Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [5]
Right out of law school, I was hired by the State Attorney’s Office in Orlando and assigned to the area from which many successful prosecutors have been launched—the traffic division. My buddy Ted Culhan and I shared an office in an old building that used to house the Federal District Court. We were a block from the main office, so we were relatively unsupervised. We weren’t above a good-natured prank or two. Our favorite was waiting until someone was on the phone, and then taping the receiver to his head. I did do serious work, too; I had a chance to prosecute some drunk driving cases, and I actually got my first taste of scientific evidence when I was doing hearings on the admissibility of Breathalyzer machines.
After eleven months, I moved to a misdemeanor branch, which was out in the western part of the county. Seven months after that I transferred to the felony prosecution division. My father had been somewhat relieved when I went to law school, but he absolutely loved it when I became a prosecutor. My parents were living two hours away, but even then, they would occasionally make the trip to Orlando to watch me in trial.
In 1983 I prosecuted my first murder case—and won. Two years later, I tried my first death penalty case. The victim was a businessman with a wife and children who took “business trips” to a local gay resort called the Parliament House. On one visit he hooked up with the wrong young man. When they got back to the hotel room, the young man slit his throat and robbed him. The jury convicted the defendant and then recommended the death penalty, which the judge imposed. Before the state could execute him, he hung himself in his prison cell.
Then in 1987 came the case in which I’d become the first prosecutor to introduce DNA evidence. That continued a string of successful homicide prosecutions for me, and in 1990 I created the homicide division of the State Attorney’s Office. I was married to my second wife, Joy, and we had two children, Rebecca and Alex, before she and I parted ways.
It was around that time that Court TV, the twenty-four-hour trial channel on cable TV, came into existence. The channel broadcast some of my cases, and my father loved it. He would watch me from his desk at work. Once, in the late nineties, a trial of mine was moved to Pinellas County, my parents’ neck of the woods, and my father came almost every day to watch it. Those years in homicide were the most enjoyable of my professional career. For starters, no other cases present the challenges that homicide cases present. But I was also damned good at them.
EVEN THOUGH LINDA WANTED ME on the Casey Anthony case, it was not, strictly speaking, up to her. Linda had gotten the case after Casey was arrested and charged with child neglect, lying to investigators, and interfering with a criminal investigation. Now that it was looking more like homicide, State Attorney Lawson Lamar had the option of turning the case over to the homicide division, headed by Robin Wilkinson, or leaving it with Linda.
That afternoon at the Daily News Café, I told Linda I wanted to be on the Anthony case, but I was all too aware of the politics that surrounded my name. I was nearing the end of my career with the State Attorney’s Office, so I didn’t need a career boost. I was twenty-eight years into a pension that would allow me to retire at thirty years, and for a while now, that retirement had been my plan. As I explained to her over a burger and fries, I would understand if the pressure made her pick Robin over me. No hard feelings. She could always count on my support and expertise, even if I weren’t on the case with her.
But Linda was unequivocal: she needed a bulldog and she