Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [161]
Ending as we had discussed, Linda told the jury that the only thing they needed to ask was whose life was better without Caylee. Linda then played Cindy’s frantic 911 call from when she had first learned Caylee was missing and referenced George’s suicide letter. But lastly she displayed the photograph of the “Bella Vita” tattoo and a photo from the hot body contest at Fusian. Pointing to the screen, Linda gave everyone a moment for the images to sink in before she said, “There’s your answer.”
And then we were done. Judge Perry read a lengthy list of instructions to jurors, all of which were fairly standard. The only point of note was that the instructions made clear that nothing any of the attorneys said in the case was evidence. The evidence could only come from witnesses. This meant that if the jury was following these instructions properly, they were not allowed to consider the unproven statements that Baez had made in his opening remarks. He hadn’t supported those points with actual evidence during the course of the trial, therefore the jury could not consider them.
The jurors stood up and filed out of the courtroom. With the instructions read, there was nothing to do but wait. If waiting for the verdict to be read is the worst part of a trial, waiting for the jury to reach a decision is second. We’d presented closing arguments on July 3 and July 4, so there was no time to enjoy the Fourth of July holiday. I spent the rest of July 4 in the office, waiting for the jury with my feet up watching TV on a set the secretaries had positioned so they could follow the trial. Toward the end of the day, I returned to the twenty-third floor so that I would be there when the judge released the jury for the day. I was sitting in a chair in the hallway playing a game on my phone when Jose approached me and we exchanged pleasantries for a bit before he said:
“You’re the toughest motherfucker I’ve ever been up against.”
I thanked him. It was good of him to say, even if the list of “motherfuckers” he’d been up against was pretty short. The gesture seemed genuine and I wish I could say it erased all the crap that I had been through in the last three years, but it didn’t. I have fought ferociously against attorneys many time and left the courtroom with them as friends. But there were times when I felt Jose misled me, and that is one thing I cannot forgive.
On Tuesday, July 5, I slid into work feeling pretty good. It had been 1,085 days since Cindy Anthony first called 911. The morning was uneventful. No one was expecting anything that soon. That afternoon, Linda, Frank, and I grabbed lunch. No sooner had I returned to my office than my phone rang. The jury had reached a verdict. I hustled over to the courthouse, where I learned the jury’s decision: not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter, and aggravated child abuse; guilty of all four counts of lying to police.
AFTER THE VERDICT, MEMBERS OF the prosecution team met in a conference room with all of the investigators and State Attorney Lawson Lamar for a private discussion before meeting with the press. The defense team also appeared before the cameras for a press conference of their own. As hard as I may have been on Jose Baez in these pages, I thought his posttrial comments showed class and professionalism, and I commend him for them. Mason, however, indulged in some rather childish comments directed toward legal commentators who had dared to point out errors committed by his team. Again, the irony was rich, since Mason himself had once been one of those commentators. I might have written it off to the adrenaline rush of a verdict that he was not expecting, but shortly thereafter the childishness continued as he was photographed “flipping the finger” to media folks filming him and the team in a rather unseemly champagne party at a bar across the street from the courthouse. If he had wanted privacy, perhaps he should have partied in private. I would have expected a man