Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [141]
CSI experts familiar with the evidence collected from the car, the computers, and the Dumpster followed Yuri Melich on the stand. Deputy Charity Beasley took the stand about collecting the computer from the Anthony home, Awilda McBryde introduced the trash retrieved from the Dumpster, and Gerardo Bloise testified about the Pontiac. These witnesses all provided testimony about the long and boring process of meticulously identifying and documenting the precise location and appearance of each item found. Although Frank did the questioning, my muscle was needed briefly, when help was needed to open an evidence box containing the trunk liner and spare tire cover. It was taped up pretty well, and it took us a while to coax it open. The instant it did, I could smell the decomposition. It seemed there was no escaping it.
Decomposition odor was the specialty of the cadaver dog handled by our next important witness, Jason Forgey of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office canine unit. Jurors seemed genuinely interested in this testimony. When he took the stand on June 7, Deputy Forgey told the enrapt courtroom about how his cadaver dog, Gerus, had alerted on the trunk of the Pontiac and in the Anthonys’ backyard. Forgey said that Gerus, whose search command was “Find Fred,” was trained to find blood, bones, and human remains. After relating the dog’s credentials, we played a videotape taken from a helicopter that showed an actual cadaver search conducted at night. In the video, you could see the figure of the dog handler glowing in an infrared light. He was moving back and forth through a heavily wooded area that surrounded a lake. The dog was unable to see the figure of someone in the lake, newly drowned, but the person was visible on the infrared camera. Watching the dog working his search and finally alerting near the body was totally fascinating. What a credit to their training and abilities to be able to locate a body in such conditions.
Baez had tried to block Forgey’s testimony on qualifications, and later criticized him for having failed to videotape Gerus’s search for Caylee’s remains. Still, he made a point when he got Forgey to admit that Gerus did not alert on his second day back to search the Anthonys’ yard.
Karen Lowe was also a widely respected expert in a very specialized field. She was the FBI hair analyst at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, who had analyzed the nine-inch hair that was found in the trunk of the Pontiac and linked it to Caylee. In her testimony on June 4, she described the microscopic banding on it, which was termed the “band of death,” explaining to jurors that only hairs that have come from a decomposing body exhibit this dark marking. Hairs with these colorations cannot have come from a living person, she said. Her testimony would later be backed up by Stephen Shaw, a hair and fiber examiner from the FBI lab. Shaw had examined the hairs from the skull itself. He testified that despite his best efforts, he could not re-create conditions under which a hair might acquire a “band of death” other than in decomposition.
The defense did not have any opposing experts on this issue, so Baez tried to challenge the finding by degrading the science on which it was based. We made the point on redirect that the hair in evidence was not a “shed” hair; it hadn’t fallen out and then decomposed. Also, the hair collected from Caylee’s hairbrush did not have the banding, so it was not a natural characteristic of Caylee’s hair to have this band.
ON MONDAY, JUNE 6, THE time had come for Dr. Arpad Vass to take the stand. Dr. Vass was our forty-first witness in ten days. He had a very natural and professorial manner