2008 death of an infant American girl
Caylee Marie Anthony (August9, 2005 – June2008) was an American toddler who lived in Orlando, Florida, with her mother, Casey Marie Anthony (born March19, 1986), and her maternal grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony. On July15, 2008, Caylee was reported missing in a 9-1-1 call made by Cindy, who said she had not seen the child for thirty-one days. According to what Cindy told police dispatchers, Casey had given varied explanations as to Caylee's whereabouts before eventually saying she had not seen her daughter for weeks. Casey later called police and falsely told a dispatcher that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny on June9. Casey was charged with first-degree murder in October2008 and pleaded not guilty.
On December 11, 2008, Caylee's skeletal remains were found with a blanket inside a laundry bag in a wooded area near the Anthony family residence. Investigative reports and trial testimony varied between duct tape being found near the front and mouth of the skull. The medical examiner listed Caylee's cause of death as "homicide by undetermined means".
The State of Florida sought the death penalty in its case against Casey. Relying largely on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution alleged Casey wished to free herself from parental responsibilities and murdered her daughter by administering chloroform and applying duct tape to her nose and mouth. Casey's defense team, led by Jose Baez, chiefly focused on challenging the prosecution's evidence, calling much of it "fantasy forensics". The defense stated that Caylee had drowned accidentally in the family's swimming pool and that George had disposed of the body. On July 5, 2011, a jury found Casey not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child, but guilty of four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer. With credit for time served, Casey was released on July 17, 2011. A Florida appellate court overturned two of the misdemeanor convictions on January 25, 2013.
The case attracted substantial attention from the public—"Time" magazine described it as "the social media trial of the century". Television personality Nancy Grace, who referred to Casey as "tot mom," was notable for the attention and corresponding publicity she gave the case. Casey's acquittal on the murder charges was met with public outrage, with hundreds of thousands posting to social media accounts in response.
Disappearance.
On June 16, 2008, Casey Anthony departed from her parents' home in Orlando, Florida, where she and Caylee resided. Her father, George Anthony, later testified that he saw his granddaughter Caylee leaving with Casey. Casey told her mother, Cindy, that she was taking Caylee to her nanny, whom Casey identified as Zenaida "Zanny" Fernandez-Gonzalez, and, the next day, she further informed Cindy that the three were headed to Tampa on a work trip.
Thirty days after Casey's departure, her car was found abandoned in Orlando and towed away. George and Cindy were notified that the car had been impounded. When George went to recover the car, he and the tow-yard manager noted a strong smell coming from the trunk, which both later stated they believed to be that of human decomposition. When the trunk was opened, it contained only a bag of trash. That day, Cindy reported Caylee missing, telling 9-1-1 dispatchers that Casey's car smelled of dead bodies and that she had not seen Caylee for thirty-one days. Cindy later retracted her statement regarding the car's odor.
Investigation.
Casey told investigators that she had left Caylee at the apartment of her nanny, Fernandez-Gonzalez, and that Fernandez-Gonzalez had kidnapped the toddler. But when police investigated the apartment, they found it had been abandoned for more than 140 days. Casey also told police that she was working at Universal Studios. However, when investigators took her to Universal Studios on July 16 and asked her to show them her office, Casey led detectives into the building before admitting that she no longer worked there; as it turned out, she had not worked there since she had taken maternity leave almost three years earlier. Casey was subsequently arrested. On July 29, Casey was offered a limited-immunity deal—in exchange for help finding Caylee, prosecutors said they would not use Casey's statements to police against her. The offer expired September 2, 2008.
Casey's parents appeared on NBC's "Today" on October 22, 2008, maintaining their belief that Caylee was alive and would be found. Larry Garrison, president of SilverCreek Entertainment, acted as the Anthony family's spokesman until November 2008, when he resigned citing the family's "erratic behavior".
On August 11, 12 and 13, 2008, meter reader Roy Kronk called police about a suspicious object found in a forested area near the Anthony residence. In the first instance, he was directed by the sheriff's office to call a tip line, which he did, receiving no return call. In the second instance, he again called the sheriff's office, and eventually was met by two police officers. He reported to them that he had seen what appeared to be a skull near a gray bag. On that occasion, the officer conducted a short search and stated he did not see anything. On December 11, 2008, Kronk again called the police. They searched and found the remains of a child in a trash bag. Investigative teams recovered duct tape which was hanging from hair attached to the skull and some tissue left on the skull. Over the next four days, more bones were found in the wooded area near the spot where the remains initially had been discovered. On December19, 2008, medical examiner Jan Garavaglia confirmed that the remains found were Caylee's. The death was ruled a homicide and the cause of death listed as undetermined.
Criminal action.
Arrest.
Following her arrest at Universal Studios, Casey was charged with giving false statements to law enforcement, child neglect and obstruction of a criminal investigation. The judge denied bail, saying Casey had shown "woeful disregard for the welfare of her child". On July 22, 2008, after a bond hearing, the judge set bail at $500,000. A month later, Casey was released from the Orange County jail after her $500,000 bond was posted by Tony Padilla, the nephew of California bail bondsman Leonard Padilla. Leonard said he hoped he and his nephew could help Anthony find her missing daughter. However, when an angry crowd began to gather around the Anthony residence, where Casey stayed while on bond, Tony decided to revoke her bond and returned her to jail. Leonard further added that Casey had not wanted to communicate with him.
On September 5, 2008, Casey was released again on bail for all pending charges after being fitted with an electronic tracking device. Her $500,000 bond was posted by her parents who signed a promissory note for the bond.
Indictment.
On October 14, 2008, Casey was indicted by a grand jury on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and four counts of providing false information to police. She was later arrested, and Judge John Jordan ordered that she be held without bond. A week later, the state dropped the child-neglect charges because "the neglect charges were premised on the theory that [Anthony] . . . was still alive". On October28, Casey was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to all charges. On April 13, 2009, prosecutors announced that they planned to seek the death penalty in the case.
Trial.
Attorneys and jury.
The lead prosecutor in the case was Assistant State Attorney Linda Drane Burdick. Assistant State Attorneys Frank George and Jeff Ashton completed the prosecution team. Lead counsel for the defense was Jose Baez, a Florida criminal defense attorney. Attorneys J. Cheney Mason, Dorothy Clay Sims and Ann Finnell served as co-counsel. During the trial, attorney Mark Lippman represented George and Cindy.
Jury selection began on May9, 2011, at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center in Clearwater, because the case had been so widely reported in the Orlando area. Jurors were brought from Pinellas County to Orlando. Jury selection took longer than expected and ended on May 20, with twelve jurors and five alternates being sworn in. The panel comprised nine women and eight men. The trial took six weeks, during which time the jury was sequestered to avoid influence from information available outside the courtroom.
Opening statements.
The trial began on May 24, 2011, at the Orange County Courthouse, with Judge Belvin Perry presiding. In the opening statements, lead prosecutor Burdick described the story of Caylee's disappearance day-by-day. Prosecutors stated that Casey used chloroform to incapacitate Caylee before suffocating her with duct tape, leaving the body in the trunk of her car before disposing of it. The defense, led by Baez, said Anthony had likely accidentally drowned in the family's pool on June 16, 2008, and that George had, with Casey's knowledge, covered up the drowning in order to spare his daughter a potential child-neglect charge. The defense further said that Casey's seemingly unaffected behavior after Caylee's death was attributable to child abuse she had allegedly suffered at the hands of her father and brother. Finally, the defense stated that the police investigation had been compromised by the media frenzy.
Evidence.
In the trial's second week, the prosecution called various members of Casey's family to the stand. George was their first witness, and, in a response to their questioning, he denied having sexually abused his daughter. Both George and Casey's then-boyfriend testified they did not smell anything resembling human decomposition in Casey's car when she visited them while Caylee was missing, but George said he did smell something similar to human decomposition when he went to pick up the car on July 15. Cindy testified that her comment to 9-1-1 that Casey's car smelled "like someone died" was just a figure of speech, further noting that she had made "exaggerated" claims on the phone in an effort to get the police to respond quickly.
The third week was chiefly devoted to forensic analysis. The prosecution called software designer John Dennis Bradley, who testified that, based on a program he used to recover deleted searches, someone using the Anthony computer — he could not specify who — had searched for "chloroform" 84 times. After the trial, Bradley publicly reported that this number was an error attributable to a bug in his program, and that the computer, in fact, contained only one search for "chloroform". Two police-dog handlers indicated that their cadaver dogs had detected human decomposition, one in Casey's car and the other in the Anthony family's backyard. Chief medical examiner Jan Garavaglia, for the prosecution, testified that she determined Caylee's manner of death to be homicide based on physical and circumstantial evidence, including the fact that her death had not been reported and that chloroform had been found in Casey's car, noting that even a small amount of chloroform could result in a child's death. On cross-examination, Garavaglia admitted that toxicology tests on Caylee's bones came up negative for "volatile chemicals", but she maintained her opinion that the death was not an accident, given the lack of a report.
Human identification laboratory director Michael Warren presented an animation featuring pictures of a still-living Caylee with her mother that were superimposed with Caylee's decomposed skull and the duct tape found with the body. Warren said it was his opinion that the duct tape had been placed on Caylee prior to her body's decomposition. FBI latent-fingerprints examiner Elizabeth Fontaine said that she had observed the outline of a heart-shaped sticker on the duct tape found with Warren, though by the time she tried to photograph the outline, it was no longer visible. Fontaine said that she had not found fingerprints on the tape, though she had not expected to. FBI hair analyst Sebastian Shaw testified that a hair discovered in Casey's trunk belonged to Caylee and displayed root banding; Shaw said that a study he had been running and had expedited for the trial had "so far" shown that such banding only occurred post mortem. Finally, over defense objections to scientific reliability, Arpad Vass of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reported that air-sampling procedure performed in Casey's trunk indicated decomposition and chloroform. The defense noted that Vass had been unwilling to share his proprietary database and that his forensic technique had never previously been used in a criminal case.
The defense began their case in chief in the fourth week, with forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, who had performed an autopsy