Anthony won’t testify; defense rests its case

Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla.

Casey Anthony’s defense team rested its case Thursday in her high-profile murder trial without her testimony, and some experts believe the strategy raised more questions than answers to support her claim that her 2-year daughter died in a tragic accident.

The jury also saw a note from a failed suicide attempt by Anthony’s own father, who wrestled with questions about what happened to his granddaughter. Casey Anthony claimed he helped her dispose of Caylee’s body after she drowned.

At different parts of the note, George Anthony wrote: “Casey does not deserve to be where she is” and “She [Caylee] was found so close to home. Why?”

The prosecution began its rebuttal Thursday afternoon. Closing arguments will follow, and the jury could begin deliberating by this weekend. If convicted of first-degree murder, the 25-year-old could receive the death penalty.

Her attorneys never produced any witnesses bolstering the claim made in last month’s opening statements that Anthony had acted without apparent remorse in the weeks after her daughter’s death because she had been molested by her father as a child, resulting in emotional problems.

“If you do not at least present facts to support that argument, the jury is going to think you have no credibility,” said Tim Jansen, a former federal prosecutor and criminal-defense attorney in Tallahassee. “When you promise the jury something and don’t deliver it, you severely handicap your client’s case and you undermine your credibility with that jury.”

Instead, the 13-day defense primarily focused on poking holes in the prosecution’s contention that Anthony killed Caylee in June 2008 by covering her mouth with duct tape. Prosecutors said the woman dumped Caylee’s body in the woods near her parents’ home and then resumed her life of partying and shopping. Their case relied on circumstantial and forensic evidence, and it did have holes: Prosecutors had no witnesses who saw the killing or saw Anthony with her daughter’s body. And there was no certain proof that the child suffocated.

The prosecution began its rebuttal Thursday by walking through the door opened Wednesday by the defense when it allowed parts of George Anthony’s suicide note to be admitted. The note included George Anthony asking questions about the death of his granddaughter. Several members of the jury were glued to their monitors as the prosecutor projected the letter for them to read.

“Who is involved with this stuff for Caylee?” George Anthony wrote at one point in the letter to his family in January 2009.

The defense said in its opening statement that Caylee drowned and that George Anthony, a former police officer, helped her cover up the death by making it look like a homicide and dumping the body near their home, where it was found by a meter reader six months later. George Anthony has vehemently denied any involvement in Caylee’s death, the disposal of her body or molesting his daughter.

Casey Anthony was born in Warren in 1986 to George and Cindy Anthony, who lived in Howland before moving the family to Florida in 1989.