00:13:52.080All George did was just look and sigh, put his hands on his legs and no other response.
00:13:59.600I thought there was a peculiar response for a father having been accused in some situation like this by a lawyer, you know, kind of officially, you know, this is what's going to happen.
00:14:12.460You make that kind of accusation, you got to prove it somewhere.
00:14:15.700This is a really bad situation for a defense lawyer or either side to make promises to a jury that they cannot deliver on.
00:15:11.680And I'll tell you another thing, that if an autopsy was done in a corresponding to what I think every forensic pathologist will tell you, where the head is not opened, that tells me about a shoddy autopsy.
00:15:29.500Excuse me the expression, but you provoked it.
00:15:32.360A shoddy autopsy, because if the head is not opened, what else wasn't examined?
00:15:37.500On cross-examination, Prosecutor Jeff Ashton presses him on that point.
00:15:42.140Where is it written that a skull has to be opened for the examination to be complete?
00:35:10.560And it is during the state's rebuttal case that George Anthony's letter from the Hawaii Motel in Daytona Beach two years earlier finally goes into evidence.
00:35:21.440Jeff Ashton introduces it. Jose Baez objects. Judge Perry points back to Baez's own questioning
00:35:29.380of George as the reason the letter is now admissible. So the jury gets to read the eight
00:35:35.740pages George wrote alone in that motel room, agonizing over not knowing what happened to
00:35:42.340Kaylee. On the morning of July 3rd, 2011, before either side gives its closing argument, Judge
00:35:49.400Perry rules on what the lawyers can and cannot say to the jury. He starts with the unsupported
00:35:55.400allegations thrown out by Baez in his opening statement that George Anthony and Lee Anthony
00:36:00.700sexually abused Casey. Judge Perry says there is absolutely no evidence to support either in the
00:36:09.160record. Lee was not asked a single question about it and rules that Baez cannot mention either
00:36:15.100allegation in closing. The judge turns his focus to the drowning theory. No witness has testified
00:36:22.040that Kaylee drowned. No one has told this jury they saw it happened and nothing in the evidence
00:36:26.960establishes when a drowning would have occurred. But the defense does have pictures of the pool
00:36:32.420behind the Anthony house, the pool ladder, and Kaylee, not yet two years old, opening the sliding
00:36:38.580glass door by herself. That is enough for Judge Perry. There is evidence that the defense can make
00:36:44.960the reasonable inference of an accidental drowning by the use of the pictures, as Mr. Mason argued.
00:36:54.860So whether or not one chooses to believe or disbelieve, there is some inference that can
00:37:03.840be drawn. Years later, I asked Jose Baez where the story of the drowning came from,
00:37:10.060as well as the sexual abuse allegations he made in his opening statement.
00:37:14.960Here's some of that exchange from 2022.
00:37:18.160Everything I said in there, I had a good faith basis based on the evidence and based on what I anticipated the evidence to show.
00:37:24.820But where'd you get the good faith basis?