Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [87]
When I looked at Casey’s profile, she checked out as the child of George and Cindy. Likewise, neither George nor Lee was Caylee’s father.
Caylee’s hair was the last to be examined. When it arrived, Karen Lowe was out of the lab so the case was assigned to Stephen Shaw, another hair and fiber analyst. The hairs on the body matched the hair from the trunk, in length, color, and microscopic characteristics, and they both had the death band. The only difference was that the hair from the swamp showed more advanced decomposition—after all, it had been there for almost six months.
EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN’T LEARN volumes from the remains, their discovery impacted every aspect of our case—especially our decision to seek the death penalty. Once Caylee’s remains were found and analyzed, we had to make a sober assessment of the story the evidence was telling us and readdress the penalty issue.
A couple of months earlier, our decision not to seek the death penalty had been based largely on the fact that we did not have a body and didn’t know exactly how Caylee had died. The discovery changed our decision on every level. A lot has been said about the decision to seek the death penalty, both before and after the trial. The death penalty is a visceral issue, and oftentimes it may feel as if the decision to seek the death penalty is made viscerally. Nothing could be further from the truth, no matter how horrific the crime. There are always arguments on both sides, but in the end the decision is always reached after we’ve weighed every aspect of the case. Such was the case with our eventual decision to pursue the death penalty against Casey Anthony.
In terms of the discussions that went into making this decision, the story behind those belongs to State Attorney Lawson Lamar. Lawson made the final decision and as such it was his to reveal as he saw fit. The questions he asked during our discussions and the answers we gave are kept in confidence. At the end of the day, only he knows why he made the decision that he did. I do, however, think I can help the public understand how the decision was reached by sharing my thought process.
First, consider the law. By Florida law, the death penalty is a possible sentence for any first-degree murder. But before the penalty can be imposed, certain additional factors must be present, and these were the factors that we considered when first making the death penalty decision prior to finding the remains. These factors are called “aggravating circumstances.” They are very specific and precisely laid out in Florida’s death penalty statute. Some circumstances depend upon facts about the victim: was she a young child, elderly and infirm, or a police officer or government official? Some deal with the issue of why the crime was committed: was it for financial gain, to eliminate a witness, or to disrupt the functioning of government? Some relate to how the crime was committed: was it committed during another felony, was it coldly planned in advance, was it torturous and cruel, involving conscious suffering by the victim? The last group of circumstances looks at the defendant’s criminal record: was the defendant ever in prison, on probation, or does he or she have a past history of conviction for violent crimes?
There are certain cases in which, while the defendant may be guilty of first-degree murder, none of the aggravating circumstances are present. The death penalty can never be applied to these people. There are other defendants whose cases are so horrendous that the death penalty must always be an option. For those in the middle of the spectrum, it is not merely the existence of the aggravating circumstances that must be considered, but the weight of them.
Over the decades, our courts have refined both the definitions of the aggravating circumstances and the concept of weighing. They teach us that not all aggravating circumstances are given the same weight. For example, if a murder is committed during the commission of another