Casey Anthony Trial: Closing Arguments a Competition of Fantasy

Closing arguments were heard Sunday in the Orlando courtroom that has been the center of national media attention for six weeks as legal teams presented and refuted evidence in the suspected 2008 murder of 2-year-old Caylee Marie Anthony. Before all was said and done, both sides would accuse the other of foisting fantasies onto the jury, whose deliberations could very well end in a conviction that would generate a death penalty phase to the trial.

State prosecutor Jeff Ashton told the jury Sunday, according to CNN, that Casey Anthony was a murderer. He told the seven women and five men that the then-22-year-old mother deliberately decided that living a carefree lifestyle was preferable to that of living with the burdens of young motherhood. They also provided a reason the young mother would plan the death of her daughter -- she was getting old enough to tell others about her mother's lies.

The prosecution walked the jury through the computer searches for chloroform, the killing that occurred because three pieces of duct tape were placed over the child's mouth, how Casey stored the body in the trunk of her car for several days before disposing of the remains near her parents' home outside Orlando. They then recounted how the 22-year-old went about her life like nothing had occurred, partying, sleeping over at her boyfriend's place, getting a tattoo, and all without telling friends or family that anything had happened to Caylee. That is, until her mother confronted her, asked about her granddaughter, then called 911, where the now desperate mother began lying anew to investigators about her daughter, who by then had been missing for a month.

Ashton said that the desperate Anthony would again take to lying one last time -- in the courtroom. "Call it Casey 3.0, the new version," he said.

Ashton said the defense's arguments would "require you [the jury] to suspend your common sense" and take "a trip down a rabbit hole," an allusion to the classic fantasy "Alice In Wonderland." He then told the defense's story in scathing tones, how they went after the man that found the remains, went after the doting grandfather (even going so far as to label him a pedophile without substantiating the claim), and noted the defense would have jurors believe "a man [Goerge Anthony] who buries his pets will take the granddaughter, who is the love of his life, and throw her in a swamp. This is the world the defense invites you to occupy."

Defense attorney Jose Baez began his arguments by simply telling the jury that Caylee Anthony's drowning in the family pool was "the only explanation that makes sense." He went over the defense's contention that the pool ladder had been left attached to the pool by mistake and the jury had heard testimony that little Caylee could open the sliding glass door that led to the yard. He then began to discredit the state's case.

He noted that Casey Anthony had no motive to kill her daughter, and that the prosecution's contentions that she murdered her child to pursue a more free lifestyle was "nonsense."

He admitted to the jury that his client had "issues," but those same issues had been part of Casey Anthony's life for a long time. (This would be the closest he would get to re-examining the sexual abuse allegations he made in his opening arguments.) This would lead the defense lawyer back to questioning George Anthony's involvement, eventually telling the jury that he only cared about himself.

Baez also couched his basic argument against the prosecution's case as fantasy. The prosecution, he said, built their case on "fantasy (computer) searches, fantasy forensics, phantom stickers, phantom stains (in the trunk) ... and no real, hard evidence."

By day's end, both legal teams had charged the other with constructing fantasies. Ultimately, and unfortunately for the jury, they could both be correct. The defense's job is to protect their client and constructing a plausible scenario for the death of Caylee Anthony is part of a workable defense. That defense does not have to be the truth. It only has to be plausible, just enough to be believed or set up the possibility for the scenario to be true or real, thereby instilling reasonable doubt that would allay a conviction.

The state's case could also be fantasy. They never got a confession out of the then 22-year-old mother upon her arrest, and in all the time Casey Anthony has been behind bars in the Orange County Jail, no confession was made. The case is all built on circumstantial evidence and behavioral analysis. To make the job of trying to prove that Casey Anthony was even present at her daughter's death, they have no witnesses to the crime -- if a crime was committed.

What is not a fantasy are the circumstances that led the state to bring charges of first degree murder against Anthony. The remains of little Caylee Anthony wrapped in a bag, duct tape attached to her small skull, and signs of decomposition in her mother's car are pieces of the puzzle investigators put together after Casey Anthony came forward 31 days after her daughter disappeared and reported her missing. But she only seemed to be forced to do that because of her distraught mother's 911 call to the police, her frantic cries that the trunk of the car smelled like death prompted an investigation. And then there were all the lies (a nonexistent babysitter, a nonexistent job, a kidnapping) that, taken together with her behavior and the little evidence they had at the time, led authorities to charge Anthony with child abuse and the murder of her daughter two months before the child's remains were located and recovered.

Although the evidence is not fantastic, the defense contends that the conclusions drawn from observation and analysis of the evidence most certainly is...

And those fantasy computer searches? Those that found "how to make chloroform" and "neck breaking" typed into the computer, the only entries found in the computer's memory that were deleted? The very same entries that Cindy Anthony desperately admitted were hers but only appeared as prompts when she searched for "chlorophyll," something state's witnesses noted were never typed into the home computer at all. And as for Cindy Anthony making any of those entries that the state determined as premeditative acts leading to the murder of her granddaughter, the state producer witnesses in the form of Anthony's employers who noted that not only was she on the timeclock at work when the incriminating entries were made on the home computer, keystroke logs indicate that her password was used during the same time period. Was the defense correct that the case was built on a "fantasy" of premeditation, or did Cindy Anthony, in an effort to try and save her daughter from conviction, erect another fantasy for the courtroom?

The Casey Anthony trial has provided the jury with plenty of possible and probable fantasies to unravel and hopefully come to a just verdict. One of the offered stories may not be a fantasy at all.

The jury will begin deliberating after the prosecution's final summation, which is scheduled for Monday. The state will seek the death penalty should the jury reach a guilty verdict.