Nothing but the truth?

June 27, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

The trial of Casey Anthony

By Anthony Colarossi

Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla.

Whether Casey Anthony testifies or not, legal analysts, trial observers and mental health experts agree the defense team must try to explain her behavior and her raft of lies after her daughter’s death.

Consider the prosecution’s theory of murder — or the defense’s: that 2-year-old Caylee Marie Anthony accidentally drowned.

Both scenarios precede a monthlong span during which — the prosecution and defense agree — Casey Anthony created an alternate reality for her friends and her family.

Caylee was with the nanny. Casey was working. Everything was fine. Lie after lie after confounding lie.

When law enforcement learned of her child’s disappearance, Casey bluffed detectives. After she was jailed and her parents visited, seeking hints of Caylee’s whereabouts, Casey continued to fabricate. On video, she seems to believe her mistruths, expressing anger when confronted by doubt.

“That’s what makes a good liar,” said Lori Butts, a forensic psychologist from Davie, Fla., who also holds a law degree and does criminal-case consultations. Such traits, she said, are “what makes a psychopath.”

“They get themselves caught up in their lies,” Butts said. “She creates her own reality.”

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.

Butts says she doubts Casey Anthony, 25, is mentally ill because she’s too lucid, precise and logical.

Butts noted the difference between “mad and bad” prevaricators. Earlier in her career, Butts worked with women who killed their children. They were psychotic, and their delusional minds caused breaks with reality. They were insane, she said.

Sociopaths, on the other hand, lie “to get over” for their own advantage, Butts said. They’re just bad.

“They’re lying in order to get what they want, whether it’s attention or money,” Butts said. “In this instance, it’s to hide the fact that her daughter is dead.”

In his opening statement, though, defense attorney Jose Baez suggested a cause-and-effect relationship between alleged sexual abuse by Casey’s father and brother and her lies. In essence, Baez said, his client was “conditioned” by deep family dysfunction to lie.

On Friday, Baez affirmed in court that this is still the defense theory, “among other things.”

All seven mental health professionals interviewed for this story were unaware of literature or studies supporting a causal relationship between childhood sexual victimization and adulthood lies on the order Anthony told.

“You can have lying and relationship problems in people who were sexually abused and people who were not abused at all,” said Jay Flens, a board-certified forensic psychologist from the Tampa, Fla., area.

Flens and many others have said that, after Baez’s opening statement, the defense has to now “deal with this bizarre theory.” Making matters worse, Anthony may be the only one who can explain her lies. But that would mean her taking the stand and speaking directly to the jurors.

Many legal experts agree the defense does not want Anthony on the stand because that would mean she would undergo fierce cross-examination by prosecutors. But Baez’s opening statement raised so many questions that seemingly only she can answer.

“She can say, ‘I was programmed to lie,’ but this is the credibility issue,” Flens said. “Why are we going to believe you this time?”

Jurors have heard a friend of Casey’s recount one instance in which the young woman hung up the phone and expressed pride in her deceptive ways. She reportedly said, “Oh, my God, I am such a good liar.”

They’ve watched her lies captured on video and audio.

Randy Otto, a professor at the University of South Florida and former president of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, said it’s possible a mental health expert could be called to say “in my experience, this could happen” in trying to associate alleged sexual abuse with the lies.

But he is confident that it would be a solitary opinion not backed by any authoritative literature.

“It’s well-known many abuse victims don’t come forward,” Otto said. “They don’t admit it in adulthood, but that’s different than engaging in manipulative behavior.”

These people may hide things from their past out of shame, guilt, intimidation and fear. But, Otto said, “that doesn’t mean they lie about all sorts of other things.”

Part of the dilemma from a psychological standpoint is the lack of detail about Anthony’s history before June 16, 2008, when her daughter was last seen alive by her family. Testimony at trial shows she was lying about a nanny before that point and had lied about her work situation.

But her mental health evaluations, conducted in advance of the trial, have not been made public. The defense has said it wants an expert to testify about how different people cope with and react to grief. But the judge has not ruled on that issue yet.

In April, the prosecution filed a motion stating Casey’s mental-health reports “do not diagnose the defendant as suffering from any clinical or personality disorders as recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.”

“If I were investigating this case, I would look for a lifelong history of chronic lying,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of law and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who said he knows nothing but the most basic details of the Casey Anthony case. “Does she lie in ways that get her into trouble?”

Beyond that, Morse said, “I’m always leery of causal-link stories. Mostly they are not that relevant.”

Philip Anthony, chief executive officer of DecisionQuest trial consulting, said he sees no other option but for Casey Anthony to take the stand.

“Her message will be, ‘I’ve been a victim my whole life,’” said Anthony, no relation to Casey Anthony’s family. “I think the defense’s hope is to create this whole deflection of responsibility from Casey to her father.”

And if a family member shared knowledge of her abuse and fear, Philip Anthony said, that would “definitely be more powerful” for jurors than Casey’s saying it herself, given her lying history.

One possibility for the defense might be to cast Casey Anthony as having “borderline personality disorder,” a condition in which individuals engage in manipulation, superficial relationships and impulsivity, among other things.

Some of those characteristics might describe Casey Anthony’s behavior for the month after her daughter’s disappearance — the partying, the hanging out with friends, the complete detachment from a child she knew to be dead.

According to Butts, the forensic psychologist, the defense also could “stretch” and attribute Casey Anthony’s behavior to the kind of dissociation disorder sometimes suffered by victims of traumatic events.

Butts said it is akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, in which the individual would block a painful memory or emotion as a “defense mechanism.”

“I don’t believe it applies in this case,” she said, because “it doesn’t explain the lying.”

And yet Stuart Slotnick, a New York City-based attorney with the firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, reminds that the prosecution’s case is circumstantial and lacks direct evidence such as an eyewitness account or a confession.

“There is clearly something wrong with her,” Slotnick said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s a murderer. Someone can be a liar and not a murderer.”