Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [129]
It’s interesting that Casey actually did a very good job of concocting a new lie that incorporated small bits of fact. That was the beauty of being able to wait until all the evidence was in and make up a story. That way you could make sure it all fit. One example: the defense had one tiny discreet fact, the fact that when Casey went to a wedding looking like she had been gaining a lot of weight, and the family hadn’t acknowledged she was pregnant yet. That one fact was all Jose needed to sell the entire broad idea of a dysfunctional family to the jury.
If you look at Casey’s background, this was her greatest gift, her ability to concoct believable lies that had just enough truth in them to fool the gullible. This defense was classic Casey, and from everything I saw in the case and heard from that side, I had no doubt that the meek, mild little waif the jury was seeing was running the show in the back room. Jose was the mouthpiece, but Casey was the architect. We had hoped the jury would have seen that through all the presentation of evidence, this was Casey 4.0, the next lie.
Baez was actually arguing that the fact that George and Cindy would be testifying at their daughter’s trial about facts in the case was akin to throwing her under the bus and evidence of family dysfunction. I didn’t know if the jury specifically bought that part, but arguing that George and Cindy testifying meant there was something amiss with the family offended me. It was as if the love of Cindy and George for Caylee and their desire to know the truth were strikes against them. Casey was so egocentric, all that was supposed to matter to them was Casey, they should basically do anything for her. Jose was insinuating that a good father would have kept his mouth shut and that only Casey should matter. But surely Caylee would matter to the jury.
Baez acknowledged that the Anthonys were religious about removing the ladder to the family’s aboveground pool so that Caylee could not get into it. He then proceeded to suggest to the jury that on June 16, they left the pool ladder up. He didn’t give a reason why they left the ladder like that; he just wanted the jury to believe it because he said so. Would jurors prefer to accept Jose’s completely unprovable speculations than what the witnesses actually said?
Moving confusingly to more speculations, Jose argued that George, by reporting the gas cans missing on June 24, was somehow trying to implicate Casey. However, Baez never suggested why George would want to implicate her, or why, having been allegedly involved himself, he would want the police alerted at all. Like so many of Baez’s arguments, this was one that, if you truly thought it through, didn’t make any sense.
In the end, though, maybe it didn’t matter what held up under the scrutiny of daylight. Perhaps I may have been giving the jury too much credit. I think he may have had a better understanding than I did of the level of analysis that this jury would take part in, and maybe his philosophy was “let’s just throw everything up against a wall and see what sticks.” If you throw one hundred red herrings out there, maybe you can get each juror to pick a different one. But the gas can argument, in particular, just never made any sense to me.
Similarly, the line “Follow the duct tape and it will show you who put Caylee’s remains where they were found” was another of Jose’s arguments, which implied that it was George. However, Baez then backtracked strangely, saying, “Maybe not.”
Baez’s next alternative was the meter reader theory. Roy Kronk was a morally bankrupt person who took Caylee’s body and hid it at the Suburban Drive location, Baez said, another argument for which he would present not one bit of evidence. He went on to say that the sheriff’s office had searched the area