Casey Anthony is guilty of many things. She is an enthusiastic liar. She was an indifferent mother. She mooched off her overindulgent parents for years. Even after her daughter went missing, Anthony partied and got a tattoo. But the state of Florida did not make a good case that Anthony murdered her daughter. In acquitting Anthony, the jury made the right call.
In his closing argument on July 3, one of the prosecutors, Jeff Ashton, said that a combination of chloroform and duct tape killed Caylee Anthony. But he couldn't say which came first, the chloroform or the duct tape; his team was never even able to prove that chloroform had been used. Caylee's corpse was found with duct tape on her face, but the tape had no fingerprints or DNA. And so Ashton, in his closing, had to resort to a passive accusation: "That tape," he said, "was placed there for one singular purpose. This murder was premeditated." But who, exactly, placed the tape? And who premeditated it?(See photos from the Casey Anthony trial.)
Anthony got off because the prosecution couldn't answer such questions. Because the prosecutors had so little physical evidence, they built their case on Anthony's (nearly imperceptible) moral character. The prosecutors seemed to think that if jurors saw what a fantastic liar Anthony was, they would understand that she could also be a murderer.
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The verdict in the State of Florida vs. Casey Anthony murder trial coincided with a spike in online news traffic.
Content delivery network Akamai tells us that it saw a spike in its Net Usage Index for News around the time of the verdict. As the verdict was announced, news site pageviews jumped from about 2 million to nearly 3.3 million a minute — nearly all of that coming from the U.S.
CNN saw an online traffic spike as well. The network tells us that more than 1 million users were watchingCNN.com/live between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. This was 30 times higher than the prior four-week average.
CNN.com (which syndicates Mashable content) also experienced a surge in regular web traffic, with 12 million pageviews — four times the four-week average — on the site during the hour the verdict was announced.
Twenty-five-year-old Anthony was found not guilty of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter. Anthony’s trial lasted nearly six weeks, but the case itself has been a big part of cable news for the past three years.
The Anthony trial was streamed online as much as broadcast on cable TV. This allowed individuals to tune in from work and to comment using social media in real time.
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In a stunning verdict reached in just 10 hours and 40 minutes of deliberation, a jury acquitted Casey Anthony of murder this afternoon in Orlando, Fla.A red-faced Anthony held back tears after the verdict. Having sat grim faced for almost six weeks of testimony, she beamed when she learned her fate.
Comprised of seven women and five men, ranging in ages from 32 to 65, the 12 members of the jury handed down the decision at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday.
The jurors spent four hours Sunday and six today breaking down the case against Casey. Ultimately, they found reasonable doubt and she walked.
Casey Anthony was found guilty on four counts of providing false information to law enforcement officers. Those charges are misdemeanor offenses.
Anthony could face a year in prison for each of the four counts, but since she's been incarcerated for three years already, she may go free altogether.
Sentencing on the guilty counts will be held on 9 a.m. Thursday.
The high-profile trial began on May 24. Much of the 33 days of testimony and two of closing arguments made a compelling case against Anthony.
Not enough, apparently. The absence of hard, physical evidence against her and a defense theory that was just plausible enough led to an acquittal.
Prosecutors claimed Casey Anthony killed Caylee with chloroform and suffocated her with duct tape over her mouth and nose, then left her in the woods.
Casey's defense team admitted she weaved a complex web of lies about what happened, but suggested that Caylee drowned in the pool by accident.
As for why Casey lied, her attorneys said that she behaved that way because she had been "trained to lie" through years of sexual abuse by her father.
Judge Belvin Perry ruled, however, that there was no evidence that Casey was abused and ordered that it not be mentioned in closing arguments.
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