Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  Pushing the “end of the hall” idea one step further, I brought up the creation of Casey’s final lie, Casey 4.0, the drowning story that became her version of the truth at trial. I explained how this story was yet another example of Casey reaching the end of the hall. Once the body had been connected to the house through the duct tape and laundry bag, suddenly the stranger abduction story became implausible. She had to take the lie somewhere else, and that somewhere was George Anthony.

  One thing that was important to emphasize was the total absence of logic in Casey’s version of the truth. Part of what I wanted to show was that even if you bought the idea that Caylee’s death was an accident, there really was no way to justify Casey’s behavior after the fact. Simply put, her behavior did not reflect how a mother would react to the “accidental” death of her child—unless, of course, you believed in the logic of Casey’s world. In Casey’s world, you didn’t call 911 when your child drowns. In Casey’s world, you didn’t frantically bring your child to the hospital to try and revive her. In Casey’s world, you didn’t grieve for weeks and months on end. Instead, in Casey’s world you stuffed your little girl in a laundry bag, threw her in a swamp, and went out partying with your new boyfriend.

  Turning to something that I knew Baez would feature in his closing, I brought up George Anthony. I explained all the reasons why I knew George was not involved with Caylee’s death, saying his love for her was undeniable, his passive acceptance of her death unthinkable, and his disposal of her body in a swamp unimaginable. I mentioned the suicide letter, the depth of the despair that finding Caylee’s body had pushed him to. George Anthony may have struggled with his own demons, but harming Caylee was not a solution.

  From George I moved on to the forensics, reminding jurors of Dr. Vass, the odors he uncovered, and the chemical compounds found in the trunk, which were only present during human decomposition. I talked about Caylee’s hair, which was found with the “death band” on it, a hair that could only have belonged to Caylee with a characteristic that had only been found to occur in dead bodies. But the piece of forensics that I really wanted jurors to focus on, the piece that I myself could never get past or understand, was the duct tape. I reminded jurors, in case they had some lingering thought that maybe the whole thing had been an accident spun out of control, that the duct tape proved the accident theory wrong. That was why the defense had gone to such great lengths to implicate either Roy Kronk or George Anthony with the duct tape; because it was the duct tape that showed an intent to kill. Almost certainly, it was responsible for her death. It was the duct tape that made little Caylee’s death murder in the first degree.

  Finally, as I wrapped up my speech, I stood in front of the court, and provided the judge, jurors, and spectators with the prosecution’s version of events. I told them how we thought Caylee’s murder happened, walking them point-by-point through the timeline that Linda, Frank, and I, with the help of Orange County Sheriff’s Office, had spent nearly three years assembling. By the end of close, I’d been speaking for almost two hours, but it felt like only minutes. I would have stood there for another twenty-four hours if I thought it would help to prove our point. To me, the answer couldn’t have been simpler: Casey wanted to live the “beautiful life,” and the only problem was the beautiful life did not include a two-year-old daughter.

  NEXT WAS BAEZ’S TURN. WE expected him to argue about everything we had presented, and we were spot-on. Judge Perry had ruled that Baez could not return to his molestation allegations, as he had not proven them at trial. Without that fiction in his quiver, he attacked us heavily on our forensics and George Anthony. He drilled into George’s credibility and minimized Casey’s lies as nothing but part of her fantasy world. At times, his argument was convincing and well-articulated. At others, it was disjointed and choppy, hard to follow, and failed to tell a cohesive story, reflecting their “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” strategy. My hope was that the jury would see this fractured presentation as indicative of just how fractured the defense had been.

  At various points in his remarks, Baez displayed fifteen poster boards with assorted, oversize fridge-magnet photos of various witnesses from throughout the trial. Two assistants were in charge of moving the photos, adding some while taking others away. It gave the proceedings a kind of Wheel of Fortune quality, which in my opinion was not such a good thing.

  Baez stated that Casey loved Caylee, reminding jurors that all of Casey’s friends and family had testified that Casey was a loving mother. No one had admitted anything less than that. In Baez’s telling, it was simply impossible for this mother who, by all accounts, loved her daughter, to kill her in cold blood. From this opening concept, he then segued into what proved to be a rather solid argument about reasonable doubt and the role it played. Pushing this point in a different direction, he then attacked us for overcharging Casey for the crime, one of about a dozen rather direct attacks on our character or motives, saying that our case was not strong enough to warrant either a Murder One conviction or the possibility of the death penalty. I had to hand it to him, there were moments when he could be a very convincing lawyer. For all his faults, he was the consummate salesman.

  After the reasonable doubt discussion, however, Baez moved a bit clumsily to his poster boards, showing a calendar of dates. As he discussed each date, he would put a photo of a witness who had been linked to that date on the calendar. The disarray of the presentation obscured whatever points Baez was trying to make, and to me, he seemed to be doing more harm than good with the use of the posters. I wondered if the posters were a bit of a crutch that showed a lack of confidence in the persuasiveness of his words.

  As he moved to the topic of George Anthony, Baez delved into what he said was George’s obvious culpability. Regarding the gas cans, Baez expressed skepticism over George’s reporting them missing in the first place, asking the question of who in the world would ever report the theft of gas cans (well, I would, for one) and stating that the duct tape connection made George look guilty. Overall, the critique of George was a good one, but it was hampered by how Baez jumped between topics. His argument didn’t seem as organized as it could have been. Baez went on to attack the investigators at the sheriff’s office for drying out the garbage that had been in the trunk, saying that the cops didn’t want the jury to know what had been in that garbage and reiterating that it had been the garbage that produced the smell in the trunk. This kind of attack levied either at the police or at us seemed to occur every fifteen minutes or so, to the point that at least once the judge actually admonished Baez for what he was saying.

  Staying consistent with the case that the defense presented, Baez focused on the evidence that been found at the crime scene and hammered home his points about chloroform and the computer searches. He went after both Dr. G and Dr. Warren for their testimonies, reserving particular scorn for Dr. Warren, calling him a fantasy man for producing the video superimposition of Caylee’s face, the skull, and the duct tape. He next touted his own medical witness, Dr. Spitz. Switching gears yet again, he went back to the Anthony family, hitting home the point about dysfunction, bringing in Cindy’s bizarre behavior during Casey’s pregnancy to show that there was something strange going on in the family.

  One of the things Baez knew we’d proven conclusively was that his client was a liar. His attempt to address that included what was perhaps his most amusing linguistic flourish, rebranding Casey’s lies as “fantasies.” Ever the salesman, it was interesting to watch him try to sell the jury on this idea that her lies somehow did not carry the sinister nature that the word “lie” implied. Instead, these were Casey’s own fantasies; a playful, almost innocent way of describing the delusions that justified Casey’s repeated attempts at deception.

  After levying yet another attack on the cops, Baez then went on to make what was probably his biggest rhetorical leap of the day, but also the one that got me into trouble as well. Baez r
eturned to make this ridiculous argument that George’s report of the missing gas cans on June 24, and the use of the duct tape at the Find Caylee search command post, had been an attempt to frame Casey for the crime. There was no evidence to support this in the slightest, yet Baez found himself making this argument in such an animated way that his voice went up a couple of octaves in pitch, giving him an almost Mickey Mouse–like quality. I began to smile, both at the sound of his words and the absurdity of their content. Aware that the situation was getting the best of me, I covered my mouth with my hand to hide it from the jury.

  Glancing over, Baez saw my reaction, and it infuriated him. He seized on that moment to accuse me of being smug and disrespectful. Now, I can say unequivocally that my reaction was not what it should have been. As a lawyer and as a prosecutor, I demand better of myself. However, Baez also overacted to the situation.

  Furthermore, what I will say in my defense is that I’d spent the last three years listening to all manner of flack from Baez. I’d taken numerous personal insults and attacks. I’d heard him spew baseless accusations at me, at my team, and at the hard-working men and women of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. None of them were justified. None of them were deserved. None of them were true. But perhaps, most important, none of it was professional. So the argument that somehow Baez had become an arbiter of professional decorum in court was simply one I was not willing to listen to so I smothered my chuckle. What I did may not have been right, but given the absolute absurdity of what Baez was arguing and the total lack of respect he’d shown me during our time as adversaries, I have forgiven myself the moment of weakness.

  After calling me out for my reaction, Baez continued on George, bringing up the painful suicide note, a letter that to me marked just how wounded George had been by his granddaughter’s death and his daughter’s apparent involvement. Instead Baez used it to say that George had only written it and had only attempted suicide because the cops had searched the Anthony home and were closing in on him. Of course, only one half of that was actually true. The cops had indeed searched the Anthony home, but the only places where George was ever an actual suspect were the minds of Baez and Casey.

  As Baez prepared to relinquish the floor to Mason, he began to thump his chest out of passion for his argument. I’d learned my lesson this time and kept my composure, but I couldn’t help but wonder what impression this would leave on the jury. When Mason took the floor, he spoke mainly in vague platitudes about the U.S. Constitution, and brought in little that Baez had not already said. In all fairness, though, Baez had thrown so much out there that it would have been hard for Mason to find something that Baez had not discussed. I think Mason, who had been largely silent throughout the case, just wanted a moment in the sun. In the end Mason’s contribution to the closing, like his contribution throughout the trial itself, was brief. It was unclear what, if anything, he’d said that would sway the jury one way or the other, but the defense had officially come to a close.

  BECAUSE BAEZ’S CLOSING LEANED SO heavily on attacking the forensics, Linda asked me to handle part of the rebuttal. Though we’d all wanted to have Linda handle it, she knew that to do this rebuttal properly she would have to address the forensics and George, two areas that were mine. I knew it was a hard call to make. At the end of the day, this was Linda’s case, and after everything she’d put in, she really deserved to have the final word. At the same time, we both knew that this material was where I had my best stuff, and in the end we decided that I would rebut the forensics, and then she would sum everything up. It was a credit to her that she was able to take herself out of it and focus on what we felt would be best for the case. That’s just the kind of great team player that she is.

  When it came time to present, I was in my element. I began first to discuss the comparison of the testimony of Dr. G to Dr. Spitz, and to expose the ridiculousness of his claim that the skull was moved and duct tape placed on it before it was returned. I then moved to a discussion about the significance of the duct tape to prove premeditation.

  If there was one thing I had complete confidence in, it was the strength of our forensic experts compared to theirs, so I set up a direct contrast, pitting our bug guy (Haskell) vs. theirs (Huntington), and our medical examiner (Dr. G) vs. theirs (Dr. Spitz). Walking through what Baez had said about Dr. Vass point by point, I explained the unavoidable truth to Dr. Vass’s findings and Dr. Vass himself: His findings were conclusive, and he was the leader in his very legitimate scientific field. I even went so far as to refer to Dr. Vass as an unapologetic science geek. (Dr. Vass told me later he received a lot of teasing from his colleagues over that, and a couple dozen pocket protectors pinned to his office door.) Everything in his experience told us that there had been a dead body in the back of Casey Anthony’s car. Baez could try all day to tie the smell to nonexistent food in the trash or blame the police for drying out the trash; the bottom line was that the science was in our favor. I tried to hit that point hard. As with the forensics, I wanted to tackle Baez’s claims about George’s attempts to “implicate” Casey head-on. Discussing each one individually, I tried to drive home just how ridiculous it would be for someone involved in a crime to then expose himself to suspicion by bringing evidence of that crime to the attention of the police. I saved my best ridicule for the Kronk issue and how impossible it would be for Kronk to get the tape from the Anthony home even if he were perverse enough to want to in the first place.

  From my three decades in criminal law, I knew full well that jurors sometimes concoct scenarios that no one has argued, so I repeated our theory but allowed that they might have imagined other scenarios and explained how those, accidental death while giving Caylee chloroform, or while using tape to silence her, would still be murder.

  I ended with a discussion of George’s suicide letter. I recall I actually got choked up when I was describing the pain and anguish he felt as he penned the words on those pages.

  I sat down and Linda took over. She began by poking a bit of fun at the Wheel of Fortune moments of Jose’s closing, saying that “posters and pyrotechnics” were not her style. She harkened back to the opening statements that she and Baez had given six weeks earlier, and in another jab at the defense pointedly stated, “I meant what I said,” a reference to the fact that Baez had not come through on his promises in opening statements. Her next comment turned out to be prophetic:

  “My biggest fear,” she said, “is that common sense will be lost in all the rhetoric of the case.”

  She implored jurors to look at the big picture of all of the evidence and what it revealed. When discussing the original kidnapping story, Linda asked jurors to consider its genesis and what it illustrated about Casey’s awareness of guilt, reminding them once again that Casey had multiple opportunities—both with investigators and with Cindy—to assert that Caylee’s death had been an accident. No such claim had been made—at least not until Casey was out of all other options.

  As she began to wind down, Linda played the first call Casey made to home from jail and pointed out how it showed Casey’s real focus was on Tony, not Caylee. Referring to Casey as a pathological liar, Linda reminded the jury of the connection of the items found with Caylee’s body in the swamp to the Anthony house.

  Ending as we had discussed, Linda told the jury that the only thing they needed to ask was whose life was better without Caylee. Linda then played Cindy’s frantic 911 call from when she had first learned Caylee was missing and referenced George’s suicide letter. But lastly she displayed the photograph of the “Bella Vita” tattoo and a photo from the hot body contest at Fusian. Pointing to the screen, Linda gave everyone a moment for the images to sink in before she said, “There’s your answer.”

  And then we were done. Judge Perry read a lengthy list of instructions to jurors, all of which were fairly standard. The only point of note was that the instructions made clear that nothing any of the attorneys said in the case was e
vidence. The evidence could only come from witnesses. This meant that if the jury was following these instructions properly, they were not allowed to consider the unproven statements that Baez had made in his opening remarks. He hadn’t supported those points with actual evidence during the course of the trial, therefore the jury could not consider them.

  The jurors stood up and filed out of the courtroom. With the instructions read, there was nothing to do but wait. If waiting for the verdict to be read is the worst part of a trial, waiting for the jury to reach a decision is second. We’d presented closing arguments on July 3 and July 4, so there was no time to enjoy the Fourth of July holiday. I spent the rest of July 4 in the office, waiting for the jury with my feet up watching TV on a set the secretaries had positioned so they could follow the trial. Toward the end of the day, I returned to the twenty-third floor so that I would be there when the judge released the jury for the day. I was sitting in a chair in the hallway playing a game on my phone when Jose approached me and we exchanged pleasantries for a bit before he said:

  “You’re the toughest motherfucker I’ve ever been up against.”

  I thanked him. It was good of him to say, even if the list of “motherfuckers” he’d been up against was pretty short. The gesture seemed genuine and I wish I could say it erased all the crap that I had been through in the last three years, but it didn’t. I have fought ferociously against attorneys many time and left the courtroom with them as friends. But there were times when I felt Jose misled me, and that is one thing I cannot forgive.