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11 hours of deliberation, 4 misdemeanor convictions for Casey Anthony
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Casey Anthony reacts after the jury acquitted her of murdering her daughter, Caylee, during Anthony's murder trial at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, July 5, 2011. (AP Photo/Red Huber, Pool)
Associated Press
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 wife, 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 only of four misdemeanor counts of lying to investigators who were 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, she could have gotten 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 national 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 was never able to establish how she died, and prosecutors had only circumstantial evidence that Caylee had been killed.
The jurors — seven women, five men — would not talk to the media and their identities were kept secret by the court.
The case played out on national television almost from the moment Caylee was reported missing three years ago. HLN’s Nancy Grace approached the case with the zeal of the hard-nosed prosecutor she once was, arguing that Anthony — or “the tot mom,” as Grace routinely called her — was responsible for her daughter’s death.