Casey Anthony: Is it a death-penalty case? What about glitch in ‘48 Hours Mystery’? - Hal

Casey Anthony: Is it a death-penalty case? What about glitch in ‘48 Hours Mystery’?
posted by halboedeker on April, 17 2011 5:56 PM

During Saturday’s “48 Hours Mystery,” a promo for WKMG-Channel 6’s 11 p.m. news briefly interrupted the program. When the CBS program resumed, viewers could see footage of Caylee Marie Anthony and hear Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi describing “a beautiful child.”

The flub didn’t happen in just Orlando, readers have told me. What happened?

“It was a network ‘timing’ mistake,” WKMG General Manager Skip Valet told me. “The easiest explanation is it was a technical error in the timing of the commercials by the network.”

WKMG-Channel 6 continued to study the Anthony case on “Flashpoint” this morning. Lauren Rowe moderated a discussion with WKMG’s Tony Pipitone and the station’s legal analyst, Mark O’Mara. The half-hour program, which was taped before “48 Hours Mystery” aired, provided a welcome, in-depth discussion on the heavily covered case. Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee, and the trial will begin next month.

O’Mara questioned the whole point of using a focus group, as “48 Hours Mystery” did, to weigh Anthony’s guilt. “We don’t even know what evidence is going to get presented to the actual jury,” O’Mara said. “The network couldn’t have come up with a precise rendition of what the jury will see.”

O’Mara questioned why former defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden described former client Anthony as a liar. “I guess she’s enjoying her time on camera, but she’s doing it at the expense of a client and and I think her own ethical obligations,” O’Mara said of Kenney Baden.

The discussion came around to whether this is a death-penalty case. Rowe showed footage of Attorney General Bondi telling “48 Hours Mystery”: “This isn’t ‘CSI.’ This is real life. … These are very good prosecutors. They are going to establish a timeline that no one else could have murdered little Caylee but her mother.”

But is this a death-penalty case? You hear that discussion a lot away from the TV cameras. To its credit, “Flashpoint” took it up. O’Mara said, “I don’t see the type of normally compelling aggravating circumstances in this case that would justify a death-penalty request.”

Pipitone asked, “Can you really prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was cold, calculated and premeditated … when you don’t even know how the child died?”

What do you think?

Pipitone predicted that there would be no trouble, despite the heavy press coverage, in seating a jury in a week.

O’Mara cited West Palm Beach as a good place to find the jurors. And what do you think about those points?

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