Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  Dr. Vass also described his discovery of “shockingly high” levels of chloroform in the sample he tested. He told jurors the levels were 10,000 times higher than levels from a piece of carpet in the trunk of a control car, a vehicle he picked randomly from a junkyard for the purposes of testing. In his twenty years, he had never seen levels this high. In my opinion, the greater significance of Dr. Vass’s testimony was in regard to the chloroform. We had the smoking gun in the duct tape, and now we had the agent that would have subdued little Caylee Marie enough for someone to use it.

  RETRACING THE FOOTSTEPS OF OUR investigation into the fall of 2008, our prosecution case moved to the evidence found on the Anthonys’ home computer. We called Kevin Stinger, the supervisor of the computer forensics lab for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and John Dennis Bradley, a computer expert and software developer. Stinger confirmed that the word “chloroform” had been searched for and found in unallocated deleted space on the Anthonys’ home computer. Bradley had developed software called Cache Back for his employer, the Canadian software company Site Quest. He had been provided the deleted file from the Anthonys’ computer by Stinger.

  It was a team effort. The sheriff’s people had found references to chloroform on the computer, but they couldn’t decode the exact sites or dates they were visited. Bradley had the new software, so investigators gave him the file to decode. He was then able to decode specific sites, dates, and search terms. He found that two searches that had been conducted in March 2008, one for “chloroform” and another for “how to make chloroform.” Unfortunately, Bradley’s software made a mistake in determining the number of searches to a particular site about “chloroform,” claiming it had appeared eighty-four times on the Anthonys’ home computer. The defense caught the error before we did and presented it in their case. The error overshadowed the real importance of the matter, which was that a search for chloroform had been conducted at all. This error certainly hurt our credibility, but our presentation of this evidence in trial was in good faith.

  We moved from computer forensics and chloroform back to Casey, recalling Lee Anthony to the stand. Computers could give us mountains of techno-clues, but for those who didn’t have a good handle on “unallocated deleted space,” humans held important evidence to our case as well. Frank led Lee through the conversation the brother and sister had about Caylee being kidnapped in Blanchard Park, what the prosecution called Casey 3.0. We hoped that the jury would be able to see Casey’s ability to spin lies from lies. Whenever investigators had uncovered some new fact that refuted a story of hers, she had responded by creating a new drama about what had happened to Caylee Marie. The supposed kidnapping at Jay Blanchard Park was a great example. Lee’s testimony showed how Casey’s story of the night of July 16 had shifted. His words also provided a good transition into the next phase of our evidence: the discovery of Caylee’s remains and all the accompanying forensics.

  Dr. Jan Garavaglia, our chief medical examiner, took the stand on June 10. She testified to the findings of her autopsy of little Caylee Marie. She had determined that the toddler was a victim of a homicide, but the manner she died was “of undetermined means.” I walked her through the steps she had followed to reach that conclusion. I didn’t take a lot of time going over her findings, because I wanted to leave those questions for the defense. I knew that Cheney Mason would be the one to cross-examine her, and that he would be his usual outspoken self. I also knew that Dr. G was ready for him. Cheney was a good attorney, but he was very predictable.

  Sure enough, Cheney Mason decided to argue with Dr. Garavaglia, and after that, it was game on. Mason would ask a question, and Dr. G would go into an unchallengeable medical explanation. Mason would try to interrupt, but she would ignore him. He challenged her opinion that the death was a homicide and not an accidental drowning, and she pointed out that in all the records of drowning by children, in 100 percent of the cases, rescue was called. “No matter how stiff that body is, they always call 911 in the hopes that the child could be saved,” she said. She pointed out that there was no reason not to report the incident if it had been a drowning. She also said that there was no other logical conclusion for the facts presented in this case other than that it was a homicide. She continued, “There is no child that should have duct tape on its face when it dies. There is no reason to put duct tape on the face after they die.” As much as Mason tried to out-argue her, she applied her science and experience to answer every single one of his challenges.

  Dr. Michael Warren followed Dr. G in our list of witnesses. He offered one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence in the case. He was the head of the C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida. In order to demonstrate that the duct tape could be used as a murder weapon, we had asked him to prepare a demonstration. We provided him with three photographs: one of the skull, one of a full face of Caylee, and one of the duct tape. The tape and skull pictures had small rulers in the frame, referred to as “scales,” to establish size. By matching the scales in the two photos, Dr. Warren’s lab was able to magnify them enough to match them up and overlay them. Then, by comparing and aligning anatomical features like teeth and the bridge of the nose, he was able to overlay all three photos. He then created a video with a dissolve feature, making the photo of the skull transition to the photo of Caylee’s live face, then back to the skull. The duct tape was overlaid in both pictures to indicate where it would have been when Caylee actually died. It was heartbreaking to watch. Once again, I was surprised at how little visible reaction I saw in the jury. Still, Dr. Warren’s presentation appeared to have impacted Casey greatly. Judge Perry had to stop the trial. “Okay, ladies and gentleman of the media, Ms. Anthony is ill, we are recessing for the day,” he had to announce when the proceedings abruptly came to an end.

  The defense was outraged by the introduction of the video, calling it inflammatory and insisting that it presented only one of a number of possible scenarios. They had lobbied the judge to prevent it from being entered into evidence and had filed a motion for a mistrial related to its being shown to jurors. But Judge Perry agreed with our argument that it was important and “highly relevant” in determining the role of duct tape in Caylee’s death.

  After the trial resumed the following day, we called Dr. Neal Haskell, the prosecution’s sixtieth witness. Haskell was our forensic entomology expert. He was a professor of forensic science and biology at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, and a nationally known expert in his field. Haskell testified that he had found flies related to decomposition in the trunk of the Pontiac, flies which were known familiarly as “coffin flies.” According to Haskell, Caylee’s body probably would have been in the trunk a very short time, based on the bug evidence. He then compared those flies to those collected at the scene where Caylee was found and described how they were consistent.

  Our final forensic expert, Elizabeth Fontaine, was also testifying to a very emotional piece of evidence. She was the latent fingerprint analyst at the FBI lab, the same agent who’d seen the outline of a heart shape on the duct tape. In the minds of the public, the “heart on the duct tape” had taken on a life of its own. Images of Casey’s mouth, covered with a piece of duct tape embellished with a bright red heart, flooded the Internet to the point where people thought there really was a sticker on the tape, not a trace of sticker residue. Such was the case in a “trial by media,” where fact and fiction weren’t properly separated. There wasn’t much any of us could do about it, though. At least the jury was unaware.

  Fontaine testified that the outline she saw resembled a heart, even though there was no photographic evidence of the heart-shaped residue. She described it as something you would see if you left a bandage on your skin for a while and then removed it, with the dirt creating an outline of the bandage.

  Ever since the story of the heart sticker had first circulated, I’d felt that this evidence was not worth presenting due
to its ambiguous nature. Now that the defense was saying Caylee had drowned and was trying to accuse George Anthony of being complicit in the crime, it had turned into a side issue, as far as I was concerned. There were still questions about the sticker and whether the stickers found during a search of the Anthony home were an exact match to the dime-size imprint Fontaine had seen on the duct tape. I also questioned the relevance of including a sticker that had been found thirty feet away from Caylee’s remains that may or may not have been involved. I thought it was a distraction that we didn’t need, but Linda wanted it included in the testimony, so I acquiesced.

  Our final witness was Bobby Williams, the tattoo artist who had given Casey her “Bella Vita” tattoo in the weeks after Caylee disappeared. The purpose of putting him on last was that I felt that the fact that she had gotten the tattoo and what it said were the strongest pieces of evidence we had to suggest motive. I felt it would have a great deal of impact on the jury that three weeks after Caylee died, her mother had gotten an irreversible tattoo celebrating her beautiful new life.

  Casey had claimed to one of the shrinks that the tattoo was an ironic commentary on the fact that her life had not been beautiful, but we thought that was ridiculous. The defense never really argued what the tattoo signified. Instead, Baez seemed to be mostly concerned about whether “bella” meant beautiful or good. A substantial legal argument ensued, whereby everyone finally agreed that “bella” meant beautiful.

  Wednesday morning, June 15, the nineteenth day of the trial, we on the prosecution team rested our case with great confidence. We had covered everything we wanted with barely a hitch. We had ended with motive, that Casey wanted a life without Caylee, substantiated by our final witness, Bobby Williams. All our witnesses had held up well under cross-examination, and we thought we had laid it all out there as best we could for a circumstantial case. The defense’s opening remarks had thrown us for a loop, but at least we knew the nuclear lie was coming. We were ready to take on Baez and all he had to offer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  DEFENDING CASEY

  Jose’s dream team had forty-five witnesses on its list, mostly experts to challenge our own forensic discovery. I had reviewed everyone’s reports which, by the judge’s order, were supposed to contain everything a witness was going to testify to. Not included on the defense’s list were the two mental health doctors, so I was unsure how the defense was going to prove their molestation premise without them. Also it was unclear how, without the molestation story, they’d be able to justify Casey’s lies to everyone during the thirty-one days. Furthermore, without the therapists, there would be no evidence that Caylee had drowned, so we weren’t sure how the defense was going to convince the jury of that accusation from their opening argument, either.

  We didn’t think Casey was going to testify, but it was still a far-fetched possibility. If she testified, she could speak to these points and more. Regardless of whether she told the truth, we knew that she would be convincing on the stand. On the other hand, Linda was eager to cross-examine her. She had been preparing for the opportunity for three years.

  Looking over the witness list ahead of time, we’d thought maybe Baez’s team would mount a defense focused on Casey’s character, as they could claim there was no substantial evidence showing that prior to June 16, 2008, Caylee had been abused or neglected. Instead, most of the defense’s case was based on evidence it claimed had not been found, such as fingerprints, DNA, or fibers. I was going to use my cross-examination of most of the defense witnesses to support my position that the absence of these minor corroborating clues was meaningless. You wouldn’t expect there to be fingerprints or DNA under the conditions in the swamp. An absent fingerprint didn’t mean a finger had never been there.

  The first witness to be called by the defense was Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Gerardo Bloise. This would be Bloise’s third time on the stand, having been called twice by us. He testified about places he had searched, the trunk of Tony Lazzaro’s car, and places he hadn’t, the master bedroom of the Anthony home. Baez’s goal of calling crime scene investigator Bloise was to infer that police had spent so much time focusing on Casey as the suspect that they had overlooked other potential suspects.

  Baez next brought two highly trained FBI experts to the stand in order to demonstrate some problems with the duct tape evidence. It appeared his goal was to embarrass the FBI and suggest that if such a distinguished lab could mishandle evidence, perhaps all our evidence was questionable. First up was Heather Seubert, a DNA expert. She said there was trace DNA found on the duct tape, but it turned out to be from an FBI technician who had handled it. It was an embarrassment to the FBI, but it was irrelevant to the case. Next was Lorie Gottesman, a forensic document examiner. She testified that she found no evidence of a sticker or sticker residue on the tape, contradicting the testimony of our expert, Elizabeth Fontaine. I thought these issues were irrelevant to the case, and prompted only by the defense’s motive to discredit our evidence.

  To refute the opinion of our bug expert, Neal Haskell, the defense called Tim Huntington. Huntington was a twenty-nine-year-old Ph.D. from Nebraska, a forensic entomologist, and an assistant professor at Concordia University. He had once studied under Dr. Haskell. He reminded me of Ichabod Crane, the schoolteacher from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” except for being about forty years younger. He was a nice guy and tall, with very thick glasses. Before trial, I had been told by Dr. Haskell that we might expect Huntington to disagree with us, but he would be honest.

  Huntington’s testimony focused on the bugs that had been found in the Pontiac’s trunk. He talked about the lifespan of flies and how flies might make their way into a car’s trunk. The gist was that if Caylee’s body had been in the car, there should have been lots of dead flies in there, and there weren’t.

  Haskell had already testified that the reason there weren’t more bugs in the car was because the trunk was sealed and they couldn’t get in. We thought this would be a simple disagreement between two experts about bugs. But Baez started moving Huntington in a direction beyond his field of expertise, asking Huntington his opinion about whether the stain in the trunk looked like the stain from a decomposing body.

  I objected, based on his lack of qualifications. He said he was in a position to render an opinion, saying he had worked at a funeral home in his teenage years. When Judge Perry said he would allow testimony and leave it to the jury to determine if Huntington had the expertise, I objected again. I said Huntington’s deposition did not cover opinions on the subject he was now testifying to. This would be the first of many objections on the prosecution’s part regarding the testimony of defense witnesses. Over and over, Baez would lead his witnesses to areas his reports did not address, and since they weren’t contained in reports or the depositions of these witnesses, our objections were sustained time and again. But what a frustrating situation for everyone, including the jury, who would have to wait for all these objections to be ironed out.

  Judge Perry’s admonitions to Baez about these repeated violations of procedure seemed to fall on deaf ears. These incidents were going to test even Judge Perry’s patience, and he was a very patient man.

  Huntington described an experiment he had performed just for the Anthony case. He took the carcass of a pig, put it in the trunk of a car, and let it decompose over time. He showed the jury pictures of the rotting pig and all the flies at various stages of decomposition. As he was making his presentation, Linda leaned over and whispered, “He didn’t put his pigs in a blanket.” We both laughed, and Linda dared me to actually say that during cross-examination.

  So, when I was crossing Huntington, I said, “Well your experiment didn’t mimic the conditions under which Caylee’s body was wrapped. You didn’t put your pigs in a blanket, did you?”

  I immediately told the jury that someone dared me to say that. I’m not sure if the defense team was a
s amused as we were, but Huntington gave a little chuckle.

  Huntington was the first witness to argue the idea that the garbage found in the trunk made the smell in the car. He was standing by his opinion that the flies were the result of trash in the trunk. On cross, I challenged him to show me where there was actual food in the garbage. I asked him if he had actually seen the evidence with regard to the trash and he said no, just a photo. First, I produced the picture in which he had claimed to see fly-producing garbage.

  He pointed to this one Oscar Mayer salami container. “See? There is meat inside that container, and if it rotted, that could create the smell,” Huntington said.

  We had the garbage in evidence. Our forensics people had taken the trash, dried it out, and put each piece in its own bag. I found the evidence bag that had the salami wrapper, handed it to Mr. Huntington, and said, “Show me the piece of meat in that package.”

  “Oh no, it was paper,” he said. What he had thought was meat in the picture was actually paper. That was the first step in the debunking of the smell in the trunk as garbage.

  Dr. Werner Spitz was a forensic anthropologist who was over the age of eighty. Back in the eighties and early nineties, he was one of the leaders in his field. Over the last ten years or so, he had inserted himself into a number of high-profile cases; O.J. was one, Phil Spector was another. Now he had involved himself in this case. I felt he was desperately searching for a way to maintain some relevance in his field.