http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-CategoriesIt was common knowledge going into the Casey Anthony trial that the state's attorneys charged with prosecuting Anthony for the 2008 murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, were going to focus on the circumstances surrounding the remains of child found near her grandparents home outside of Orlando, Florida. Much of that focus was going to center around duct tape found with the remains and believed to have been used to asphyxiate the child. But Anthony's defense offered expert testimony Saturday that could undermine the prosecution's case with regard to the duct tape.
Dr. William Rodriguez was the first of two expert witnesses called by the defense Saturday to refute the duct tape claim, according to ABC News. Rodriguez, a forensic anthropologist with the U.S. Department of Defense Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office, said it would be impossible to determine the exact position of duct tape on a corpse given the time the remains had been at the mercy of the elements. He also offered that duct tape adhesive loses its stickiness over time and that animals that came into contact with the body could have moved the tape as well.
Forensic expert Dr. Werner Spitz testified that the duct tape the prosecution argued was used in the murder was actually applied after the body began decomposing. He also stated, according to the Associated Press, that the state's autopsy of Caylee Anthony's body had been "shoddy" and that the entire body had not been examined. He attested that he also examined inside the child's skull, something that had not been done prior to his examination.
Spitz, who also testified at the O. J. Simpson trial, said, "The head is part of the body and when you do an examination, you examine the whole body." He added, "... That to me is a signal of a shoddy autopsy."
The defense earlier in the week -- after the prosecution presented evidence surrounding the duct tape -- made certain that the jurors understood that no fingerprint evidence was found on any of the pieces (three) of duct tape found with Caylee's body. In fact, according to ABC News, defense attorney Jose Baez got FBI latent print analyst Elizabeth Fontaine, after an exhaustive tutorial on fingerprint retrieval, to admit three times that there were no fingerprints found.
The defense -- which contends that Caylee Anthony drowned in the family pool at her parents' home and that the death was subsequently covered up by her negligent grandfather, George (Casey Anthony's father), who let his daughter take the blame for the murder -- is pushing for an acquittal on the charge of murder against their client. By offering various refutations of the evidence, they hope to establish reasonable doubt.
Casey Anthony, 25, faces the death penalty phase of a trial should she be found guilty of murdering her daughter.
The prosecution contends that Anthony, then 22 years old, simply and callously planned and murdered her daughter, going so far as to do computer searches on how it could be done, then carrying out the killing, placing her daughter's body in the trunk of her car, allowing it to decompose for as long as five days, then placing the remains in a bag and disposing of it not a quarter-mile from her own parents' home outside Orlando. The remains were discovered two months after Anthony was formally charged with murder.
It was reported that a piece of duct tape was found adhered to the skull and hair of the remains. A heart-shaped sticker was also discovered, one that matched a roll of stickers found in the home of Anthony's parents -- in the room Anthony and Caylee had once shared. It was reported that there was a heart-shaped residue on the tape that had been found near the mouth of the body but the residue had been lost in the handling of the tape during forensic testing -- and no photograph of the residued image was taken to preserve the visual evidence.
Defense testimony resumes in the murder trial Monday. Presiding Judge Belvin Perry noted last week that he hoped that the defense would rest and the jury could begin deliberations by Friday, June 24.
(photo credit: Orange County Sheriff's Office, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)
