ORLANDO, Fla. — Casey Anthony’s eyes welled with tears and her lips trembled as the verdict was read once, twice and then a third time: “Not guilty” of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Outside the courthouse, many in the crowd of 500 reacted with anger, chanting, “Justice for Caylee!” One man yelled, “Baby killer!”
In one of the most divisive verdicts since O.J. Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, Anthony was cleared Tuesday of murder, manslaughter and child-abuse charges after weeks of wall-to-wall TV coverage and armchair-lawyer punditry that one of her attorneys denounced as “media assassination.”
Anthony, 25, was convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to investigators looking into the child’s June 2008 disappearance.
Anthony could get up to a year behind bars on each count when she is sentenced Thursday. But since she has been in jail for nearly three years already, she could walk free. Had she been convicted of murder, prosecutors intended to pursue the death penalty.
After a trial of a month and a half, the Florida Ninth Judicial Circuit Court jury took less than 11 hours to reach a verdict in a case that had become a cable-TV sensation, with its “CSI”-style testimony about the smell of death inside a car trunk and its storyline about a seemingly self-centered, hard-partying young mother.
Prosecutors contended that Anthony — a single mother living with her parents — suffocated Caylee with duct tape because she wanted to be free to hit the nightclubs and spend time with her boyfriend.
Defense attorneys argued that the little girl accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool and that Anthony panicked and concealed the death because of the traumatic effects of sexual abuse by her father.
State’s Attorney Lawson Lamar said, “We’re disappointed in the verdict today because we know the facts, and we’ve put in absolutely every piece of evidence that existed.”
The prosecutor lamented the lack of hard evidence, saying: “This is a dry-bones case. Very, very difficult to prove. The delay in recovering little Caylee’s remains worked to our considerable disadvantage.”
Anthony failed to report Caylee’s disappearance for a month. The child’s decomposed body was eventually found in the woods near her grandparents’ home six months after she was last seen. A medical examiner never was able to establish how she died, and prosecutors had only circumstantial evidence that Caylee had been killed.
The jurors — seven women and five men — would not talk to the media, and their identities were kept secret by the court.
Given the relative speed with which the jury came back, many court-watchers were expecting Anthony to be convicted and were stunned by the outcome.
Anthony’s parents left court quickly after the verdict without saying anything to her. As court broke up, she smiled broadly and tightly hugged her lawyers.
“While we’re happy for Casey, there are no winners in this case,” defense attorney Jose Baez said after the verdict. “Caylee has passed on far, far too soon, and what my driving force has been for the last three years has been always to make sure that there has been justice for Caylee and Casey because Casey did not murder Caylee. It’s that simple. And today, our system of justice has not dishonored her memory by a false conviction.”
Because the case got so much media attention in Orlando, jurors were brought in from the Tampa Bay area and sequestered for the entire trial, during which they listened to more than 33 days of testimony and looked at 400 pieces of evidence. Anthony did not take the stand.
Anthony case timeline
June 16, 2008: 2-year-old Caylee Anthony is last seen alive leaving the home of her grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony, along with her mother, Casey.
June 18, 2008: Casey Anthony borrows a shovel from a neighbor.
June 20, 2008: Anthony is captured in various photos partying at a nightclub and participating in a “hard body contest.”
June 24, 2008: Anthony gets into a fight with George Anthony and storms out. She tells him that Caylee is with a babysitter.
June 28, 2008: Casey Anthony’s car is towed from outside a check-cashing store after a supervisor calls to report it as abandoned.
June 30-July 15, 2008: Anthony is captured in security videos shopping at JC Penney, Target and Winn-Dixie.
July 15, 2008: George and Cindy Anthony pick up Casey’s car from a tow yard. George Anthony observes a strong odor in the vehicle. Later, Casey tells her mother and brother that she hasn’t seen Caylee in a month and that a babysitter named Zanaida “Zanny” Fernandez Gonzalez kidnapped her.
July 15-16, 2008: Casey Anthony takes police to what she said was the last place she saw Caylee. It’s a vacant apartment. Authorities take her to Universal Studios, where she said she worked, but supervisors there say she hadn’t worked there in more than two years.
Oct. 14, 2008: Casey Anthony is indicted on charges of first-degree murder, along with aggravated manslaughter, aggravated child abuse and four counts of lying to police.
Dec. 11, 2008: The skeletal remains of Caylee Anthony are discovered in a wooded area not far from the Anthony home.
The Associated Press
