Accidental killing of Caylee is ‘absurd,’ prosecution says in final rebuttal

Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla.

Prosecutors in Casey Anthony murder trial today said it is “absurd” to believe the defense’s assertion that her 2-year-old daughter Caylee drowned and that Anthony’s father made the death look like a murder.

Prosecutor Jeff Ashton told the jurors during his rebuttal closing argument that no one makes an innocent accident look like a murder. The defense contends that Caylee drowned in the family’s pool and when Anthony panicked her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a homicide by placing duct tape over the child’s mouth and dumping the body in some nearby woods. George Anthony has denied that.

“That’s absurd. Nothing has been presented to you to make that any less absurd,” Ashton said. He also spent significant time reminding the jurors about the forensic evidence that he says links Anthony to her daughter’s death, including the smell and chemical signature of decomposition in her car.

After today’s prosecution rebuttal, Judge Belvin Perry will instruct the jurors on the seven separate charges Anthony faces, including first-degree murder.

The jurors, who were chosen from the Tampa Bay area and sequestered in an Orlando hotel, will then begin their deliberations and decide which portrait of the 25-year-old woman to believe.

The state contends Anthony was a party girl who killed Caylee because the toddler got in the way of her love life.

“Something needed to be sacrificed, that something was either the life she wanted or the life thrust upon her. She chose to sacrifice her child,” Ashton said during his original 90-minute argument Sunday.

Her attorneys contend that after Caylee drowned, her troubled mother’s lies and erratic behavior were brought on by sexual abuse she suffered as a child from her father. George Anthony also denies that allegation. Judge Belvin Perry has ruled that no evidence of such abuse has been presented and struck it from closing arguments.

Defense attorney Jose Baez said during his closing argument Sunday that the prosecutors’ case was so weak they tried to portray Anthony as “a lying, no-good slut” and that their forensic evidence was based on a “fantasy.” He said Caylee’s death was “an accident that snowballed out of control.”

Casey Anthony has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. She could face a possible death sentence or life in prison if convicted of that charge.

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.