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CASEY ANTHONY: FAILING TO ESTABLISH GUILT
claimed, was because her father had sexually abused her as a child and so she was trained to deceive others (Baez, 2011: defence closing statement). In order to support the new and different story, the defence questioned Casey’s capability for committing murder by principally attacking the prosecution on their forensic evidence, referring to it as ‘fantasy forensics’ which reflected their ‘level of desperation’ (Baez, 2011: defence closing statement). In addition, Baez argued that the forensic evidence was irrelevant since it did not reveal how Caylee had died. Spotting the weakness in the prosecution’s case enabled the defence to emphasise their theme of an ‘accident that snowballed out of control’. The gap in the prosecution’s story appeared in other critiques developed by the defence. For instance, Baez accused the prosecution of trying to make the jury angry and emotional, arguing that ‘Casey’s character has nothing to do with how she [Caylee] died’ and that the prosecution’s evidence relating to the trunk of the car also did not reveal how Caylee died (Baez, 2011: defence closing statement).
Closing statements: was it premeditated murder or not? Inability to offer an irrefutable cause of Caylee’s death appears to be at the heart of the prosecution’s failure to establish guilt. For instance, the prosecutors vigorously argued that Casey was guilty of premeditated murder but this was at odds with their filing of three different charges. Casey was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter and aggravated child abuse. However, even the charge of first-degree murder proved problematic because in Florida there are two ways in which a person can be convicted of this crime: premeditated murder and felony murder (2015 Florida Statutes). To prove premeditated murder, the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Casey murdered Caylee after consciously deciding to do so. To prove felony murder, the State needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Caylee’s death occurred as a consequence of committing a felony, in this case, aggravated child abuse or attempted aggravated child abuse by Casey. Thus, the prosecution explained to the jury that they could find Casey guilty of either premeditated murder or felony murder. More than one version of motive and capability was offered and we would argue that this strategy was detrimental to the prosecution’s case. The point is illustrated in Jeff Ashton’s closing statement: Our position is that this was a pre-meditated murder of a young child but we know that you can reconstruct the events in any way that you want. So you also need to know what felony murder is. ... The reason that we talk about this is that you can postulate a number of different hypotheses in this case. Some might say well maybe Casey put the duct 15
