by Jeff Ashton
She claimed that for the next thirty-one days, she was in a fog. She did not have a clear recollection of what she did or why she did it. She did tell him that she was not a “party girl.” In explaining the “Bella Vita” tattoo, she said it was an ironic comment on the fact that her life hadn’t been beautiful. Dr. Weitz could not elaborate further on what she meant by that statement. This was as far as we got in our first interview with him.
The goal of our initial interviews had been to gather the basic facts with the intention of conducting more probative examinations in the days ahead. But on the morning of our next scheduled appointment with Dr. Danziger, we received a call from Jose Baez saying that he wanted to withdraw him as a witness. There was no need for deposition, he said. No sooner had he dropped the eleventh-hour witness on our doorstep than he whisked him away.
I wanted to proceed, and when Jose and Danziger arrived at our office I insisted we continue the questioning. We questioned him briefly, but then Jose said he wanted to call Judge Perry to prevent me from asking another question. We did, and the judge said that just to be safe, if I wanted to continue, I’d have to file a motion, and we of course complied.
Dr. Weitz was also scheduled to give a deposition that day. When he arrived at the office, Jose did not interfere. Dr. Weitz told us that he had reviewed Dr. Dangizer’s report. He brought to our attention Dr. Danziger’s MMPI results and agreed they were normal. Dr. Weitz had given her a battery of tests, including one designed to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by trauma like sexual victimization. The test did not support the conclusion that she had been victimized. Weitz explained it this way to me: I am not diagnosing her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but all of these things that she did were as a result of the denial of having been sexually molested. You can understand all of this behavior by denial and suppression.
“So, when Casey said that Caylee was with the nanny, she believed it?” I asked him.
“Yes,” Weitz said.
“When she was taking the cops through Universal, did she believe she worked there?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened when she got to the end of the hall?” I questioned.
“Well, people can go in and out of denial” was his easy answer.
I didn’t know denial could ebb and flow like that, but I was no psychologist.
After we took the doctors’ depositions, both sides agreed in court that the transcript of the depositions should not be made public, because the allegations were so sensational. Until now their contents have never been discussed publicly. On the prosecution side, we wanted to spare George the weeks of pretrial discussions in the press. I could just see the did he/didn’t he debates all over HLN, and if there was any way to minimize that, I was all for it. As for the defense, we assumed that Baez wanted to keep the story under wraps so he’d get the “wow” headlines at the beginning of the trial.
Regardless of our motives, Judge Perry concurred with our assessments and the documents were sealed. In the end, though, Weitz did not testify either. Having completed the depositions of both therapists, we filed a motion to have Casey submit to an examination by a state-certified expert. This is a procedure that usually applies to insanity cases, and we felt it should apply in this odd circumstance as well. We argued that point in court, and Judge Perry agreed with us. If the defense was going to offer mental health testimony, we had the right to have Casey submit to an examination by our own expert.
After Judge Perry agreed, Cheney took Jose in the back. It was clear there were risks for them in giving our expert access to Casey. For one thing, our expert could get Casey talking and lead her in a direction that the defense had no control over. Then there was always a risk that she could reveal something she didn’t mean to when our expert had her alone.
When they returned, we were informed that they were pulling both psychologists from their witness list. They might still have an expert testify on some hypotheticals about mental health, but they would spring that on us later during the trial.
I knew what Jose Baez had been up to. He had two possible objectives. The first, I think, was that he was trying to get Casey’s story in front of the jury without having Casey actually testify. The two psychiatrists would have testified to everything Casey told them about what went down on June 16, as well as all her allegations about her father and brother. Meanwhile, she would be protected from having to take the stand because of the rules of self-incrimination. Baez’s second motive was to present some explanation for why Casey would take thirty-one days to report that her daughter had disappeared or died. We were surprised that Baez had not anticipated the request for our own expert evaluation and considered that before showing his hand like he had. We appreciated the heads-up, nonetheless.
EVEN THOUGH THE WITNESSES HAD been withdrawn, Linda, Frank, and I all wondered how much of this George and Cindy knew. Just because the defense had dropped the witnesses didn’t mean they were abandoning the argument completely. There was still a chance that George could be dragged into this.
One evening around the time that all this was happening, Mark Lippman, the attorney who by then was representing George and Cindy, filed a strange press release. It said something to the effect that George Anthony had nothing to do with the disappearance of Caylee. I thought it was an odd statement, and I figured it indicated that they knew about the allegations, so I contacted Mark. Linda was in the room when I asked him about his press release, assuming that the release had been somehow in response to these new inflammatory allegations from Casey. I wanted to know if in light of the allegations, we should expect George or Cindy to change any of their testimony. During the call, I sensed that Mark and I were not talking about the same sequence of events. “Mark, what is it that you think the new story is?” I asked.
Mark told me that a few days earlier, Baez had asked for a meeting with just Cindy. When she arrived at his office, Baez, Dorothy Sims, and Ann Finnell via the phone were waiting for her with important news. Baez proceeded to tell Cindy that Casey had authorized him to say that Caylee had died at the house and that her death had been an accident. Baez also told Cindy that the state was investigating George’s involvement with Caylee’s death. Baez claimed that the authorities had information from a witness who said that George’s phone records held valuable clues.
I was speechless. Poor Mark only knew the tip of the iceberg. It was the cruelest thing I have ever seen an attorney do. Many times in defending a client a lawyer must do things that end up causing pain to innocent people. It happens, and I lay no blame on them. To tell this grieving woman, who for almost two years had held out hope that her daughter had nothing to do with the death of her little angel, that her own home was the place where it happened was bad enough. But to try and convince her that her husband was implicated and in jeopardy was beyond the pale. To me, there was no way to justify that kind of statement—no matter how “passionate” Baez may have been to defend his client. The only strategy I could see was that he was trying to get them to refuse to cooperate with us, fearing the prosecution of George.
“That is not the story that we have been given,” I told Mark. I also informed him that Jose’s claim that we were investigating George was a complete and utter lie. I believe my exact words were “That’s a fucking lie.”
I was outraged. Cindy and George hadn’t been the most helpful people throughout our investigation, but no one deserved to be treated like this. I was appalled that Baez would dare to tell these anguished parents a fat, blatant lie, while simultaneously hiding from the real, horrifying accusation that he was likely to make in open court. It shouldn’t have amazed me. From the moment I joined the case, I found myself saying over and over again, “I can’t believe he did that.” I kept trying to think the best of Jose and kept finding out how wrong I was.
I told Mark we weren’t investigating George, although sadly there
was more bad news. But I had to get back to him about it. Linda and I discussed the best way to handle the therapists’ reports and we decided to invite Mark, Cindy, and George to our office. I gave Mark a call.
“We would like to speak with your clients,” I told him. “Have them come to our office with you. What Jose is telling Cindy is not true. I understand that the Anthonys may not trust us, but if they would like to read the transcripts we now have in our possession, they can see exactly what Casey is saying about what happened.” I didn’t give Mark any indication of what I knew, beyond that the transcripts were from mental health experts.
Mark started guessing what it might be. “Are they saying that George disposed of the body?” he asked.
“No, it is worse than that. It is worse than you can imagine,” I said.
Mark had a conversation with Cindy and George, telling them about Baez’s fabrication. Cindy was furious. Mark later told us that she called Baez and cursed him out for lying to her, she then told him she was coming to see us to read the psychiatrists’ transcripts for herself.
When Baez found out that Cindy was coming to our office to see what the doctors had said, he immediately shot off an e-mail to Judge Perry, essentially accusing us of violating Perry’s order.
Linda said that Judge Perry’s order indicated only that the transcripts would not be made public documents; it never restricted our ability to investigate the story, and there was no way we were going to let Jose’s lies go unchallenged. Baez would later attack us on this point, but the judge agreed with us.
What we decided was that if the depositions were sealed, we would just discuss our notes and our recollections with the Anthonys. At this point, we felt we had to tell them. They needed to know the truth about what was going on. We were prepared for the defense to accuse us of all manner of witness tampering, but we were willing to take the risk. We felt a moral obligation to George and Cindy, even though we didn’t know where their loyalties lay. We never deluded ourselves into thinking that anything we could do would bring Cindy out of her denial, but we figured that maybe if Cindy wasn’t willing to come out of denial for Caylee, she might be for George.
George and Cindy were visibly upset when they arrived, polite but very apprehensive. They were not very talkative. We made the usual introductions, “How are you, nice to see you,” that kind of thing.
I hadn’t seen them in a while. The last time I had any conversation with either of them was with George at the Frye hearing. Generally, when we saw them at the hearings, there would be a polite nod exchange, though sometimes not even that.
Before the meeting, we’d told Mark that we would speak to him privately and share what we knew with him. Then it would be up to him to decide what to tell the Anthonys. We put Cindy and George in the conference room and took Mark into the office with us.
Linda and I carefully told him the story the shrinks had told us, as he jotted everything down on his legal pad to keep the story straight. He was in complete disbelief. He looked at us and said, “I cannot believe Jose lied to Cindy like that.” Mark asked us a couple of questions for clarification, but not many.
“It’s your decision what you tell your clients,” Linda and I said. “We are going to give you privacy. You tell them that we will wait for them. When you are done, if they have any questions, we will speak to them, but we are not going to interrogate them or ask them any questions.”
Mark left and went to the conference room to talk to the Anthonys for what seemed like twenty to thirty minutes. Linda and I were in a nearby conference room when Mark came to find us. Cindy and George had questions, and we accompanied him back to the conference room. Cindy was sitting at the table just looking down. George was next to her, his face bright red. Cindy looked angry. George looked like he had been crying, like someone had just killed Caylee all over again. He was just devastated.
“I just want you to know that none of this is true,” George said to us.
Cindy patted him on the hand and said, “It’s okay, George. Nobody believes this.”
His words would catch in his throat as he assured us one more time, “I just want you to know that everything I told you is the truth and I am not changing any of it.”
I remember Cindy saying something like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” referring to Casey. At least she was finally willing to admit that there was something not right about Casey. How it would affect her testimony at trial, though, was anyone’s guess.
That said, I didn’t get the sense of hostility I had in the past. I think the realization that Caylee had in fact died in Casey’s custody, at the very least, changed their animosity toward us. While they didn’t turn into supporters of the prosecution, they were not quite as obstinate.
Of course, the Anthonys weren’t the only wild cards in the deck. By now, we also knew to expect some kind of a “surprise” witness from Baez in the middle of the trial; all we could do was hope that whatever it was, we’d be able to handle it on the fly. Over the years, we’d all become pretty good at that, since Baez was not the first defense attorney to practice the ambush tactic. Part of the frequency of these ambushes comes from an unfortunate flaw in Florida’s discovery rule: it is extremely rare that discovery violations by the defense during the trial are punished by the exclusion of that evidence. Most defense attorneys know this, so the risk to the client is minor. A few years ago, the state added contempt against the attorney as one of the punishments in the judge’s arsenal, but unfortunately it is rarely used. As prosecutors, all we could do was adjust and try to prepare for the unexpected.
Heading into the trial, there was no telling how it all would play out. We had confidence in our case. We knew what evidence we had on our side. We knew what evidence they had on theirs. We also now knew what their defense was going to be, and that without the therapists on the stand to be the mouthpiece for Casey’s version of events, Casey herself was going to have to testify. Linda would be ready for the cross-examination.
It all came down to the jury now. Could we get a jury with a modicum of intelligence that would see through the bombast and the lies? Could we get a jury that would care enough about Caylee to put in the work necessary to see the truth, to see Casey for who and what she was? It was anyone’s guess. As good as we felt about where we were, the jury was, and always is, a crapshoot—the one part we couldn’t control.
PART III
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JURY SELECTION
Saying that Florida is familiar with high-profile legal cases is a gross understatement. In many ways, our state’s laws regarding the media are tailor-made for precisely this kind of court case: our discovery laws release information to both the defense and the media simultaneously, and our court system allows cameras inside the courtroom. But even in a state that had seen its fair share of media trials, this was unlike anything we’d ever experienced.
The clamor for new information was unparalleled. Usually, in sensational cases, the media would request copies of discovery, but because of the overwhelming demand and the huge volume of documents (over twenty-five thousand by the end), we had to create a special website so that media outlets could easily access the latest batch of photos or documents that we’d provided to the defense. Even during the slower years when we were simply taking depositions and filing motions, it seemed like barely a night went by without some mention of Casey Anthony in the news.
Sometimes this extensive coverage of the case’s minutiae would work to our advantage. While the defense was all too comfortable using the media to get their message out, we had determined in the beginning that we would not respond publicly to their comments. However, because the media would always cover the motions and responses that were filed by either side, we allowed ourselves to present a different kind of public response. I took personal delight at times in crafting lines in motions that I knew the media would pick up and run with. Ordinarily t
he motions would have gone by unnoticed, but in a case where literally every document was scoured, this was as close as we could come to putting out formal statements. In the end, it was the only way we had to respond.
It amazed me the way some people followed this case on the Internet. There were bloggers who read every single word of all twenty-five-thousand-plus documents. We would frequently get e-mails from people with suggestions for things to look into. Most of these were about as helpful as you’d expect, but occasionally there would be a gem that actually was of use. Likewise, there were regular blogs and websites that featured very well-considered commentary on the evidence, while others were just mean. The cycle of consuming new information and digesting it into analysis was incredibly fast. People came up with outrageous theories online one day and then moved on to something else the next. As a result, I think the defense actually used the blogs as sort of an informal focus group to test potential defenses. In my opinion, that may have made blaming George an appealing defense. It would have been fascinating to watch, if I hadn’t been so busy living it.
Fairly early on, this overwhelming amount of pretrial publicity made it clear that we would need to face the issue of changing venues. When it appears to the court that a fair and impartial jury cannot be found in the county where the crime occurred, the law permits the court to move locations. There are some appellate opinions that suggest that the court should at least attempt to select a jury in the home venue before moving on, but most of the time that is a futile gesture.
In my career, I’d had five trials change venue to five different counties all over the state. In each of those instances, it was pretty obvious that the level of pretrial publicity was too high for a fair trial to take place. So when the issue first came up in this case, it was a no-brainer. There was a news report on this case almost every day; even the most trivial things would warrant mention in the news. Once they even ran a story on what items Casey was buying in the jail commissary. There was no way we were going to get a jury from Orlando, and anyone we would get, we wouldn’t want.
