It struck a chord with George, who turned around and blew up at the reporter.
“Shut up. Shut up,” he started yelling.
Then they go into the jail, and you can hear Cindy saying to Casey, “George just blew up at the media.”
“Oh really?” said Casey.
“They’re saying that Caylee drowned in the pool,” said Cindy.
And that’s when Casey said, “Oh well. Oh well.”
But here’s the point. The media said, she died “by accident.” But Cindy was the one who said “she drowned in the pool.”
The inference had to be that at that point Cindy knew.
And I was going to ask her how she knew. But we never did that, because we didn’t feel it was necessary.
The one thing everyone in the media forgets is that they knew they were being recorded. They knew their visits would be on all the news stations, because that’s what happened after the first one. I even filed a motion to try to stop it. So her detractors who watched the video in which she told George what a great father he was—and to them that was proof she was lying about the sexual abuse—didn’t know the backstory, how she was trying to get George and Cindy to bond her out.
I do believe the way the state presented it—playing all those videos for a day and a half straight—helped the defense. However, the prosecutors should have selected the best ones that made their points instead of using all of them.
The other interesting story relates to the state playing a recording of Casey’s first phone call home after she was arrested. That’s the call where her girlfriend says to her, “If anything happens to Caylee, I’ll die,” and all Casey can say to her is, “Oh my God. Calling you guys is a huge waste of time. All I wanted was my boyfriend’s number.”
From a defendant’s standpoint, it was terrible. She sounded cold and heartless. All these people were trying to find out what happened to Caylee, and she’s being bitchy with them. The prosecution used the tape to bash her at the trial.
I was sympathetic to Casey’s trauma, but still, hearing her sound so heartless was infuriating. While it was being played I leaned over and said to her, “If this jury doesn’t kill you, I will.”
THE PROSECUTION called Amy Huizenga, who claimed to be Casey’s best friend. The prosecution flew her in all the way from Spain, where she had been working on a cruise ship. Amy really wasn’t able to contribute much, but the purpose of her testimony was for her to discuss one of the thousands of text messages that had gone back and forth between Amy and Casey, at least one of which had to do with Amy inviting Casey out to party, and Casey blowing her off, telling Amy she couldn’t go out because she had to stay home with Caylee.
You see, this was another part of the prosecution’s ridiculous accusations, Casey’s supposed motive for murder. They were trying to argue that Casey had murdered Caylee because Caylee was preventing her from going out and partying. Again, when the charge was made in all the newspapers and on the all TV stations, the public took the state’s word for it. Now, in court, the state would have to dig up evidence to support its absurd conclusion, and here was the “evidence,” one of Amy’s text messages where Casey complains she has to stay home and watch Caylee.
I have to say I never liked Amy. Yes, Casey stole some of her checks and cashed them, but that’s no excuse for her stabbing her supposed best friend in the back. Everyone liked to portray Casey as the party girl, but I read every single one of her text messages between her and Amy, and it was usually Amy almost every night trying to get Casey to go out and Casey saying no.
Then came Lee Anthony, called to the stand to discuss July 16. I noticed during the direct examination that the prosecution was having a tough time getting anything out of him.
I sat up straight and took notice, because since the bond hearing, when he told the cops the nature of our private meetings and I found out about it, I hadn’t trusted him again. Moreover, most of his public statements had been very pro-prosecution.
Then the prosecutors held a sidebar, during which Frank George admitted to Judge Belvin Perry that Lee had refused to meet with prosecutors before the trial to discuss his testimony, and he asked the judge if he could treat Lee as a hostile witness.
I knew right then and there we would have an opportunity, and that we needed to reach out to Lee’s lawyer to see if he would meet with us.
Mark Lippman represented all the Anthonys, but it was clear that George and Cindy felt one way, and Lee another. I saw this a conflict of interest.
Due to the Rules of Professional Conduct, we couldn’t approach Lee without his lawyer being present, but we got lucky. Out of the blue we got a call from Lee, informing me that Lippman no longer represented him. I explained to him my professional obligation to make certain of this. I asked him to send me a text message saying Lippman no longer represented him.
What he wanted was open access to the defense. In time Lee would prove to be a valuable ally.
THE NEXT WITNESSES were the first responders to Cindy’s 9-1-1 calls, which started with Deputy Rendon Fletcher and ended with Detective Yuri Melich. They all testified to not smelling anything in Casey’s car, and that while Cindy was a wreck, George was calm, and so was Casey.
At the end of my cross-examination of Melich, who spent an hour talking about how Casey had lied to him about working at Universal Studios, and how he had gone with her and trapped her into admitting to him that she no longer worked there, I asked him what I thought to be a logical and germane question.
“If you’re about to sit down, what if Casey had told you, ‘Don’t sit there. Zanny the nanny is sitting there,’ what would you have done?”
Linda Drane Burdick immediately objected, saying my question was speculative and irrelevant.
But it wasn’t irrelevant at all. If Melich had seen a troubled, delusional young woman and had sought to find out why she acted the way she did, he would have discovered the reason behind her behavior. He would have discovered the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father, and he would have found out how Caylee died.
But he didn’t do that. Instead, he made the determination that Casey was guilty of something, threw her in jail, and made sure all the evidence pointed in her direction. As far as I was concerned, if there was any negligence on anyone’s part, it was at the hand of Melich.
“I said it’s a hypothetical, Judge,” I told the judge.
“Sustained,” said Judge Perry.
I asked Melich, “Are there psychologists or psychiatrists who you consulted with during this investigation?”
Again Linda objected, and her objection was sustained.
I asked to approach the bench, and I explained to Judge Perry that I was trying to establish that Melich’s investigation should have taken the direction where he should have dealt with Casey’s mental health issues.
“I think I should have the right to explore what this officer would have done under certain scenarios and whether he even considered that,” I said.
“I’m trying to establish if instead of looking at this as a murder investigation or someone who is lying, as opposed to someone who doesn’t have a grip on reality, this investigation would have taken a completely different direction. I think it’s critical with this witness at this specific point of time.”
“You haven’t asked him one question in that direction,” said Judge Perry.
“That’s the question I’m getting at,” I said.
Linda objected, arguing I had no good-faith basis to ask this question.
“She was evaluated right after her arrest, and they said she is normal,” Linda said. “Is she insane?”
Judge Perry asked me whether there was a good-faith basis for my question.
I said there was.
“What is it?” he asked me.
“She has been evaluated,” I began to say when Judge Perry cut me off.
“Just a second. Okay, what is the good-faith basis pursuant to the Del Monte Banana Company case? You c
annot insinuate something out of thin air without a good-faith basis.” He repeated, “You cannot dream up stuff out of thin air and bring it up, and that’s precisely what this case says.”
“I’m not dreaming this up,” I said. “I do have a good-faith basis.”
Judge Perry decided it was time for all of us to go to lunch.
And what “let’s go to lunch” meant was that I was done. The issue was done. He ruled against me, and that was it. I couldn’t go into that. Enough said.
This happened so often. I couldn’t try this case the way I wanted to. He was forcing me to try it a certain way. It was absurd. It was like I was fighting the whole world.
When we returned the next day, I was determined to ask Melich why he didn’t bother investigating the possibility that Caylee had drowned when Cindy told him the ladder to the pool had been up.
He said he didn’t find the information to be important. Not only did he not ask Cindy about it, he said he never questioned Casey about it either. When asked about this by Burdick, Melich said he focused solely on Casey’s statement that Caylee had been taken by Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez.
The state then called a couple of witnesses to show that Casey had lied about being employed at Universal Studios.
ON DAY ELEVEN of the trial, the state called Arpad Vass to the stand to testify as to his air evidence. I immediately objected because he had not adequately explained his database for his conclusions used in his research.
My motion was denied.
Dr. Vass got on the stand and talked of his expertise in anthropology, biology, chemistry, microbiology, clinical biology, and endocite biology. He said he had worked for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for twenty years.
He discussed how he studied the decomposition of dead bodies, studied the chemical breakdown of soft tissue. He began to go through the process of decomposition in great detail, when I rose and objected, making the point that Dr. Vass was not a biologist.
I was overruled.
He continued, and I objected again, arguing he wasn’t qualified to talk on the subject because he wasn’t a chemist.
Again I was overruled. He blathered on, talking technically about the process of decomposition. I doubt if one person in the courthouse had any idea what he was talking about.
Through Dr. Vass’s recitation I kept objecting, citing narrative improper predicate and nonresponsive.
Judge Perry overruled me every time, and finally he called a sidebar to explain why he was overruling me.
“I appreciate that, Your Honor,” I began. “Part of the reason why we’re objecting is this witness is going into areas that have no relevance to this case.”
I continued, “The state alleges there may have been a body in the Pontiac Sunfire from June 16 to June 27, a period of nine days. And all this is doing is allowing this witness to give a lecture to the jury about his knowledge in various different areas that do not encompass the areas of which he’s been asked to testify.”
“I find that is improper bolstering.”
Co-counsel Cheney Mason got up and told the judge that Jeff Ashton was getting dangerously close to testimony that he had already ruled was not admissible.
Ashton rose to say he didn’t recall any restrictions in the court’s order.
Cheney reminded him that the court order would not permit Dr. Vass to give an opinion as to whether the odor signature is that solely of a decomposing human body.
“He will not testify to that,” said Ashton. “But he will testify that his own experience of smelling the odor, combined with all the other things, he will give his opinion as to whether he believes that there was a human body in the trunk of that car.”
Say what?
“Hang on there just a second,” said Cheney. “So what you’re trying to do is say okay, the judge has made these findings or rulings, and you’re still allowing him to give a backdoor quote pure opinion unquote?”
“He’s going to give an opinion as many other witnesses already have about the nature of the odor having smelled it. He’s going to combine that information with chemical information he’s received, and he will answer a question about whether it’s his opinion as whether there was a dead body in the trunk of that based on both—but no, he will not in any way vary from what he’s said before about this scientific evidence.”
Incredibly, Vass was allowed to do this.
He proceeded to explain his experiment with dead bodies to study how they decomposed. He talked of the tests he made to do that.
I stood and objected to his testimony. Vass hadn’t made the chemical tests. Dr. Marcus Wise, Vass’s partner, had, and he had sent the results to Dr. Vass.
I brought up the fact that there was no quantitative analysis of chloroform because the trunk is a free-flowing environment and it would be impossible to know how much chloroform was in the trunk of the car.
I also pointed out that Vass made corrections to his study.
I moved to strike the previous testimony, but my motion was denied.
Vass then testified that the amount of chloroform was “shockingly high.” No it wasn’t. I objected as it being outside his area of expertise, and I was overruled.
He then testified about tests to the carpet sample of Casey’s car. He said he was able to identify fifty-one individual chemical components, and one of them was chloroform. And not only that, he testified there were “large peaks,” that it was in much larger abundance than the other chemicals.
“Did that surprise you?” asked Ashton.
“We were shocked,” said Vass.
He said he had never seen that level of chloroform in the twenty years doing his work. His conclusion: chloroform appeared in the trunk of the car at some point in time in the past.
I objected, of course. I told the court, “The witness has not testified as to where he obtained it, who conducted the tests, and anything related to its reliability.”
Judge Perry asked Vass who conducted the tests.
“Dr. Wise and myself conducted the tests,” he said.
“Is that the data that you reasonably rely upon in formulating your opinion in this case?” asked Judge Perry.
“Yes.”
“Anything else, folks?” asked Judge Perry.
Dr. Vass then discussed the power of the odor coming from the sealed can that held the carpet sample. He said he jumped back a foot or two. He said he was shocked that “that little bitty can could have that much odor associated with it.”
“What did you recognize that odor to be?” Ashton asked him.
“I would recognize it as human decomposition odor,” said Vass.
“That you’ve smelled many, many times before?”
“Many times before,” said Vass.
Vass then testified about paper towels and napkins sent to him by Dr. Neal Haskell for analysis. Vass said he did a chemical test and it revealed a number of fatty acids on the napkin.
His conclusion: those fatty acids are from decomposition.
“It is a product of the breakdown of the fat,” he said.
“Is it associated with decomposition?” asked Ashton.
“Yes.”
He then testified that the carpet was the source of the odor.
Said Dr. Vass with great finality, “Now, in the car sample, the car trunk sample, we identified fifty-one human decomposition [chemicals] based on the studies we’ve done over the last several years.”
He said he started eliminating compounds found in the car trunk. He said he looked at decomposing pizza, squirrel remnants, the garage air, and that left approximately sixteen compounds.
“Of those sixteen compounds,” said Vass, “seven of those are considered significant.” He said there were six others, but they were eliminated because they had the same makeup as gasoline, which had been in the car.
He continued, “Those seven were found to be in the list of thirty compounds that we considered most relevant out of five hundred compounds in human decompositio
n.”
“Can you come to any opinion about the source of the odor that you analyzed from the carpet?” asked Ashton.
“I consider it consistent with human decomposition,” said Dr. Vass.
What I considered at that moment should not be set in type.
I KNEW WHEN VASS took the stand that Judge Perry was going to allow his testimony, even though according to my experts his methodology was faulty and his conclusions weren’t based on reliable science.
Sometime in 2010 Judge Perry had conducted what is called a Frye hearing in which each side discusses the evidence they want to introduce, giving the other side the opportunity to object. I objected at every turn, but to no avail.
Judge Perry let everything come in. I know I sound like I’m whining, and I’m really sorry about that, but I can’t help myself.
The Frye hearings were comprehensive, and so at the trial Vass knew exactly what it was that I was going to ask him. Often during the Frye hearing he was vague, or nonresponsive, or pretended he didn’t get what I was saying.
It wasn’t any different at trial. I did what I could to let the jury know that his science was junk, but I was stopped at every turn by Ashton’s objections and Judge Perry’s agreement. Vass had supposedly come up with a database which was supposed to identify the chemicals which indicated a dead body, but the way he collected his data was so totally unscientific, I couldn’t believe it. Yet when I questioned him about it, I didn’t get very far because of Ashton’s objections and Judge Perry’s upholding them.
I even had difficulty letting the jury know that Vass had a financial interest and stood to make a mint if he could sell his machine to police departments. His problem was that he needed his database study to be admitted in a court of law for him to sell these dead body detectors.
I fenced with him for an hour, getting him to admit he would get paid if his testimony stood up and his machine was sold to police departments around the country.
Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story Page 38