I heard on last night’s Dr. Drew that the defense will be calling a surprise witness – an ex-con who was in prison for kidnapping. I can hardly wait to hear what he has to offer.
Is there such a thing as a surprise witness, a la Perry Mason? I thought both the prosecution and the defense had to be aware of all potential witnesses?
Or do you mean a surprise for the public?
I was surprised to see the other night that even Dr. Drew is covering this trial. What’s next…“Today on Wall Street Week: Timothy Geithner analyzes the Casey Anthony trial”?
You’d think a program hosted by a doctor would concern, you know, medical issues*! :rolleyes:
The new guy – Vasco Dagama Thompson (I kid you not) – is a late addition to the witness list. The defense is saying there were 4 cell phone calls between Thompson and George Anthony the day before Caylee disappeared.
Somebody on Webslueths figured it out: George had four contacts with this particular number during the month of July (not during the day before Caylee’s disappearance), and Thompson’s number is listed as being this particular number in some online databases. But it’s not his number. Thompson’s number is two digits off. It’s a clerical error, and the police and the prosecution figured that out years ago.
Quite a coincidence that this mix-up would involve a convicted kidnapper, but from what information about the case I could read, I infer that the kidnapping involved a grown woman and was a domestic violence sort of thing. Not to downplay the seriousness of domestic violence–it just doesn’t seem as if Thompson is a kidnapper-for-hire.
Baez had a good first day on defense. Several commentators mentioned that he did a good job. He really had the prosecutors reeling after slipping in the question about the FBI testing Lee Anthony for paternity of Caylee. Turns out FBI Agent Nick Savage requested the test.
My own opinion hasn’t changed. I see little chance that Casey can climb out of the huge hole she dug. But, I’m glad to see Casey is getting a decent defense. That’s a basic right any defendant deserves.
Interestingly enough, neither failure to pay child support, get life and health insurance for his teenage daughter, writing bad checks, declaring bankruptcy, or defaulting on student loans is likely relevant to the question of ineffective assistance of counsel.
When an appellate court considers overturning a verdict because defense counsel was inept, they ask two questions: was defense counsel’s performance at trial so poor that it fell below an objective standard; AND was the accused actuallt prejudiced as a result?
I can’t say I’ve followed the trial in detail, but I haven’t heard any tidbit that would support such a reversal.
Appealing on the grounds of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel is almost impossible. You essentially have to show that if it weren’t for the lawyer the outcome would probably have been different. He has to be pretty much flinging poo at the Jury for that to stick.
If you want to go out and party, how does it not occur to you to hire a babysitter or leave your child with someone? Was she just that much of a sociopath that duct tape and drugs and the trunk of her car seemed preferable? What a monster.
Like Scott Peterson, her behavior in the month after her daughter went missing, was so bizarre and inappropriate, that it leads me to conclude, without ever seeing any hard-and-fast evidence against her, that she’s at the VERY LEAST, extremely mentally ill. She’s so far gone that she doesn’t have the capacity to even recognize how a normal person in these circumstances SHOULD act. And that is pretty scary.
I’d go so far as to say that even if they turned up evidence that exonerated her of her child’s murder, she still needs to be locked up. She went clubbing a few days after her child turned up missing. What person does that? I tell you who. A freaking sociopath.
Fun fact: my Professional Responsibility instructor is a Florida circuit judge, and happens to be one of Judge Perry’s best friends. I have absolutely no interest in the Anthony trial, but I have to hear about it anyway.
The defenses bug expert is really shaking up the prosecution’s theory about a body in the trunk.
I guess the jury has to decide which bug expert to believe.
I’ve thought all along that there weren’t enough flies in that trunk. Growing up on a chicken farm, we often had dead birds in the summer. They died in the summer heat. We took them to the dump twice a week. The numbers of blow flies and maggots were pretty incredible. We had to use shovels to load the birds into the truck because they were too juicy. Eventually my uncle purchased an incinerator that ran off diesel fuel to get rid of the birds.
A body in Florida in July? I’d expect hundred, maybe thousands of flies in that car trunk. The defense bug guy is saying the same thing. They only found a few flies and fly parts in that car trunk.
Would the flies still be there after the body was removed? Would the smell be enough to keep flies around?
Florida requires only a showing of actual prejudice. No objective standard (though reviewing courts always address whether the defender’s performance failed to meet the reasonable stadard in the locality.
Wouldn’t the flies need to find an ingress route into the trunk the first place? Then through two plastic bags, a cotton bag and a blanket?
Not if the body had previously been exposed and flies had already blown maggots.
But now they’re hypothesizing that Caylee was alive when put intot he plastic bags. Surely that would limit the insect exposure.
No real experience with exposed corpses, but I know within minutes thousands of tiny flies are around piles of horse manure.
StG
Flies will gather even on a living person if there’s dead tissue exposed.
Well, scratch that theory. Thompson had a press conference today in which he says that number is his phone number–since 2009. The important part for the prosecution is that if this true there was no way he was the other guy on the line with George in July, 2008.
I agree with you that she is a freaking sociopath. I disagree that she is extremely mentally ill. Sociopaths are rational; they have no delusions or hallucinations. They just don’t care.
She’s certainly not mentally ill in the criminally insane category.
Can someone refresh my memory?
Doesn’t the prosecution get a chance to rebut the defense? After the defense rests?
If so, doesn’t that give the prosecution a chance to bring back their bug guy to testify and refute the defense’s bug expert?
Been awhile since i watched the OJ trial. Don’t recall exactly how this works.
I’d like to hear more about that black decomposition stain. I want to hear the prosecutions bug expert say yes/no whether it’s really black like that picture we saw of the hog. FWIW the stain in Casey’s car was not black.