Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [114]
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 the 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