State rests its case in Casey Anthony trial

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Prosecutors spent 19 days proving beyond any doubt that Casey Anthony is a liar who loves to party. But did they also prove that she murdered her 2-year-old daughter Caylee?

The prosecution rested its case Wednesday after introducing a wealth of circumstantial and forensic evidence that they say shows that the young single mother suffocated her daughter by wrapping duct tape around her head. They say she left the girl's body in her car until it stank and then dumped it in the woods near the home she shared with her parents.

But there are holes. They have no witnesses who saw the killing. No one saw Anthony with the body. And because the body was so decomposed, there is no absolute proof that the child was suffocated, just the tape remnants on her skull. Caylee's remains were found in December 2008, six months after the girl was last seen.

And while the prosecution used Anthony's friends, parents and brother to show that she lied repeatedly before and after her child died, the witnesses also all agreed that she was a loving and doting mother. If convicted of first-degree murder, Anthony faces a possible death sentence.

"I think (the prosecutors) did as best they could with the evidence that they have," said Leslie Garfield, a criminal law professor at Pace Law School in New York. "The problem is that all 12 jurors have to find a verdict unanimously beyond all reasonable doubt. So you wind up having a pretty heavy burden."

And that's what Anthony's attorneys will bank on when they begin their case Thursday -- but they also set a high bar for themselves. In his opening statement, lead defense attorney Jose Baez said he will show that Caylee accidentally drowned in her grandparents' above-ground swimming pool and that Casey freaked out. He said Anthony's father, a former police officer, made the death look like a murder and helped her dump the body. George Anthony adamantly denied the claim during his testimony, along with an accusation that he molested Casey as a child.

If the defense has no witnesses to back up their claims of a drowning and cover-up, many lawyers familiar with the case think Anthony, 25, will have to testify in her own defense, opening her up scathing cross-examination.

"That's really risky," Garfield said.

In her opening statement, lead prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick didn't hide the central mystery of the case: "What happened to Caylee Marie Anthony?"

She and her assistants then methodically tried to answer that question, showing that Anthony had been living the life of a party girl before Caylee disappeared in June 2008 -- and didn't slow down until she was arrested weeks later.

They showed that Anthony, then 22, lied to her parents and detectives about working as a party planner at Universal Studios theme park. She also maintained that a nanny named Zanny had taken the child in several conversations with investigators -- a vastly different explanation from the drowning story the defense is now using.

Prosecutors showed that in the days after Caylee was last seen -- the period when prosecutors say she was murdered -- Anthony hid from her parents, spent time with her boyfriend, went shopping and hung out with friends.

When her parents and brother visited her in jail after her arrest, she insisted she had no idea where Caylee could be.

"Her conduct just sticks out," said Karin Moore, an assistant professor at Florida A&M College of Law. "If she knew her child had died or was missing, she was not acting like a grieving mother. It may be enough for a jury to convict her."

Still, Moore says it's risky for prosecutors to rely so heavily on bad character evidence.

"They're asking a jury to decide, `She's a bad person, so she must have killed the child.' I think that's a big leap for a jury to have to make," Moore said.

Prosecutors used forensic evidence to bolster the case, primarily from Anthony's car and Caylee's remains.

Shortly after their daughter and granddaughter disappeared in June 2008, Casey's parents got a notice that their daughter's car had been towed and needed to be claimed. George Anthony and the tow lot operator both said the Pontiac Sunfire smelled like death.

Prosecutors played a tape of a frantic 911 call made by Anthony's mother, Cindy, reporting her granddaughter missing. Jurors took notes as they watched the grieving grandmother drop her head in tears while listening to the recording in which she said: "It smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car."

That smell is a major component of the prosecution's case.

They called Arpad Vass, a senior researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who offered what's arguably the most controversial evidence so far. Vass and a colleague used a syringe to extract air from a can holding a carpet sample from the Pontiac, then injected the air into a special instrument to identify the substances it contained.

The substances were compared against a database of more than 400 chemical compounds Vass has previously identified from the decomposition of bodies. He backed up the prosecutors' theory, testifying that he smelled an "overwhelmingly strong" odor of human decomposition in the air sample and that his machine found high levels of chemical compounds observed when the body breaks down, such as chloroform.

But Anthony's attorneys say the stench came from a bag of trash left in the trunk during the broiling Florida summer. They argue that Vass' tests haven't been duplicated elsewhere and that the researcher has refused to share his database, claiming it is proprietary.

Prosecution experts also said a single strand of hair found in the car's trunk showed signs of decomposition. But not all the forensic scientists agree on the level of decomposition.

"I do have issues with the validity and reliability of the odor testing because the doctor relied on his own studies," Moore said. "It was not peer-reviewed."

Still, Garfield said disagreements in the testimony of expert witnesses may not necessarily cause the jury to dismiss the evidence.

"On one hand, it doesn't look like a rock-solid case for the prosecution," Garfield said. "But on the other hand, it looks more real. If you have too many witnesses saying exactly the same thing, then a jury could be cynical. If they conflict a little bit, then you could say it's not a rock-solid story, but you can also say these people are real -- let me look at the whole picture."

Amended witness list filed by defense

Casey Anthony, through her defense team, has filed a last minute motion introducing an additional witness. The motion alleges that there were four points of contact on July 14, 2008 by telephone between Vasco Dagama Thompson and George Anthony. Thomson has a criminal conviction and has served 10 years in prison for kidnapping.

The attorney representing George Anthony, Mark Lippman, stated in an email sent to FOX 35 on Wednesday that, "This simply appears to be another attempt by the defense to attack my client." Lippman added that George Anthony, "has and will continue to maintain the position that he had nothing to do with the death of Caylee Marie Anthony or any of the events that occurred afterword."

According to Lippman, George Anthony does not know Thompson and does not recall ever speaking with Thompson at any time by any form of communication. He said George does not recall ever receiving telephone calls from Thompson and does not recall ever calling Thompson.

Brad Conway isn't only a defense attorney, but at one point he represented Casey's parents, George and Cindy Anthony.
FOX 35's Tracy Jacim asked Conway about the defense's last-minute addition Wednesday afternoon of convicted kidnapping felon Vasco Thompson.

"This is one of those things that adds to reasonable doubt, and that's what the job of the defense is... to put reasonable doubt in jurors minds," Conway said. "So, if there's no explanation from George Anthony and there's no explanation from Vasco Thompson, they're going to be wondering, 'What does this mean?' There doesn't have to be an answer for there to be reasonable doubt."

A defense investigator reportedly found records of four separate points of contact by phone between Thompson and Anthony on the day before Cindy Anthony's well-known 911 call.

We'll have to wait and see if Judge Perry allows Thompson's testimony, and if he does, we'll learn together the defense's plan. But how does the defense plan to debunk the testimony of Orange County Medical Examiner Dr. Jan "Dr. G" Garavaglia?

State rests its case in Casey Anthony trial: MyFoxORLANDO.com

Conway points to an interview with Dr. Spitz, an expert for the defense. "His testimony that when opening the skull, there was matter on the left side of it, indicating to him the remains at one point were laying on the left side. The inference being they were moved."

And what about the defense's opening argument: Casey sexually abused by dad George, Caylee accidentally drowing in the family's above ground pool and dad George finding her?

Conway says Casey has to take the stand. "I'm sticking to my theory she has to take the stand, has to testify, in order to supports Mr. Baez's opening statement."

FOX 35's Tracy Jacim contributed to this report.

www.caseyanthonymurdertrial.com

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