Was duct tape used to murder Caylee Anthony? Roll of tape seized from Anthony home

By Amy L. Edwards and Anika Myers Palm

Orlando SentinelOrlando Sentinel

Will prosecutors be able to link duct tape as a possible murder weapon to Casey Anthony?

Authorities are clearly taking a close look at duct tape in this case based on details released Tuesday and in the past.

In December, in fact, Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton described how prosecutors think Caylee died, with duct tape over her nose and mouth.

He suggested a child who was nearly 3 years old should have been able to remove the tape — but Caylee could not, meaning she was either drugged or physically restrained, he said.

"If she was physically restrained, her killer would have had to restrain her arms by some means, applying tape while she was conscious," Ashton said in December.

"As the killer looked into her face, maybe her killer even saw her eyes as the tape was applied. ...Could Caylee have understood what was happening to her? Did she try to resist? Could the killer see the fear in her eyes as the tape was applied? These are questions only the jurors will be able to answer in this case."

So far, investigators have seized a roll of Henkel brand duct tape from the Anthony family home.

They found the same brand on a gas can that Casey Anthony once stored in her trunk.

And, tape found wrapped around Caylee's skull also was Henkel brand.

What remains unclear is whether the tape on her skull and the gas can came from the roll seized from the home or a separate roll all together.

That's what investigators are trying to determine.

Based on photos, video clips and documents released Tuesday, they also are looking at duct tape used to post missing Caylee Anthony fliers in the days after the girl's disappearance.

One short video, which was shot by local news media, shows fliers placed on utility poles and in store windows were secured with duct tape.

Liz Brown, a new spokeswoman for the defense would not comment about specific information released Tuesday.

"The photos and documents released Tuesday demonstrate the extent of public access to the area where Caylee Anthony's remains were found," Brown said.

Other evidence released included photographs of a syringe, a Gatorade bottle and a child's car seat, as well as television news footage taken when Anthony's family, including parents George and Cindy Anthony, were still looking for the toddler.

Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of her daughter.

The footage from WFTV-Channel 9 shows brief clips of Caylee playing and turning the pages of a book; a flier featuring Caylee; some footage of a jailed Casey Anthony on the phone; and Casey's brother, Lee Anthony, speaking with media.

The toddler was reported missing in June 2008. Her remains were found scattered in woods in December 2008, just blocks away from the east Orange County home she shared with her mother and grandparents, George Anthony and Cindy Anthony.

Casey Anthony is accused of killing Caylee. She is being held on no bond in the Orange County Jail, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case.

The syringe and Gatorade bottle also were part of previously-released evidence.

Records show trace amounts of chloroform — a potentially deadly chemical — on some of the evidence, though it's unclear whether the chemical played a role in the child's death.

Authorities ruled Caylee's death a homicide, but they could not determine how she died.

An earlier released FBI report shows investigators found a plastic Gatorade Cool Blue sports-drink bottle near the child's remains.

A plastic bag labeled "Disposable Syringe Kit" with a syringe was found inside the bottle. A report indicates chloroform, testosterone, ethanol and water were inside the syringe.

Chloroform — a byproduct of the contact between pool-grade chlorine and skin, sweat or urine — is often depicted as a chemical that can render someone unconscious.

Commercially, it is used in refrigeration. But a person can die if too much of it is inhaled.

Among the other photographed items released Tuesday: a doll, what appears to be the liner from Casey Anthony's trunk and duct tape.

Also included are documents from the FBI Laboratory's Chemistry Unit, and several previously released items, including Casey Anthony's employee wage information and Orange County Sheriff's Office reports.

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Should Casey Anthony testify at her murder trial?

The drama of the summer continues in Courtroom 23 in Orlando as court watchers wonder if Casey Anthony, the Florida mom accused of killing her toddler, will take the stand in her own defense.

Pool photo by Red Huber

Casey Anthony taking the stand has a serious pitfall, analysts say: The prosecution has shown, and the defense admits, that Anthony is a liar.

Pool photo by Red Huber

Casey Anthony taking the stand has a serious pitfall, analysts say: The prosecution has shown, and the defense admits, that Anthony is a liar.

Legal analysts say she has little choice but to testify after her defense lawyer said in his opening statement that Anthony's daughter, Caylee, drowned in the family pool and her father helped cover it up. The lawyer, Jose Baez, told the jury that Anthony had been molested by her father as a child and that conditioned her to keep quiet about what happened to her daughter.

"She has to take the stand now," says George Parnham, a lawyer who defended Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children during a psychotic breakdown. "She has to explain this to the jury. They need to hear from her. You need to humanize your client."

Anthony's father, George, took the stand during the prosecution's case and denied the allegations. That means Anthony must testify about the alleged abuse and the alleged drowning, other defense lawyers say.

But her taking the stand has a serious pitfall, they say: The prosecution has shown, and the defense admits, that Anthony is a liar. "It's a big risk," says Miami criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Daniel Lurvey.

Prosecutors, Lurvey and other lawyers say, will methodically pick apart all her stories about what happened to her daughter, including that the child was taken on a trip and that her daughter was kidnapped by a nanny named Zanny.

Lurvey says Baez has boxed himself into a corner.

"He's created a situation that if she does not testify, it's almost as bad as if she does and does badly, Lurvey says.

Baez did not return a call to his office. Anthony is charged with first-degree murder and faces the death penalty if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say she suffocated her 2-year-old daughter with duct tape on her nose and mouth, kept her body in the trunk of her car and later dumped it in woods near her home.

Donald Jones, a law professor at the University of Miami, says the prosecution has a circumstantial case that has not tied Anthony directly to murdering her child. He says the defense should have stuck with poking holes in the prosecution's case, but Baez is giving the prosecutor a chance to discredit her on the stand.

"But because the defense chose the strategy it did, it is dotting the i's and crossing the t's prosecution failed to do," Jones says.

Baez, who was admitted to the Florida bar in 2005, has never tried a death penalty case.

Karin Moore, director of defense and death penalty clinics at Florida A&M University, says his inexperience shows in his questioning of witnesses, which she says is not as focused as it should be.

"Questioning a witness has to be like a surgical strike," she says. "You don't cut your teeth on a death penalty case. … I hope this woman does not receive the death penalty because of it."

Judge Belvin Perry adjourned for the day Monday after he said both sides were wasting the jury's time with legal matters that should have been taken up before court began.

Contributing: Melanie Michael, WTSP-TV; The Associated Presshttp://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-Categories

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Judge orders one-day recess in Casey Anthony murder trial

Casey Anthony is charged with killing her 2-year old daughter in 2008.

It appears that the judge presiding over the Casey Anthony murder trial has had enough - of the lawyers' bickering.

Judge Belvin Parry suspended proceedings for a day, MSNBC.com reported.

While the reasons for the recess weren't immediately clear, they came after he scolded defense attorneys and prosecutors for bickering about legal issues that should have been resolved before the jury was seated.

The judge was visibly annoyed with both attorneys before the start of the 23rd day of the trial, CBSNews.com reported.

The scolding came after he listened to them argue for about 25 minutes following a request from the prosecutor, Jeff Ashton, to delay testimony from two of the witnesses the defense planned on calling

The defense lawyer, Jose Baez, snapped that Ashton was  too inexperienced to know he should have prepared for them weeks before the trial.

That prompted Parry to ask them what time it was.http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-Categories

When Ashton replied 9:25 and Baez said 9:26, Perry, exasperated, said, "That shows the two of you will never agree on anything."

He also had to dismiss the jury twice on Friday to listen to attorneys from both sides.

Anthony has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. If convicted, she could receive the death penalty.

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Even if Anthony goes to death row, she'll never be executed

Mike, revenge is served deliciously cold. Casey will definitely get the needle. Many of us will celebrate her death.

—Machttp://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-Categories

Mac was responding to my column on why Casey Anthony does not qualify for the death penalty.

I hate to spoil the celebration of Mac and others like him, but Casey will never feel that final vein prick.

If she ever does make it to death row and gets in line behind the 399 inmates already there, she would be killed sometime in the 23rd century.

That is based on the execution rate since 1979. We're adding folks far faster than we're killing them.

For example, Jeb Bush stopped executions in 2007 after it took 34 minutes to kill an inmate because of a misplaced needle. By the time executions resumed 18 months later, more than 20 inmates joined death row.

Our last execution was 16 months ago. Since then, we have added 11 more.

I hate to point out the obvious, but this isn't working.

Do not get me wrong. I was quite happy to see Ted Bundy take a seat in Old Sparky. The psycho killer cases are easy. But it has become impossible for our gigantic criminal-justice bureaucracy to equitably dish out cold revenge in the shades-of-gray cases.

The result is a haphazard system that invites mistakes and is increasingly expensive to maintain.

The Palm Beach Post calculated in 2000 that the death penalty cost Florida $51 million a year, or about $24 million per execution. The state has never crunched the numbers.

Various studies have concluded that the death penalty adds a minimum of $1 million to the cost of the average trial, often more. And then verdicts are automatically appealed. The appeals drag on and often succeed. So there are more trials and/or more sentencing hearings. And then they are appealed.

New Jersey eliminated its death penalty in 2007 after spending more than $250 million on death-penalty trials since the early 1980s and executing nobody.

In 2004, researchers at Columbia University came out with a report titled "A Broken System: The Persistent Patterns of Reversals of Death Sentences in the United States.''

It found that when a court hands down a death sentence, "there is a 68 percent chance that it will be overturned by a state or federal court because of serious error.'' The reversal rates are higher in states where the death penalty is applied more frequently.

Fifty-four percent of the federal judges who have overturned verdicts were appointed by Republicans. Even they understand details matter when you are killing people.

Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who is presiding over the Casey Anthony trial, had to sentence convicted killer Jermaine "Bugsy" LeBron to death three times because of problems with sentencing hearings.

In 1999, Perry threw out a conviction and death sentence for John Huggins, accused of killing Orlando engineer Carla Larson, because the prosecutor withheld evidence from the defense. The prosecutor was Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton. Huggins was convicted again but now seems to be having sanity issues.

One solution would be just to close our eyes and kill them fast as we can. That would be the manly thing to do.

But Florida leads the nation with 23 death row inmates who have been exonerated. That makes you wonder how many, like Leo Jones, didn't live long enough to join them.

He was executed in 1998 in what looked like an open-and-shut case. Confession. Witness statement. But then it turned out the confession was beaten out of him, perhaps even with a gun pointed at his head. Witnesses recanted. And more than a dozen people implicated another man as the killer.

It appears we murdered Leo. Whom should we execute for that?

The problem with killing people is there is no take-back.

If Casey is sentenced to death, the celebration will be short-lived. I've watched enough of this trial to know that she would be back for rounds two and three and so on.

Casey will outlive most all of these people sending me emails.

Sticking her in a cell until her cherished hotness is long a thing of the past would be a lot cheaper than trying to execute her. And I still could celebrate that.

mthomas@tribune.com or 407-420-5525

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Judge Calls Recess After Scolding Attorneys in Casey Anthony Murder Trial

Judge Calls Recess After Scolding Attorneys in Casey Anthony Murder TrialPublished June 20, 2011

| Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The judge in the murder trial of a Casey Anthony scolded prosecutors and defense attorneys Monday, warning them they may face punishment when the trial concludes, then he abruptly halted proceedings for the day to give both sides more time to sort out issues with witnesses.

One of the major disputes involves a defense witness who took the stand over the weekend, but neither prosecutors nor the judge knew what he was going to say. With the jury outside of the courtroom still waiting to hear testimony on Day 23 of the trial, Judge Belvin Perry said he was tired of the infighting.

"There has been gamesmanship on both sides," Perry said. "... Obviously there is a friction between attorneys. That's something I guess the Florida bar will deal with. And at the conclusion of this trial, the court will deal with violations that may have occurred."

Anthony, 25, is accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter during the summer of 2008. She has pleaded not guilty. The defense says the girl drowned in her grandparents' swimming pool while the state says she was suffocated by duct tape being placed over her nose and mouth. If convicted, Anthony could get the death penalty.http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-Categories

The judge highlighted the discord between attorneys when he asked prosecutor Jeff Ashton and defense attorney Jose Baez to look at the clock in the courtroom and tell him what time it was. Ashton said "9:25" and Baez "9:26."

"That shows the two of you won't agree on anything or ever interpret things the same way," Perry said.

The defense was about to call forensic anthropologist William Rodriguez to the witness stand Monday when the prosecution asked the judge for more time to go over a deposition he gave this past weekend.

Rodriguez was supposed to testify Saturday, but he was interrupted after prosecutors said he started talking about information that was not previously disclosed to the state. Perry wound up granting the state time to depose him and admonished lead defense attorney Jose Baez for violating a January court order that made it mandatory for expert witnesses to submit preliminary reports on their testimony.

Ashton said Monday the next expert Baez planned to call submitted only a summary report without any clear opinions. Ashton also said he planned to officially file for sanctions against Baez.

Baez argued that Ashton decided not to utilize the option to depose the new witness this past weekend and was also engaging in legal maneuvering.

"We did not intentionally look at this court's order and say we were going to disobey it," Baez said. Ashton "had a responsibility, omitted it ... and should not be allowed to come forth at the 11th hour."

Click here for complete coverage on the Casey Anthony murder trial from MyFoxOrlando.com

TIMELINE: Casey Anthony murder trial 

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Casey Anthony Trial: Duct Tape Problematic in Murder Case

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)

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Even if Casey Anthony ends up on death row, she'll never be executed

Mike, revenge is served deliciously cold. Casey will definitely get the needle. Many of us will celebrate her death.

—Machttp://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dvd+with+media+on+it&_sacat=See-All-Categories

Mac was responding to my column on why Casey Anthony does not qualify for the death penalty.

I hate to spoil the celebration of Mac and others like him, but Casey will never feel that final vein prick.

If she ever does make it to death row and gets in line behind the 399 inmates already there, she would be killed sometime in the 23rd century.

That is based on the execution rate since 1979. We're adding folks far faster than we're killing them.

For example, Jeb Bush stopped executions in 2007 after it took 34 minutes to kill an inmate because of a misplaced needle. By the time executions resumed 18 months later, more than 20 inmates joined death row.

Our last execution was 16 months ago. Since then, we have added 11 more.

I hate to point out the obvious, but this isn't working.

Do not get me wrong. I was quite happy to see Ted Bundy take a seat in Old Sparky. The psycho killer cases are easy. But it has become impossible for our gigantic criminal-justice bureaucracy to equitably dish out cold revenge in the shades-of-gray cases.

The result is a haphazard system that invites mistakes and is increasingly expensive to maintain.

The Palm Beach Post calculated in 2000 that the death penalty cost Florida $51 million a year, or about $24 million per execution. The state has never crunched the numbers.

Various studies have concluded that the death penalty adds a minimum of $1 million to the cost of the average trial, often more. And then verdicts are automatically appealed. The appeals drag on and often succeed. So there are more trials and/or more sentencing hearings. And then they are appealed.

New Jersey eliminated its death penalty in 2007 after spending more than $250 million on death-penalty trials since the early 1980s and executing nobody.

In 2004, researchers at Columbia University came out with a report titled "A Broken System: The Persistent Patterns of Reversals of Death Sentences in the United States.''

It found that when a court hands down a death sentence, "there is a 68 percent chance that it will be overturned by a state or federal court because of serious error.'' The reversal rates are higher in states where the death penalty is applied more frequently.

Fifty-four percent of the federal judges who have overturned verdicts were appointed by Republicans. Even they understand details matter when you are killing people.

Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who is presiding over the Casey Anthony trial, had to sentence convicted killer Jermaine "Bugsy" LeBron to death three times because of problems with sentencing hearings.

In 1999, Perry threw out a conviction and death sentence for John Huggins, accused of killing Orlando engineer Carla Larson, because the prosecutor withheld evidence from the defense. The prosecutor was Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton. Huggins was convicted again but now seems to be having sanity issues.

One solution would be just to close our eyes and kill them fast as we can. That would be the manly thing to do.

But Florida leads the nation with 23 death row inmates who have been exonerated. That makes you wonder how many, like Leo Jones, didn't live long enough to join them.

He was executed in 1998 in what looked like an open-and-shut case. Confession. Witness statement. But then it turned out the confession was beaten out of him, perhaps even with a gun pointed at his head. Witnesses recanted. And more than a dozen people implicated another man as the killer.

It appears we murdered Leo. Whom should we execute for that?

The problem with killing people is there is no take-back.

If Casey is sentenced to death, the celebration will be short-lived. I've watched enough of this trial to know that she would be back for rounds two and three and so on.

Casey will outlive most all of these people sending me emails.

Sticking her in a cell until her cherished hotness is long a thing of the past would be a lot cheaper than trying to execute her. And I still could celebrate that.

mthomas@tribune.com or 407-420-5525

View the original article here