Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story

by Golenbock, Peter; Baez, Jose

  Originally, she was going to spell it K-A-Y-L-E, but finally she changed it to Caylee.

  “And then she says it was the greatest thing that ever happened to her, and George took her from her,” Weitz said.

  “Meaning George killed Caylee?” asked Ashton.

  “It is the perception of Casey that her father had something to do with the death of her daughter,” said Weitz. “She believes that George either harmed and/or took the life of Caylee.”

  Later Weitz said, “She believes George took Caylee out of the bed, had a sexual—some sort of sexual experience with her daughter, and in order to cover it up killed her.”

  All of a sudden I had a problem. As soon as Weitz said that, I knew I couldn’t put him on the stand. Weitz became far too defense-oriented on how Caylee died, and it made me uncomfortable. I don’t like witnesses who try too hard, even if they are for the defense, because I don’t think they are credible. During Weitz’s testimony, I kept hearing things that I had never heard Casey say before. I just didn’t think the jury would find him believable.

  In his deposition Weitz seemed hell-bent on pinning a murder on George. I never for a second believed George murdered Caylee. My belief was that Caylee accidentally drowned in the backyard pool. After Weitz’s deposition, Ashton and the media made a lot of comments about how Casey said that George killed Caylee, but that’s not what she said.

  I want to be clear about this: Weitz was trying to pin a murder on George, and I didn’t believe that to be the case.

  Here’s what he was conveying: he was saying that he felt George may have drowned her because his shirt wasn’t wet, and he felt Casey might have been drugged at the time Caylee died, because Casey’s normally a light sleeper. And he also was saying, “Oh, by the way, George was sexually abusing Caylee,” but that part of the testimony was lost when the press got ahold of the murder accusations.

  The fact was that Casey didn’t know what happened to Caylee. All she saw was George carrying away her limp body. And after she was arrested, she knew that she was being thrown under the bus by her father for something she didn’t do. So she could think the best—that Caylee’s death was an accident—or she could think the worst—that he killed her. She was in a position where she was facing the death penalty. She was sitting in prison and slowly came to the realization that her very own father was out to have her killed to save his own scalp. When that happens, you think the worst, so I can see how Casey might have said to Danziger and Weitz, “He did it intentionally.” But it was never anything she knew. It was always something Casey felt might have happened, and she felt that way because she was so hurt by and angry with him. That anger was what motivated her to think the worst.

  Because Danzinger and Weitz were out, Casey taking the stand became more of a reality.

  There were times during our three years on this case when my associates and I talked about whether it might be possible that George killed Caylee to cover up sexual abuse, but eventually we backed away. If George had been messing with Caylee and maybe even sexually abusing her, we felt that might have been the reason George didn’t call 9-1-1 when he picked her up out of the pool. An autopsy clearly would have shown that she had been sexually active, an investigation would have ensued, and George would have gone down big time.

  Or maybe he thought he was Caylee’s father and didn’t want that revealed. Or maybe he was afraid his incestuous behavior with Casey would come out, as it eventually did. We thought of different motives, but we didn’t say them because we didn’t have any evidence of them. I could have thrown those suspicions out there, but what I wanted to be able to do was look the jury in the eye and say, “As much as we’d like to be able to say that somebody murdered the child, the fact is there is no more evidence that Casey murdered this child than there was that George did it.”

  And that’s the truth. If you look at all the evidence compiled by the state—the prosecution and the police—even if you believe everything they say about the smell in Casey’s car, it doesn’t tell you how Caylee died. It only tells you whether she was transported in that car or not.

  The prosecution had no confession and no statement. It had nothing to tie a murder to Casey. And that was because the accusations as invented by the police were so absurd. And that was the approach I decided to take at the trial. It was, after all, the more conservative one, even though I’ve been criticized for it. I didn’t want to go too far, because I thought it would affect the credibility of our case. I don’t believe in making accusations without any evidence to support them, despite accusations to the contrary.

  I will respond to their criticism in this way. Not only did Casey tell me she was sexually abused by her father, but there was plenty of other evidence she had told other people about that abuse. There’s evidence this was a young woman who had her periods since she was twelve years old, but who never once went to a gynecologist until she became pregnant at age nineteen. Why? There may be two or more reasons for this, but the most plausible is that a gynecologist would have noticed the evidence of sexual activity—especially when she was a preteen. It would have raised questions about possible sexual abuse.

  And then there’s plenty of evidence of her compartmentalization, the way she pretended nothing was wrong in the face of such horror. She lied to fashion a story that soothed her. How her pregnancy was hidden for more than seven months, not only by her but by her family as well. The fact that she told two boyfriends about the abuse prior to Caylee dying refutes the charge of it being a “recent fabrication.” Moreover, she didn’t have sexual boundaries with men. All these are signs of sexual abuse. And all of that came to play a role in the trial. So when people say I never submitted any evidence of sexual abuse, they are very mistaken.

  Here’s another thing: If Casey had walked into the state attorney’s office on June 15, 2008, and said, “I’m a victim of sexual abuse. My father has been abusing me since I was eight years old. I’ve been afraid to come forward, but I’m doing so now,” I guarantee you they would have arrested George and filed felony charges. And the only reason she didn’t come forward? Victims of sexual abuse almost never do. They are too afraid that their parents will be arrested, that their families will be broken up, that the parents won’t love them anymore, and most importantly, that no one will believe them.

  Sexual abuse—incest—is the most underreported crime in the world, and if people who are abused cannot come forward and can’t expect a process that is helpful to them and makes it easier to speak out, it will never get reported. I find it so hypocritical the way people approached Casey in that regard.

  But the fact remains, despite the headlines, this case was never about sexual abuse. I never meant to make it so and didn’t try. It was a low priority.

  But her sexual abuse was an explanation for why she acted the way she did during the thirty days she was away from home after Caylee disappeared.

  The fact is, how she acted during those thirty days should have been irrelevant to the question of whether Caylee was murdered. If the judge had precluded any discussion of her behavior during those thirty days, there never would have been a discussion around the topic of George’s sexual abuse. If the prosecution had really wanted to make this trial about the first-degree murder charge, none of these things should have been allowed into evidence. They prosecuted this case by discussing everything but a murder. And this was the end result.

  If you are outraged by our approach, you really aren’t looking at it from a logical perspective. As I said, whether or not Casey was abused is irrelevant to the question of how Caylee died, but so is her behavior during the thirty days. The prosecution made a big deal of her clubbing and partying. What does that tell you about whether there’s been a murder? These are all irrelevant facts, but what made them relevant was the prosecution’s approach, not ours.

  If you can understand that, you can understand it all.

  CHAPTER 20

  YOUR HONOR

  PERHAPS THE HA
RDEST ISSUE I had to face in 2010 was Judge Stan Strickland’s clear prejudice against Casey. He had made public remarks such as, “It appears that the truth and Ms. Anthony are strangers.” And most telling, whenever we made a motion, he always ruled against us. It got to the point where we just couldn’t win in the courtroom.

  When the case began, we were buoyed by Strickland’s reputation for fairness. He’s defense-friendly, we were told, which is why, for a long time, we took our defeats and swallowed hard.

  Then came the issue of Casey’s bad check charges that stemmed from her stealing Amy Huizenga’s checkbook during the thirty days after Caylee died. They were written for a total of $644, and if this had been any other client, Casey would have been put in a pretrial diversion program and asked to take a course and repay the money.

  Instead she was overcharged with thirteen counts by an overzealous prosecution. We made a motion before Strickland to reduce them significantly because of double jeopardy.

  “We should withhold adjudication on all of these,” I argued. Strickland got around my argument by saying, “I’ve never withheld adjudication on so many counts” adding, “Who knows? If we try this [check] case and I hear the facts, I could sentence her to prison.” Basically he was saying, You’d better plead her guilty, or I’m going to sentence her to prison for $644 in bad checks.

  Needless to say, Strickland ruled in favor of the prosecution on the double jeopardy issues.

  Everyone knew we were going to plea out the check charges, and we asked to continue that portion of the case until after the murder trial. After all, the checks were written after the supposed murder, and if only for judicial economy, we thought it was a no-brainer.

  Under most circumstances an economic crime would be tried after the more serious crime because the economic crime becomes substantially less important if a client gets the death penalty. The rules are different, however, when you have the most hated woman in America on trial.

  The always scheming, ruthless prosecution, however, was out for blood. Though these were mere economic crimes, it refused to offer us a plea deal because it wanted a trial—a tactic unusual and unconscionable in itself. And the prosecution wanted the check charge trial to go first because it wanted to have convictions in the check trial in case Casey took the stand in the murder trial. That way the jury would know she was a convicted felon. Also, those convictions would be considered if she was found guilty of murder and a jury had to consider the death penalty.

  In a calculated move on its part, the prosecution overcharged her. Instead of charging her with uttering a forged instrument, three counts, it stacked the charges by adding fraud and grand theft to each count. So it was three felony counts per check, which is never done. And the prosecutors had her dead to rights. They had her on video writing the checks and had a complaining witness saying she didn’t have permission to write them. She was facing thirty years, even though normally a judge wouldn’t sentence anyone to prison for $644 in bad checks.

  This prosecution, continuing to overstep its bounds, refused to allow us to plea bargain on the check fraud charges. I argued to Strickland, “If she gets convicted of first-degree murder, I’ll be more than happy to plead her guilty to all of these economic charges. She’ll be doing a long prison term, and these will be insignificant. Why do this when it’ll cost so much money to change the venue and go to trial? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  At first Strickland seemed to agree, saying it was the logical thing to do, but then the prosecution became insistent and kept pushing.

  “No, no, no, this is something we really want,” the prosecutors argued. In the end, the judge denied our motion to have the check charges heard after the murder trial.

  Ironically, had Strickland listened to me and granted the motion, Casey would have been facing thirty years on the check charges after her murder acquittal. My belief is that Strickland’s successor, Judge Belvin Perry, would have slammed the book on her and sent her to prison for many years. In the end, Casey didn’t have to do any time at all on the check charges because the prosecutors were overaggressive and shot themselves in the foot.

  As Strickland liked to say, the irony is indeed rich.

  There were numerous times when we thought of trying to get Strickland recused, but I was reluctant to do so unless I was sure we would win. I’m a strong believer in the metaphor, “If you’re going to shoot the king, shoot to kill.” Instead, we waited for a situation where we could show without a doubt that Strickland was biased and Casey was unable to get a fair trial.

  It’ll come, I told myself. You can set your watch by it.

  One day after a hearing before Strickland, co-counsel Andrea Lyon and I left the courtroom. After we were gone, Strickland asked an officer to go and get one of the members of the audience. The person he called up to see him was Dave Knechel, a blogger who went by the name of “Marinade Dave.” I first learned of their meeting because one of Andrea’s students had been in the courtroom when Strickland called him forward.

  I can tell this story because Marinade Dave wrote it on his blog, and one of my investigators got him to confirm it.

  According to Marinade Dave, Strickland called him up to the bench and said to him, “I want you to know I’ve read your blog, and I think you’re really fair. I wanted you to know how much I enjoy reading your blog.”

  Marinade Dave’s blog was naturally called Marinade Dave, and on it he wrote such fair and unbiased articles as, “Casey Anthony Must Die,” and, “Premeditated and Pretty Stupid.”

  Cheney and I wanted to handle it quietly and delicately, so one day after a hearing we approached the bench and asked if we could meet with the judge.

  Cheney said to him, “We need to speak with you about a matter.”

  Strickland said, “No, we can’t talk in private because the press will want to be involved. I don’t feel comfortable about it.”

  We hadn’t asked to meet privately with him; we just wanted to talk to him in his chambers and ask him about Marinade Dave.

  “What’s this about?” the judge wanted to know.

  “It’s about us asking you to recuse yourself,” said Cheney.

  We had wanted to do it quietly so Strickland could quit on his own, sparing him from both embarrassment and the firestorm the media surely would ignite. But Strickland refused to meet with us.

  We were struggling about what to do. We met with the prosecutors about Marinade Dave and the judge; true to form, they were no help.

  “We don’t know if it’s true or not,” they said.

  “We’ll investigate,” we said. And that’s what we did. Marinade Dave told our investigator everything, including the fact that he had been in the hospital, and that Strickland called him to see if he was feeling better.

  Then the media got into the act and interviewed Marinade Dave. It turned out that he and the judge had met for lunch to discuss the case. After lunch Strickland took him to the court’s back area, showed him around, and even gave him a law book.

  We filed our motion. We had ten days to do it and finished on a Friday. The story was blasted all over the news. Strickland accused us of waiting until 4:00 P.M. on a Friday afternoon so he wouldn’t be there to respond, and for maximum media impact.

  We had no such plans. That had nothing to do with it. How were we supposed to know he left early on Fridays? He was the one who had the media on his mind, not us.

  In the end, Strickland had no choice but to recuse himself. If he had stayed on, we would have appealed his decision to the appellate court, and it was clear we had made a strong case for him to step down.

  It was a question of his fairness, and he was unable to stand up to the storm of criticism that came from the media when they learned of his relationship with Marinade Dave.

  Rather than just step down, Strickland wrote a scathing order in which he ripped me and worse, ripped the defendant. Under the law this man was supposed to be impartial. When we saw his comments, we were appalled a
nd knew we made the right decision.

  Cheney refused to take it lying down. He filed a motion to strike his comments and added his own commentary, arguing that a judge should not have any relationship with the media, including bloggers. It was inappropriate, he argued. The two of them went at it.

  After the not-guilty verdict, Strickland became a commentator and one of our strongest critics. I was on a plane watching Nancy Grace and couldn’t believe that he was her guest. It turns out that Strickland and Nancy Grace were classmates at Mercer University School of Law. He also granted an interview with a local TV station in which he said he disagreed with the verdict.

  I couldn’t believe what he was doing. Strickland’s appearances caused a major stink in the local legal community. I was getting calls from lawyers who threatened to complain to the Judicial Qualifications Committee (JQC), which regulates Florida judges. They wanted the JQC to know what Strickland was doing. Shortly thereafter, he resigned as a judge. My suspicion is that he resigned because of those complaints.

  When Strickland stepped down, Cheney, who had been on the circuit a long time, had a strong suspicion that the judge who was going to replace him would be Judge Belvin Perry. He was the chief judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida and didn’t have any active cases. Perry had more of an administrative role. He filled in for trials and presided over some of the more important cases. He was a former prosecutor who had tried death penalty cases. His father was the first African-American police officer in Orlando. Cheney had a wonderful relationship with Perry; the two of them were old colleagues, and Cheney considered him a friend.

  We thought we had finally caught a break. We had important motions coming up, motions Strickland was sure to shoot down. We were optimistic that Perry wouldn’t hold the same strong prejudices against us that Strickland had held.