Long Road to Justice for Caylee Anthony

Casey parties after Caylee is gone

by Diane Fanning

This morning, Tuesday at 9 a.m., in an Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, the state of Florida will step to the podium to present the opening arguments in favor of the conviction of Casey Marie Anthony for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony. 

Following that, the defense will present its arguments for a not guilty verdict. Attorney Jose Baez has promised that he will explain why Casey didn't report her daughter missing and answer a lot of other questions in the first three minutes.  Odds are he will claim the death of Caylee was an accident, or he will point the finger of guilt at a member of Casey's immediate family, or perhaps at one of Casey's friends.

The body discovery site

This day of reckoning has been delayed for quite some time. From the moment of Caylee's death in mid-June 2008, her road to justice has been long and full of obstacles. She spent days unnoticed in the trunk of a car driven by her mother, Casey Anthony. She was then dumped in the undergrowth--her location unknown to anyone but her killer.

No one else even knew for nearly five weeks that she was gone.  It was then that her grandmother, Cindy Marie Anthony, reported her missing.  Nearly six months after Caylee was last seen alive, the poor child's decomposed body, with duct tape wrapped around her skull, was found less than half a mile from the Anthony home.

Still, her mother would not admit to what her daughter had done.  She lied again and again and again. Each prevarication more outrageous than the last. And, somehow, Casey seemed to think she would be believed if only she kept lying. 

That string of lies will surely be part of the deliberations of the jury at trial's end.  They'll also consider some controversiaal evidence--the cans of air taken from Casey's car. The defense argued that allowing the jury to smell the contents turns jurors into witnesses. I did not find that argument compelling because it is only a matter of which sense is being invoked. Juries are taken to crime scenes all the time. There they use their eyes to observe. Here the state wants them to use their noses. I can't say that I've seen all that much distance between the two. But as Stacey Dittrich said on the Levi Page Show, the odor from those cans will permeate the area where they are opened. Let's hope for everyone's comfort that they are taken outside to sniff and not expected to smell the odor of decomposition inside a closed space.

Judge Belvin Perry has estimated that the trial will last six to eight weeks.  That length of time seems as optimistic an approximation as his prediction that the jury would be seated in one week; it took twice as long.  Six hundred and forty seven subpoenas have been issued to witnesses--an enormous, time-consuming number. Even if only half of them are called to the stand, it's hard to believe it could be all over before the end of July.  At this point, there is really no way of knowing how long this trial will last.

From June of 2008 until May of 2011 is a long time--nearly three years after Caylee Anthony died. By the time the trial is over, we will be near the date that would have been Caylee's sixth birthday. She's waited a long time for justice. Let's hope Caylee Anthony finds it in the courtroom of Judge Perry.

Diane Fanning is the author of the best-selling Mommy's Little Girl, the only book about the death of Caylee Anthony. Watch for updates about the Anthony case on Diane Fanning's blog, Writing is a Crime,