ORLANDO, Fla. — Opening statements in Casey Anthony’s first-degree murder trial did not disappoint: They offered jurors two wildly opposing theories about the death of the young woman’s 2-year-old daughter nearly three years ago.
Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick told a condensed and compelling story filled with previews about the state’s deep circumstantial case, its forensic evidence and the first revelation: that duct tape was used by Casey to overcome Caylee Marie in the summer of 2008.
Defense attorney Jose Baez, meanwhile, delivered a series of supposed bombshells: Caylee never went missing. She accidentally drowned in the Anthony family pool June 16, 2008.
“The fact of the matter is this is an accident that snowballed out of control,” said Baez. “This is not a murder case. This is a sad, tragic accident.”
Baez also insisted that George Anthony, Casey’s father, held Caylee’s lifeless body in his arms after the drowning and immediately blamed his daughter, saying, “Look what you’ve done.”
George Anthony sexually molested his daughter starting when she was 8 years old, Baez argued, describing in sometimes-graphic language the degree of the abuse.
Baez promised, “These ugly secrets will come out slowly during this trial.”
Those secrets, he claims, also will help the defense explain Casey Anthony’s behavior in the days and weeks following her daughter’s disappearance — the partying, the tattooing, the lying. “She went back to that deep ugly place called denial to pretend nothing is wrong,” Baez said. “She acted as if it never happened.”
How far this defense will go with the 12 jurors and five alternates hearing this case remains to be seen. They sat riveted to both the prosecution and defense openings, which comprised most of the day. The jurors will ultimately decide whether Casey Anthony, 25, is guilty of first-degree murder in her daughter’s death.
As much as Baez went for the dramatic, delving into the story of a family’s dysfunction, Burdick provided a sober, clinical assessment of the case.
She said the duct tape found with the remains of Caylee Anthony in December 2008 was placed there by her mother with the intention of ending her child’s life.
Burdick told of how Caylee’s body was wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket, then placed in several plastic bags and then tossed into the swampy woods “like a piece of trash.”
She went day by day, chronicling Casey Anthony’s actions in the month-long period her child was missing and repeatedly asking, “What happened to Caylee Marie Anthony?”
And then she hinted at the motive: freedom, the opportunity to have life resume as a young woman with a boyfriend — and no child.
“Caylee’s death allowed Casey Anthony to live the good life. At least for those 31 days (in which Caylee was missing),” the prosecutor said while wrapping up her opening statement.
“At the end of this case, you will have no trouble concluding that Caylee Anthony was murdered by her mother.”
More than two hours earlier, Burdick began her opening statements by saying: “It is time to tell the story of a little girl named Caylee.”
After the openings, George Anthony was called as the first witness. Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton asked George Anthony to talk about June 16, 2008 — the last day, George Anthony said, he saw Caylee alive.
There was “nothing out of the ordinary,” that morning, he said.
Ashton asked whether George Anthony ever molested Casey, and he said: “No, sir.”
George Anthony said he had no idea anything had happened to his granddaughter and knows nothing about a drowning.
“I never knew of anything that happened to Caylee until our lives started to unfold on July 15th and Caylee was found on December 11th,” he said. “I would have done anything I could to save my granddaughter.”
He did not dispose of her body and he did not place duct tape on her mouth, he said on the stand.
George Anthony said he and his wife, Cindy, were “just devastated” the day they found out Caylee was missing.
During cross-examination, Baez asked whether George Anthony had at one time moved out of the family home because of marital problems. He did, around December of 2005, about four months after Caylee was born.
The defense attorney asked whether the reason he moved out was because Casey wanted him out of the home. “Cindy and I were going through a rough time,” George Anthony said.
After court adjourned, George Anthony’s attorney, Mark Lippman, issued this statement: “George and Cindy Anthony are shocked and appalled that the defense would resort to lies about them in today’s opening statement. Baez’s idle speculation today certainly are not facts. The only result achieved by the defense in this statement was to further hurt this grieving family.”
Burdick’s opening came at the start of the day, and she launched into Casey Anthony’s alleged lying for 31 days about where she was, where Caylee was and what they were doing.
“It’s with her back against a wall … that Casey Anthony first says these words: ’Caylee was kidnapped by the baby sitter.’ The baby sitter that no one has ever seen,” Burdick said.
Burdick talked extensively about the evidence in the case, including the stench in Casey Anthony’s car and the bag of garbage found in the yard.
She discussed cadaver dogs that were brought to the Anthony home and around Casey Anthony’s Pontiac and how two of them “alerted to the scent of human decomposition.”
The prosecutor also brought up the computer forensic analysis showing an Internet search conducted on a computer in the family home in March 2008 with the keywords, “Chloroform, alcohol” and “household weapons,” ”neck-breaking” and “self defense.”
She maintained “there could have been no other user making those searches than Casey Anthony.”
Baez never addressed these searches in his opening.
The prosecutor also told of the day Caylee’s remains were found in a wooded area just down the street from the Anthony family home, “near the site of the elementary school where she would be at this very moment if she were alive.”
She had been thrown there, Burdick said, “like she was just another piece of trash.”
“Caylee spent many months in that spot — roots encircled the blanket, wrapped themselves into the bags that she was in,” she said. “The duct tape stuck in the hair indicated that Caylee’s killer never intended for it to be removed.”
Casey Anthony sat stoic through much of the opening, but cried at times — first when the prosecution displayed a picture of Caylee alive alongside a clear, vivid photo of the child’s skull where it was discovered in a heavily wooded area.
“You will hear, during testimony in this case, that no one had any idea anything had befallen Caylee Marie Anthony until July 15 of 2008 — how can that be?” Burdick asked. “What happened between June 16 (when Caylee was last seen) and July 16th? Where is Caylee Marie?”
Casey Anthony cried more during the defense’s openings, and again when her father took the stand.
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(Staff writers Walter Pacheco and Amy Pavuk contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2011, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).
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