Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [146]
The first witness to be called by the defense was Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Gerardo Bloise. This would be Bloise’s third time on the stand, having been called twice by us. He testified about places he had searched, the trunk of Tony Lazzaro’s car, and places he hadn’t, the master bedroom of the Anthony home. Baez’s goal of calling crime scene investigator Bloise was to infer that police had spent so much time focusing on Casey as the suspect that they had overlooked other potential suspects.
Baez next brought two highly trained FBI experts to the stand in order to demonstrate some problems with the duct tape evidence. It appeared his goal was to embarrass the FBI and suggest that if such a distinguished lab could mishandle evidence, perhaps all our evidence was questionable. First up was Heather Seubert, a DNA expert. She said there was trace DNA found on the duct tape, but it turned out to be from an FBI technician who had handled it. It was an embarrassment to the FBI, but it was irrelevant to the case. Next was Lorie Gottesman, a forensic document examiner. She testified that she found no evidence of a sticker or sticker residue on the tape, contradicting the testimony of our expert, Elizabeth Fontaine. I thought these issues were irrelevant to the case, and prompted only by the defense’s motive to discredit our evidence.
To refute the opinion of our bug expert, Neal Haskell, the defense called Tim Huntington. Huntington was a twenty-nine-year-old Ph.D. from Nebraska, a forensic entomologist, and an assistant professor at Concordia University. He had once studied under Dr. Haskell. He reminded me of Ichabod Crane, the schoolteacher from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” except for being about forty years younger. He was a nice guy and tall, with very thick glasses. Before trial, I had been told by Dr. Haskell that we might expect Huntington to disagree with us, but he would be honest.
Huntington’s testimony focused on the bugs that had been found in the Pontiac’s trunk. He talked about the lifespan of flies and how flies might make their way into a car’s trunk. The gist was that if Caylee’s body had been in the car, there should have been lots of dead flies in there, and there weren’t.
Haskell had already testified that the reason there weren’t more bugs in the car was because the trunk was sealed and they couldn’t get in. We thought this would be a simple disagreement between two experts about bugs. But Baez started moving Huntington in a direction beyond his field of expertise, asking Huntington his opinion about whether the stain in the trunk looked like the stain from a decomposing body.
I objected, based on his lack of qualifications. He said he was in a position to render an opinion, saying he had worked at a funeral home in his teenage years. When Judge Perry said he would allow testimony and leave it to the jury to determine if Huntington had the expertise, I objected again. I said Huntington’s deposition did not cover opinions on the subject he was now testifying to. This would be the first of many objections on the prosecution’s part regarding the testimony of defense witnesses. Over and over, Baez would lead his witnesses to areas his reports did not address, and since they weren’t contained in reports or the depositions of these witnesses, our objections were sustained time and again. But what a frustrating situation for everyone, including the jury, who would have to wait for all these objections to