In 2008, Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder in the murder of her own 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. The verdict shocked the nation and changed the course of the criminal justice system forever. But was it really Casey's fault?
00:00:00.400Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:12.040Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and our true crime Christmas week here on the program.
00:00:19.000Going to take you back now to July 15th, 2008, when Cindy Anthony of Florida first reported her granddaughter Kaylee missing, a fact she only learned one month after the child had disappeared.
00:00:36.020Cindy had no idea that her grandchild was missing because that child, she believed, had been with its mother, Casey Anthony.
00:00:43.560Casey Anthony had been claiming that she and her little girl were on a trip together.
00:00:48.500When Grandma called, she just kept telling Grandma that little Kaylee couldn't talk.
00:03:46.760Then we talk about how she discovers that wasn't true.
00:03:50.100She goes to the car impound lot and she winds up calling the 911 operator.
00:03:59.260At first, what she really thinks this might be about is maybe there was a stolen car, and then she realizes that it's worse than that, that something smells wrong with that car and she doesn't know where the granddaughter is either.
00:04:50.840And I'll start with you on this, Beth.
00:04:54.060So that's, we were off to the races, because now what we learned on that day is that you've got a young mother who hasn't, by her own admission, hasn't seen her child in a month, who tells investigators she decided to handle it herself and was only caught because the mother was called to that impound lot.
00:05:13.400So I know when we look back in hindsight, we know what the defense explanation for that was at that time.
00:05:20.180But when we were looking at this unfolding in real time, people who were following it, and I started following it with court TV from the very beginning, it looked really suspicious.
00:05:32.840Like, why is she looking for this child herself?
00:05:38.280She ultimately tells the police she didn't trust them.
00:05:40.880She wanted to look for her daughter herself.
00:05:44.160But we learned that what she's doing in this 30-day period from June 16th to July 15th was, I mean, what's documented, photos of her and other memorializations and text messages, whatever, don't seem to be consistent with looking for her daughter.
00:07:26.360Cindy, at some point after that, made the call, the infamous call, it smelled like a damn dead body was there.
00:07:36.540Five deputy sheriffs responded to the house, to the car on the same day, inspected it, trunk opened, doors opened, and every single one of them testified under oath that they did not smell anything.
00:07:50.560So that's another one of these examples that made it imaginary.
00:10:16.360And the the head of the tow lot, it was the towing company and the man's name was Simon Birch.
00:10:21.720That's the company that impounded Casey's car in June, testified that he hadn't encountered multiple vehicles with dead bodies during his three decades in the business and that the smell from Casey's car was consistent with those past experiences.
00:11:20.940It had had been in there before she had any contact with it.
00:11:25.300The garbage bags were thrown out of the car over the fence to a public dumpster site.
00:11:33.720There's no question that Cindy said what she smelled.
00:11:37.940And that made it a very, very alluring claim about the case.
00:11:42.720And all I'm saying is we established there is no forensic evidence to do that.
00:11:47.220And as a matter of fact, that's when they had the air sample test and the forensic scientists testify that what was and was not.
00:11:56.560It's not really important to the turn of the case, in my opinion, other than it led to causing the attention to the case right from the beginning.
00:12:09.920And it could very well be under any theory of the case that that Kaylee's body was was either not in that trunk at any point or was not in that trunk for long or was there and was removed.
00:12:22.680I mean, what we do know is Kaylee was killed.
00:12:26.320The Kaylee is dead and that ultimately her body would be found not in that car.
00:12:30.060But we'll get to that that point in the story.
00:12:32.020But when we learned about Casey Anthony's version of the story was at the opening argument, the opening statement at trial and and we'll get to all of that.
00:12:41.360But under her version, under her version of the case, she, George, her dad killed.
00:12:50.460Well, didn't kill, but it was with little Kaylee when she drowned.
00:14:05.100In my opinion, that child had been found and had been disposed of in some capacity long before she was ever brought into any kind of inquiries of whatever.
00:14:19.860Casey, this is where, and you justifiably, and so many other people believe, Casey, you would think, would have known immediately about her daughter.
00:14:38.880The bottom line is that Casey went into what I have previously characterized as Casey Wall.
00:14:46.040She was in a total, some sort of state, psychotic state, not acknowledging the child was gone, dead, and just fabricating whatever she had to fabricate about it.
00:14:59.920And it was clear to me, I can tell you, whoever watched the trial besides the jury, when we had a grief expert testifying about how people grieve differently in different circumstances.
00:15:13.340And she talked about it during the trial, the last part of the trial, Casey broke down, I was sitting right next to her.
00:15:20.620That, in my opinion, was the first time that she absolutely clearly accepted and knew that this child was dead.
00:15:30.740How did, I mean, she realized that her child wasn't with her for a month, right?
00:15:35.520You know, I don't know what she realized.
00:15:38.660We know from facts and videotapes of witnesses, as you described, she was out on a couple of occasions to a young people's club and doing shopping and going around and just kind of in another world.
00:15:54.320And so what she actually knew, I guess none of us will ever know.
00:15:57.820Well, I mean, her mother asked her that day that they were reunited, where is Kaylee?
00:21:14.180The remains are found, and within a few months, the prosecution decides to up to ante and charge her with capital murder, right, seeking death.
00:21:22.480So for the next three years, there are all kinds of pretrial hearings and lots of motions were being filed.
00:21:29.280And all the while, Casey is sitting in a jail cell.
00:21:32.780So for three years to her trial in 2011, 2008 to 2011, she's locked up.
00:21:38.500And I don't understand, if this was an accidental drowning, maybe there's some sort of negligent theory of some kind of crime that Casey could be charged with, but nothing like capital murder, if the facts are what you say, Cheney.
00:21:53.040I don't understand why you wouldn't go to the prosecutors and say, look, this is an accident.
00:22:18.700Well, I know you don't believe that all prosecutors are the same way, because we know better than that.
00:22:25.220The bottom line in this situation is that this case was ongoing for a long time before I was brought into it.
00:22:35.480I was a citizen of Central Florida all the time with all the news medias.
00:22:41.920And, you know, every night or every day, all the channels said, you know, more about Casey Anthony, news at six, pictures at six or whatever like that every day for a long time.
00:22:55.180I was a citizen like everybody else until Mr. Baez asked me to come in.
00:23:00.920I don't know, and you may have a better time of when the charge was.
00:23:07.020I happened to have been in an NBC studio on a totally unrelated matter when the people there got all excited because the sheriff was there doing something, got a call.
00:23:22.240And he came into the studio and he like like they found a baby with tape all around her head.
00:23:29.740And we believe that's going to be Kaylee.
00:23:32.280And that was the first time there was any ability to prove that there was a death.
00:23:38.260So there could not have been any any criminal charge of homicide against her at that time.
00:23:49.020No, no, just just to jump in and set the record straight.
00:23:50.900According to my my timeline here, it was October.
00:23:53.920As Beth points out, she was charged with not with murder, but with child neglect and some other small charges first.
00:24:01.320So that's kind of how they got her into into custody.
00:24:05.200She was declared a person of interest with respect to Kaylee, but she was not yet yet charged.
00:24:10.720That's when she posted her bond and the bounty hunter Leonard Padilla came in and all that happened.
00:24:16.000And then on October 14th, 2008, she was charged with first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, four counts of providing false information to law enforcement and so on.
00:24:26.240And then it wasn't until December 11th, 2008, two months later, that the skeletal remains of Kaylee were found.
00:24:35.980So two months after she was charged with murder.
00:24:44.900We believe tape was around her mouth and nose.
00:24:47.380And that was the change circumstance that would just and we'll get we'll get to what how the condition in which they found the remains, which is which was the part of the prosecution's case.
00:24:55.780But let's just go back to the days, the 30 day period that she was not with Kaylee and not with her parents and lying to her parents and out and about as we all would wind up seeing.
00:25:07.140I mean, I remember seeing it on Greta Van Susteren show every night.
00:25:09.940You know, the pictures of that would be on Earth from her social media.
00:25:13.260You know, her dancing, her looking like I have a great time.
00:27:05.980So she took them on a couple of wild goose chases.
00:27:09.360And you tell me why this young mother with no consciousness of guilt whatsoever, because she's in this confused fugue state, not realizing her kids, not with her would do those things.
00:27:18.820You tell me, I don't know why she would do it.
00:27:23.360She did not know, I believe, at this time that this child was deceased.
00:27:28.960She still had in her mind this myth of where the child was.
00:27:33.780And that's why the police didn't do anything else at that time to arrest her or charge her or anything, because they couldn't other than to prove the child was missing and they didn't believe her.
00:27:43.960So why was she making up that she worked at Universal and making up that there was a nanny and taking them to the fake apartment of the said nanny?
00:27:52.820I'm not sure that I know she had worked at Universal.
00:27:56.360She did work up there to a few months before this occurred.
00:28:27.580And that's when we got into a whole issue about whether she was Mirandais or not, whether her statements could be used and how the appellate court dealt with that and and reverse two of her misdemeanor convictions.
00:28:42.740Beth, why don't you tell us about the wild goose chase involving Zanny the nanny, who was the one you heard on that very first day that her mother and she called what her mother called the police and put her on with police.
00:29:05.240So in opening statements, Linda Drain Burdick does recount almost every single one of those 30 days.
00:29:12.300There is something, whether it's a text message, an email, a MySpace posting, some communication, something, a photo that will document what she was doing during that time.
00:29:21.720During those 30 days, she does she does tell the police that, you know, Zanida Gonzalez.
00:29:44.620I don't know if it's ever been proven true that that Casey may have seen that application, may have seen that form, you know, and got the name from it because there's a woman who who did apply to live there.
00:29:53.760But, um, and not a nanny and not Casey Anthony's nanny working to protect Casey.
00:29:59.980No, there's no connection between them.
00:30:20.000That's prior, but even during the 30 day period.
00:30:21.940Now during the 30 day period, Casey is saying a couple of things, right?
00:30:25.320She's up in Jacksonville or she's, um, like in Tampa and then her car broke down and she was in a car wreck or maybe there was a hospital at some point.
00:30:36.400Yeah, everything she, she relates, but, um, Cindy, Casey's mother is really getting frustrated because she's, you know, she wants to see her granddaughter.
00:30:46.320The two of them had fought, as I said, the day before, uh, you know, on Father's Day that night they had fought and, you know,
00:30:51.880there was some talk about, you know, Cindy saying, if you don't get in better shape as a, you know, take care of this child, uh, you know, I'm, I'm going to file, um, to adopt her.
00:31:01.880Let me say though, that at trial, there was the only evidence about Casey as a mother was good evidence.
00:31:08.320Like she was a very doting, good mother.
00:31:10.660However, Cindy may have begged to differ only because I think that, that Kaylee was left with her grandmother a lot that Casey was gone, especially closer in time to when the child disappeared because Casey had a new boyfriend and it was sort of a new life and he was working at a club and, you know, it was kind of a new life and she, maybe she wanted her freedom.
00:31:38.600Now around July 5th or so is she got a Bella Vita, uh, tattoo, beautiful life tattoo, which also is something that the prosecution pointed out, you know, their theory being, look, you know, maybe she knows her daughter's dead.
00:31:51.680And, uh, she's celebrating her daughter's, uh, life through this tattoo.
00:32:03.780So, um, these are the things she's doing that she says, but if I can just jump back, I'm actually looking for my daughter.
00:32:10.460Let's just jump back to the, to Zanny, the nanny, because what she did, she told the police, I left her with the Zanny, the nanny, and then I went to pick her up and she was gone.
00:32:19.540And, um, I, you know, I've been looking for her.
00:32:22.980And so the cop said, do you know where Zanny, the nanny lives?
00:33:43.320It's, it's, it's her behavior, her deceit, her throwing the police into the wrong direction time after time, her total seeming lack of empathy or concern for her child, who you're telling me she may or may not have known was dead or alive at that point.
00:34:01.760Right. So all of this goes into our perception on the outside Cheney of Casey Anthony, um, and is, you know, I don't, so far, I don't see where we're going wrong.
00:34:13.980I'm wanting you to walk me through it because I'm, much as I think she did it, I'm open minded to a different story.
00:34:18.920I'm not saying that your perception is wrong because I saw it nationwide, if not worldwide, people believe the same sort of things about her.
00:35:20.080Are you suggesting still to this day that there was a Zaneda Gonzalez who had babysat Kaylee and then what, George, then Kaylee went home and drowned in the pool after that?
00:35:30.100Like, what, what are you, why are you even mentioning that?
00:44:34.060And that was the end of that investigation.
00:44:37.160That exact spot, just so you'll know, was 17 feet and nine inches from the curve of Suburban Drive.
00:44:44.760And that's a very short distance to, to, to not been found.
00:44:49.100It had been searched by horseback people, as we call the Kissimmee boys on, uh, four wheel drives, numerous, uh, volunteer walkers and searches had covered that area and every square inch of it for a long time.
00:45:06.940But can I, I mean, I see the point you're making Cheney, which is like, what, why wasn't it found if it had been there the whole time?
00:45:11.580But what the reports were that they had, that, that, that they had massive flooding during that period that we're talking about that four months and that there was as much as four feet of water in which the body might, may have been immersed for a lengthy period of that time.
00:45:26.400Well, that was suggested, but that wasn't the testimony.
00:45:31.760I believe the hydrology expert that the state had from the university of Florida came and had tested all around all of that geographical area and did not find that we don't know.
00:45:43.680And I'm only 78 years old and I'm still don't know, and I'm not going to know, uh, how that body was there.
00:45:51.840If it was there all that time, there's a certain reason to believe that the body had been moved and brought back there.
00:45:59.120Can they ever prove that? No, because in order to be able to prove that, you'd have to have evidence of who did it and how they did it.
00:46:06.140Can't do it. All I can say is it's unreasonable to expect that the body was 17 feet, nine inches from the curve of the road, which was a half a mile from the Anthony house.
00:46:17.700It was searched by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people during that whole circus event and didn't find her.
00:46:24.360My recollection was that there was actually like plant material growing up through the skull, which indicates it was there the entire time, but it had not been moved.
00:46:34.220I, I don't remember that that is the case.
00:46:37.140I remember Dr. Spitz talking about how there was at the base of the skull inside, there was some, uh, dirt.
00:46:44.320There may have been some, I don't think there's anything going through the skull.
00:46:49.400Well, I could be wrong about that, but there was some growth around it.
00:46:53.980So let me just back up and say this on behalf of the sheriff's department.
00:46:57.720Um, there, they have basically suggested they were, they were overwhelmed with tips from, you know, this case is getting national attention.
00:47:05.060They had tons of people calling, they had kooks calling, they had legitimate people calling.
00:47:09.680And this guy says, Hey, I work for the city.
00:47:12.360You should be listening to me when I call in.
00:47:14.620Um, obviously it would have been much more helpful to have the remains earlier rather than later, but it's just, it's a piece of this case now.
00:47:20.900And, uh, you know, for better or for worse, that's when they did ultimately find her.
00:47:24.660Um, the, uh, so they go to trial and can we just spend a minute talking about Jose Baez?
00:47:30.700Because I had not seen him on the national stage.
00:47:34.660I don't, I was pretty young in my reporting and legal, uh, well, older, my legal tenure, but young in my journalistic tenure.
00:47:41.480And, um, my understanding is maybe Cheney, you can speak to this, but my understanding is when he got on the Casey Anthony case, he, he wasn't one of the most storied criminal defense attorneys in town.
00:47:53.120Like what put Jose Baez in perspective for us then at the moment he, he came on to represent her.
00:48:03.680I think he had only been a lawyer about five years.
00:48:07.560It may have been, I think that's accurate.
00:48:09.540He had worked at a public defender's office in South Florida.
00:48:13.540He was up here and he was, uh, working.
00:48:16.500He was taking cases and going to court.
00:48:19.260You know, that's all like young lawyers do, uh, routinely.
00:48:22.900I had never heard of him, never met him, never knew anything about him, uh, until he started calling me for, uh, suggestions and strategies and questions and so forth.
00:48:36.420And that evolved into finally asking me to get in the case.
00:48:40.240And, you know, I've made mistakes before in my life, but I agreed to do this.
00:49:12.920Well, no, listen, I, I have my beliefs having covered it and having, you know, had some experiences as a journalist and a lawyer, but I'm, I'm, I'm giving you an open mind to convince me.
00:49:38.640So you, you get brought in by Jose Bias Cheney and you, um, you actually were very well known.
00:49:45.120You were former president of Florida Association of Criminal Lawyers, um, had been selected by Florida Monthly Magazine as one of Florida's topics.
00:49:52.800Lawyers and you, uh, I read were disgusted by the local media coverage about the relatively inexperienced Jose Bias saying that you had been offended by it.
00:50:05.060It was one of the reasons why you want to get involved.
00:50:08.640Well, I detailed that by the way, in my book, because the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, uh, had published a story and expose on Jose's, uh, personal life.
00:50:22.000Uh, uh, being behind in alimony payments or something and criticize him.
00:50:58.500Good guy and all these sorts of things.
00:51:00.060Well, uh, I pointed out to them that he had been personally criticized in several appellate court opinions, reversing convictions because of his, uh, misconduct professionally.
00:51:14.960And Beth will tell you that appellate courts don't mention the names of the lawyers when they reverse them.
00:51:20.380It's pretty rare, uh, that they'll actually identify the person they say did wrong.
00:51:25.260So, so I wanted to press, you know, treat this, treat this kid fairly.
00:51:29.620He's one of my people, you know, treat him fairly and go to trial.
00:51:33.420Well, I mean, what's so extraordinary about it is he wasn't that well known.
00:51:37.740It wasn't like, uh, you know, Robert Shapiro or, you know, whatever.
00:51:41.880Alan Dershowitz, it was like, who is this Jose Baez representing this defendant on the biggest case in the country at the time.
00:51:49.280And as we now would, well, as we all now know that he managed to secure in a quill, which left the nation slack jawed.
00:51:57.940I mean, speaking of Robert Shapiro, that was the other case that was probably of equal notoriety, like where somebody got found not guilty in the country.
00:52:10.100Beth, can you, I'll give you this one.
00:52:11.580Cause I want to, then I want to get, um, Cheney to sort of put some meat on the bones, but take us to the moment of Jose's opening statement.
00:52:18.460Because that's the, that was the moment.
00:52:21.800I mean, that was the moment I would say the case was one for him lost for the prosecution that they never seem to recover their footing.
00:52:30.940Um, it's my understanding the prosecution got word about maybe six weeks before the opening statement about what their position was going to be.
00:52:37.020Maybe not quite that much time, but, um, that it was going to be an accidental drowning.
00:52:42.140Jose Baez, the whole defense team played their cards very close to their vest.
00:52:45.660So many people did not know, uh, where they were going.
00:52:49.520You know, this was a case that where there weren't many surprises because the law is so liberal, open about documents being made available to the public.
00:53:01.540So, so we knew we, the media, we all had like 25,000 pages of discovery.
00:53:07.200There were, there weren't going to be any surprises from the prosecution's team because we knew what the investigation was.
00:53:13.040So the surprise came from the defense when Jose said she wasn't murdered, that she drowned, that it was an accident.
00:53:20.740And George found her and then, and, and, and people were like, what's like, where is this coming from?
00:53:26.560And that's when I was like, there's no way he's going with this.
00:53:29.140Like, cause she's been sitting in jail for three years.
00:53:31.180There's no way he would have, you know, he's going to go with an accident defense, but, um, you know, what do I know?
00:53:36.320Um, and I have to say, you know, Jose could not have tried this case alone because I don't think the law allows it in any state, you know, in a capital case, you have to have two lawyers, but also he wasn't, he wasn't credentialed enough, right?
00:53:47.840Five years, three, five years as a lawyer, you have to practice longer, um, in some States to, uh, handle a capital case, but you can tack onto your team, some more experienced people, which is why Cheney was critical.
00:54:00.300I credit Cheney with the acquittal and his summation, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
00:54:06.240Um, but when, when, um, Jose said in the opening that it was an accident on drowning, and then he started talking about Casey being sexually abused by her father.
00:54:18.360Now, wait, cause the audience at home is like, wait, what?
00:54:24.160Our audience at home just had the same turn we all had at the time, which is a, wait, what?
00:54:27.720But, but, and that's, no, that's what the prosecution got word of in advance, a few weeks in advance.
00:54:34.420And I, I, I, I think that they were considering, you know, you know, was, is it too late for them to file any charges against George?
00:54:41.740Probably, probably it was, but, um, if this, you know, were the truth.
00:54:46.180Um, but yeah, so we hear that George has been sexually abusing Casey since she was a little girl.
00:54:51.460And that, I mean, he said this in opening, uh, he said like she would be a little girl and she would have his penis in her mouth and then she'd get on the school bus and, and that she learned how to live a life of lies.
00:55:05.960She learned how to be a really good liar because of that.
00:55:08.500Okay. So he's like opened this whole can of worms.
00:55:13.140And I remember speaking to him when he was speaking to me that night saying, wow, you're putting Casey on the stand, you know, because how are you going to get this stuff in?
00:55:23.000Cause you know, George was the first witness right after openings and he denied it.
00:55:25.840And he's like, well, no, not necessarily. I'll put it on to the psychiatrist. I say, yeah, no, you won't. You got to put Casey on.
00:55:32.340So anyway, um, I never reported any of that, but that was a discussion I had with him because based on his opening statement, I was sure that Casey was going to testify.
00:55:40.880We've seen defense attorneys say certain things and openings and then not follow through because they have a right to do, you know, not to call their client and you can't comment on it, you know, as a prosecutor at the end,
00:55:51.560because a defendant has a right to, to remain silent. And that's what happened here. He made us think that Casey was going to testify and then maybe Shane talked him out of it or something, but she didn't testify in the end.
00:56:07.460And that proof of sexual abuse was never put before the jury, sexual abuse by George. He denied it on the stand and the judge said, you cannot sum up on that because you didn't put on proof of it.
00:56:18.820Even though you rang the bell and opening statements. And as they say, you can't really unring the bell.
00:56:24.440And that taint was there on the prosecution case on George Anthony throughout the trial.
00:56:29.500I don't, I suspect jurors didn't like him because they had just heard Jose's opening and then George gets on the stand.
00:56:35.460Did the prosecution move for a mistrial after that? I mean, I realize normally it's the defense that does that, but the prosecution can do it. Did they?
00:56:43.180I, I don't recall that now. No. Okay. And at that point, they're still thinking, maybe you're going to put Casey on the stand and she's going to bring it together.
00:56:50.260I don't know. And they're still thinking they're going to win. I mean, they're, they're thinking like most of us are thinking it's a slam dunk case and they're going to win.
00:56:55.200They don't want to mistrial. They they're fine with this one.
00:56:58.220A wins up something. I mean, there are a lot of counts and there were lessers. I mean, maybe not capital murder, but maybe some lesser degree of a homicide.
00:57:05.960But, um, I just remember on that first day thinking, wow, cases for them to put this stuff on. I mean, Casey's got to testify. How else are they going to get it in?
00:57:15.440Yeah. And there was no, so just to be clear, a lawyer's opening statement is not an lawyer's closing argument. They're not evidence. That's not, that's just sort of a directional, uh, offering for the jury. It's not considered evidence.
00:57:27.360And so technically the jury shouldn't have been thinking about that when they went back into the deliberation room, but you know, the seed had been planted as Beth says, it's hard to unring that bell.
00:57:35.800Now I know Cheney that, um, you, you wrote, I think a story in your book about telling George, I got to give you a heads up. We saw some, cause there were some letters.
00:57:46.320I think Casey wrote to like some guards in jail accusing him. And he later said, George gave an interview saying he, he claimed it was Jose bias who said, I'm going to throw you under the bus. Um, so did you guys, what's your recollection of the, what you said to George about it's coming.
00:58:03.540I told George in my office with the permission of his lawyer. And in a few minutes later, also Cindy gave them notice that what was going to happen, that George is going to be accused of sexually molesting his daughter. I wanted to see his reaction.
00:58:27.980I can tell you that if someone accused me of molesting my daughters or all my granddaughters, there would be a real issue. It would be me bonding out of jail for having gone across the desk and kicked her ass.
00:58:44.580But, so I felt the need to tell him. All George did was just look and sigh, put his hands on his legs and no other response. I thought there was a peculiar response for a father having been accused in some situation like this by a lawyer of, you know, kind of officially, you know, this is what's going to happen.
00:59:08.340I want to let you know this. And, uh, I did, I thought it was the ethical thing to do. And I did. Um, I don't know what impact the whole thing had or didn't have.
00:59:22.060I will tell you that when Jose made the opening statement, the way he did, I was surprised. I guess I was pretty good at keeping my old face calm, but I was, I wasn't surprised as many people because I did the same analysis that both you and Beth have.
00:59:40.160You make that kind of, you make that kind of accusation, you got to prove it somewhere. And, and, and, uh, it's, it's a really bad situation for a defense lawyer or either side to make promises to a jury that they cannot deliver on jurors.
00:59:55.620Remember it. And while you can say, uh, uh, that, that, uh, opening statements and closing statements are not evidence, that's all book BS because jurors listen to it.
01:00:07.800They do a lot of things they're not supposed to do. And they do it on every trial. Hello.
01:00:13.920Yeah. Sorry. I was just adding in the lawyers have authority. They have a relationship with the lawyers.
01:00:17.540Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and the, the, the point is that we give in, if we really, really wanted to have pure jury verdicts that were reliable, every juror would be sequestered in every case.
01:00:31.860And they wouldn't have any access to any of the information except what was in the courtroom. Well, we can't do that. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I've tried a long, a whole bunch of cases, but probably no more than a half a dozen out of 350 plus that were sequestered.
01:00:52.140And you have to sequester them right from the moment of the crime all the way through to the beginning of the trial. Because that's when they take in all the spin.
01:00:58.740Yeah. Well, you're never going to get that. Not already. So we do the best we can with trying to, uh, uh, give instructions. And I mean, if you went back, you went back to the selection of the jury in this case, it was an interesting process.
01:01:15.400The 600 people we interviewed, there was a lot of, a lot of bias and prejudice and all kinds of stuff that we had to weed out to get a jury at all. So, yeah, I don't know that it's a perfect system. I don't know how to do it.
01:01:28.740So let me ask you this, because I've talked to a lot of the lawyers in OJ and other cases, but the OJ case, I watched a lot of it was going down while I was in law school.
01:01:36.440And, um, I think OJ Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. But I can see how that jury reached its verdict, separate and apart from a nullification issue. I can see how they could have honorably, honestly found that the prosecution did not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't agree, but I can see it.
01:01:56.440What do you think it was, Janie, about this case that had the same effect on this jury, right? Like, what do you think your best facts were or your best pointing, poking holes in the prosecution's facts were?
01:02:09.760Well, I don't know. I can say there was a major difference. 1991, the OJ case, there was no internet, Facebook, on all the social media, was there?
01:02:26.980You get to Casey Anthony, and it was dominating the news basically all day of every day for a very long time. And so people were focused on it. I've been asked so many times why this case is opposed to others.
01:02:48.980This was because there was a young, cute mother with an absolutely adorable little baby victim, and they were white. And all the improper things to say or not do, I'm telling you that I know from my 51 years of trying cases that had major impact on this case.
01:03:15.600If it probably had been a young African-American mother and child, it may have been in the newspaper, and it may not have been. It never in hell would have been what this case is.
01:03:28.780I also think class matters. I think that if it's a family of means or a family that you can see sort of has its act together overall, people are more interested.
01:03:42.420If you see a family that's got a lot of criminals in it, white or black or any other race, it's like, oh, it's unfortunate, but okay, I think we all know what happened here.
01:03:50.200This one seemed to be a nice family. The dad was a former sheriff's deputy, the granddad, I guess.
01:03:58.320It seemed to be a loving set of parents to Casey. She looked like an all-American girl in terms of smiley and bubbly and hadn't been a career criminal anyway.
01:04:08.840So I was like, okay, there's a real mystery here because the daughter's missing, right?
01:04:13.060It was like, we all need to pull together to find the daughter.
01:04:15.260So it had a lot of elements that would attract news coverage, you know, and I understand the whole missing white woman syndrome arguments, and they're not totally wrong, but I do think class plays a lot into it as well.
01:04:28.520And these people, they weren't lower socioeconomic class.
01:04:32.260They were sort of middle class and not at all the kind of family that you normally see enveloped in this sort of a deep crime.
01:04:37.940I want to talk to you about that moment, right, because we all watched it.
01:04:43.200It was like the O.J. Simpson, you know, we, the people, find that case of Orinthal J. Simpson, and she stumbled on it.
01:04:50.660This one, I actually was in the newsroom, but the moment this happened, and they read it, I'll just take the top of This is Soundbite number four.
01:05:00.780It's kind of long. I'll cut it off after the first one, but let's take a look back at that moment.
01:05:04.700As to the charge of first-degree murder, verdict as to count one, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty, so say we all, dated at Orlando, Orange County, Florida, on this 5th day of July, 2011, signed for person.
01:05:21.840As to the charge of aggravated child abuse, verdict as to count two.
01:05:23.580And you can see the relief, you know, flood over her face, obviously, as anybody would be.
01:05:29.180What was going through your mind at that moment, Janie?
01:05:34.700No, I really wasn't, and because I have some secrets about looking at jurors when they come in the courtroom.
01:05:41.840I've been there so many hundreds of times that there are certain things they do or don't do that are pretty revealing to some old coots like me.
01:05:56.060They won't look at the defendant if they're guilty.
01:06:00.800One or two of them might, but when they come in and do that, you can say, I certainly wasn't confident about it.
01:06:10.120But when the, before the jury verdict was read, remember, it's handed to the clerk who hands it to the judge, and the judge read it, and I'm reading his face, and it was very clear that he wasn't real happy about this verdict.
01:06:27.280He was on Dr. Oz saying he definitely thinks she's guilty.
01:06:29.760Well, he said a lot of things he probably shouldn't have, but like he said, when the defense lawyers were like car salesman or something, I don't know where the hell he got that, but the bottom line is that the clerk, you didn't play all of it, because of course you can't.
01:06:48.220But the first thing, when she first started reading it, she stuttered over the not guilty part of it.
01:06:56.740And briefly, but you don't, you're so tense there.
01:07:00.600I mean, look, I'm not sure of the statistics.
01:07:06.240My wife had kept a calendar on stuff, and I remember her best estimate was I had tried something in excess of 350 criminal jury trials in state and federal court.
01:17:33.620Can I add about what, what, what Cheney said, um, about the searches on the computer?
01:17:39.400He's right that, um, a witness got on the stand to correct the, the record.
01:17:46.000And it was actually one search, but that was on one search engine.
01:17:49.120There was another search engine that the prosecution didn't discover that Jose Baez talked about after the trial that had a lot of, a lot more, um,