Arrest Following her arrest at Universal Studios, On July 22, 2008, after a bond hearing, the judge set bail at $500,000. 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. 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 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.
Evidence In the trial's second week, the prosecution called various members of Casey's family to the stand. 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. 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. 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. 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. Cindy, now testifying as a defense witness, said that she had been responsible for the chloroform search on the family computer, saying she had meant to search for
chlorophyll but had misremembered the term. Cindy said that work records indicating she had been at work at the time of the search were incorrect, as she said they often were because she was a salaried employee. Finally, Cindy testified that their family buried their pets in blankets and plastic bags, using duct tape to seal the opening. On June 30, the defense called Krystal Holloway, a volunteer in the search for Caylee, who stated she had an affair with George. According to Holloway, George said Caylee's death was "an accident that snowballed out of control". During cross-examination, prosecutors pointed to Holloway's sworn police statement, in which she said George believed, rather than knew, it was an accident. During
redirect examination, Baez asked Holloway if George had told her Caylee was dead while stating publicly that she was missing, to which she replied yes. In his earlier testimony George denied the affair with Holloway and said he visited her only because she was ill. Casey did not testify. By the time the trial was finished, 400 pieces of evidence had been presented. Ashton, for the prosecution, reiterated the state's belief that Casey had killed Caylee to free herself of parental duties, saying, "When you have a child, that child becomes your life. This case is about the clash between that responsibility, and the expectations that go with it, and the life that Casey Anthony wanted to have." He emphasized Casey's false claims (including her claims regarding Fernandez-Gonzalez), the smell in the car and the items found with Caylee's remains. Baez, who Judge Perry had said could not address the abuse claims given the lack of evidence presented at trial, emphasized the circumstantial nature of the prosecution's case, saying the state's allegations were based on "fantasy [computer] searches, fantasy forensics, phantom stickers, phantom stains ... and no real, hard evidence". further contending that drowning was "the only explanation that made sense", a point he illustrated with a video of Anthony opening the home's sliding glass door (which did not have a child-safety lock) by herself. In the rebuttal, lead-prosecutor Burdick said that the state had backed up the claims from its opening statements with evidence. Burdick denied Baez's charge that the prosecution had based its case on emotion rather than evidence. She then ended her rebuttal by showing the jury a side-by-side picture of Casey partying and a tattoo she received the day before Caylee was reported missing. On July 5, prosecutors stated that, during deliberations, they were about to give the jury the corrected information with regard to Bradley's software discrepancy; however, the jury reached a verdict before they could do so. One legal analyst stated that if the jury had found Casey guilty before receiving the
exculpatory evidence, the prosecution's failure to fully disclose it could have been grounds for a
mistrial. On July 5, 2011, the jury found Casey not guilty of counts one through three regarding first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and aggravated child abuse, while finding her guilty on counts four through seven for providing false information to law enforcement: the guilty counts pertained to Casey's false statements that she (1) worked at Universal Studios, (2) employed Fernandez-Gonzalez as a nanny, (3) had told two Universal Studios coworkers that Anthony had disappeared, and (4) had spoken by phone with Caylee after Caylee went missing. On July 7, 2011, sentencing arguments were heard. The defense asked for the sentencing to be based on one count of lying on the grounds that the offenses occurred as part of a single interview with police dealing with the same matter, the disappearance of her daughter. In the alternative, the defense argued for concurrent sentencing—that is, for Casey to be permitted to serve the various sentences at the same time. The judge disagreed with both arguments: Perry found the statements to constitute "four distinct, separate lies". He sentenced Casey to, consecutively, one year in the county jail and $1,000 in fines for each of the four counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer, the maximum penalty prescribed by law. Perry ruled that Casey must pay $217,000 to the State of Florida. The prosecution had requested $516,000 in reimbursement, but Perry only found Casey liable for expenses incurred during the period in which Caylee was reported missing to when the homicide probe opened. In earlier arguments, Mason had called the prosecutors' attempts to exact the larger sum "sour grapes" because the prosecution lost its case.
Appeal Casey
appealed her convictions, arguing that the false statements she provided to officers constituted one offense and that the statements were inadmissible because she had not been given a
Miranda warning. ==Media coverage==