, and calm when he arrived to arrest her. This outcome was no surprise; she always seemed to keep her emotions in check. Melich placed her in handcuffs and transported her to the sheriff’s office, where she was read her Miranda rights. Melich later reported that she declined to speak to anyone without her attorney present, but her mood was light and she engaged in chitchat with the officers processing her back into the system. She could have asked the court to have another bond hearing, but for some reason never made clear to us, she opted not to. By that evening, she was back at the Orange County Jail, charged with first-degree murder in the death of her darling two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie. Whether she was to face the ultimate penalty was an issue to be decided on another day.

I
N SPITE OF THE GRAND
jury indictment, Cindy Anthony was still convinced that Caylee was simply missing, not dead. As such, she spent the months of October, November, and December going on TV to say that Caylee was alive and to wonder why the police weren’t looking for her. Now that the indictment was in, our office started preparing for trial. The pretrial date, when you discuss if you are ready for trial, was set for December, abiding by the 180 days speedy trial statute. We figured the defense would try to push the case to trial before Caylee’s body could be found, thereby leaving open the argument that she was alive somewhere, so we had to be prepared for that. Although it would have been a herculean task, we were up for it. I was primarily dealing with requests from the defense about the forensic testing. We assumed that the defense would start taking depositions. They wanted the lab documents from Dr. Vass and the FBI. There was a great deal of litigation about getting the lab information. Many of the labs were out of state, so technically they didn’t have to comply, but everybody was fairly cooperative. The defense also made other requests, many of which seemed overboard to me, such as when Baez requested all the e-mails between the sheriff’s office and Dr. Vass. Technically we were not required to provide these, but in this digital age we had no problem providing it. Baez also wanted law enforcement to compile and copy each and every tip they had received concerning Caylee sightings. We again had no problem with providing that as long as the agency didn’t. The sheriff’s office had to spend time and effort to put together those tips—numbering about five thousand—and as a result, they had the right to expect reimbursement for the copying costs.

There was one particularly ridiculous hearing where Baez complained that the sheriff’s office was not filtering the tips that were being provided to the defense, and he accused them of giving him the worthless ones first—as if anyone had time to sort them that way. When the tips were all collected and Baez was informed that they were ready for pickup, he balked, claiming that Casey didn’t have the money to pay for them. We suspected this wasn’t true, since there were rumors floating about that Casey had sold videos and photographs of her daughter to
ABC News
for $200,000. But regardless of the money situation, the whole exercise just felt like an unnecessary waste of time, which it almost certainly was.

It wasn’t just the defense’s requests that appeared outrageous. In general I found their continued presence in the media to be questionable. Baez was on TV all the time, giving his opinions, making statements, all arguably inappropriate under the rules of the Florida Bar. On November 7 I filed a motion to have the court prohibit the defense attorneys from making comments to the media. I thought Baez was potentially tainting the jury pool, which was a concern that Baez himself claimed to have. I even went so far as to extend the gag order request to all parties involved in the case, including the sheriff’s office and the Anthony family. Not surprisingly, the motion was opposed by Baez. In the end, he must have been more concerned about continuing his media appearances than about getting the untainted jury pool he said he wanted. Of course the media opposed us on this as well. The motion was denied.

While we were battling Baez on just about every little thing, there was another issue that we had to address internally at the prosecutor’s office: whether to seek the death penalty against Casey. Every defendant charged with first degree murder technically faces the possibility of the death penalty, though few actually meet the eligibility requirements in the statute. These requirements are based upon factors about the crime, the victim, and the offender’s prior record. Although the statute does not mandate it, most state attorneys try to inform the court as early as possible if their case obviously does not meet any of these criteria. In some cases the determination is clear-cut because none of the criteria is met. In others, though some of the criteria may be met, we know from experience and research that the death penalty will not fly, either because juries never give it under those circumstances or because the courts have decided in similar cases that the facts aren’t sufficiently egregious.

We like to have as much information as possible in making such an important decision, so we invited Casey’s defense team to provide us with any information they would like us to consider. After some delay they provided us with a document that was largely useless to us since it provided no new information, just a lot of argument. From reading it, we sensed that it was prepared more for the media than for us. We presented the information we had to the state attorney, and from the outset, Linda, Frank, and I knew how it would go. Since we didn’t know how Caylee died, we could not in good faith assert that we could meet any of the criteria related to the crime itself. That left us with only a single criterion met by the case: the fact that Caylee was a child in the care of a caregiver. Strong as that piece was, alone it was unlikely to convince a jury or appellate court that death was justified. On December 3, the state attorney made the decision not to seek the death penalty against Casey.

Meanwhile, Baez continued to file motions, including a request to use his laptop in jail, another to inspect the evidence, and another to review the credentials of the cadaver dogs. Some of the motions were fairly standard, such as inspection of evidence, while others seemed to demonstrate an expectation that Casey should be treated differently than other inmates. Special privileges were requested, and generally, unless there was some security concern at the jail, they were granted. At one point the defense requested that she not be required to appear in court when the motions were heard. We objected, and her presence was required. Some people wondered why we objected. Why should we care if she did not want to hear her own attorney’s motions? Baez accused us of just wanting to put her on display. In truth, it was not that simple.

While part of me felt that if I had to sit and listen to him blather on, then she should too, the actual reason was more subtle. We in the prosecution are highly conscious of the accusations that defendants typically make against their attorneys after they are convicted. One way of responding to those allegations is to show that the defendant knew what the lawyer was doing and went along with it. Having her present in the courtroom throughout the trial helps with that argument. As the motions poured in, there was one thing consistent in them all. Every motion attacked somebody. Usually it was the police, but occasionally it was our office. Reading Baez’s motions left you with the distinct impression that he felt there was a conspiracy against his client and against him. We learned to grow a thick skin and consider the source. Many of the motions alleged facts that were just plain wrong; Mr. Baez didn’t always check his facts very carefully before he put pen to paper. On one occasion, I recall, he filed a motion saying that the sheriff’s office had withheld evidence from him when he and a defense expert had come to view it. We decided that our response was going to be: “Prove it.”

So turning to Baez, Judge Strickland said, “Call your first witness.” He stammered and looked surprised, seeming to be caught off guard. He tried to delay by claiming that he hadn’t expected to have to present a witness. Luckily for him, Linda had brought the witnesses in for him (she is so helpful, isn’t she?), and when he put the witnesses on they testified that the evidence he claimed was withheld was in fact at an out-of-state laboratory being tested. The whole motion fell flat on its face.

The first trial date was set for January 5, 2009, which was within the six-month window. On December 11, 2008, the pretrial hearing was under way in front of Judge Stan Strickland when Baez came before the judge and asked for a continuance in the case, thereby waiving Casey’s right to a speedy trial and giving everybody more time to prepare their cases.

For us it was a gift, but not a surprise. In this instance, Baez did the smart thing. When your client’s life is in your hands, it’s no time to play chicken. He needed time to depose all the witnesses and inspect all the evidence. Up to this point he had done very little of either. Any conviction we might get would be far more secure if he left no stone unturned. We could have gotten the state’s case ready to present in time for January, but this extra time would give us opportunities to pursue things in a different way and go at a pace that would be much more conducive to presenting a thorough case. As it turned out, we’d need every second of the extra time.

At that very moment, Roy Kronk, the Orange County meter reader who’d called the police over the summer about a suspicious bag in a swamp, was revisiting that same swamp on Suburban Drive. He noted that the gray laundry bag he’d phoned in to 911 back in August was still there. Now he had no doubt that the white object he had seen next to the bag was a skull. While Judge Strickland was granting Baez’s motion for a continuance, Roy Kronk was calling his boss at the utility company, leading to the fourth call alerting the police to something important on Suburban Drive.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

FINDING CAYLEE

I
was sick and had stayed home from work on a very gray, rainy December 11 when my neighbor Dawn Feeser called to alert me to the latest “breaking news” in the Anthony case. I assumed it was another of the false alarms I’d heard so often, but I turned on the news anyway. I was in disbelief. At 9:38 that morning, the skeletal remains of a child had been found in a swamp just off Suburban Drive near the Anthony home. Someone had called 911 about a suspicious bag and something that might have been a skull in that area. The CSI team had already confirmed that it was a skull—a child’s skull.

I immediately dialed Linda to see what she knew. She had spoken to Melich, who confirmed that a body had been found. Melich told Linda that upon being notified of the find, he had requested CSI Gerardo Bloise to proceed to the scene and verify it. Bloise was there when Yuri arrived, as were the medical examiner’s investigator, the crime scene photographer, and another detective. By that point, they’d taped off the scene and Suburban Drive had been closed, though it wasn’t a much-traveled road to begin with, being frequented only by people going to the elementary school just down the dead-end road.

Beyond that, there was not much more known, but Melich was on the scene and promised to keep us posted. As the morning wore on, the details started coming in. There wasn’t much for me to do yet, even if I had been at the office, so I waited by the phone for updates throughout the morning and afternoon. Roy Kronk had gone back to the Chickasaw neighborhood to read the meters and said he just happened to return to the same spot he’d gone to before to relieve himself again. Once there, he saw the bag, tried to pick it up with the stick he used to open meter boxes, and a skull rolled out. He did not initially tell the deputies that morning that he had called 911 about that same location three separate times back in August. After his discovery, he went back to his utility truck where his partner, Alan Robinson, was waiting. Once there, he called his supervisor, Alex Roberts, who notified the dispatcher, who placed the call to 911.