Casey Anthony: Donald Trump, Elvis Presley and eloquent words - Hal

Casey Anthony: Donald Trump, Elvis Presley and eloquent words
posted by halboedeker on May, 14 2011 7:13 PM

Jury selection continued this afternoon in the Casey Anthony case, and the memorable responses kept coming. Here are three:

1. One man said he didn’t believe everything he read. “I’ve also read that Donald Trump is an alien and Elvis Presley is still in Graceland,” the man said.

2. “I’m not much of an in-depth follower of anything,” a man said when explaining how he consumes news.

3. Defense attorney Jose Baez asked a woman, “Who are you?” She sounded dumbfounded and replied, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Perhaps finding a jury won’t be so hard, after all. On HLN, Jean Casarez of “In Session” was struck by one trend: “Jurors have said that they don’t know much about the news. So many of them say they don’t watch the news. They don’t really read the newspaper.”

Casarez noted that one woman said she didn’t take the newspaper because of the terrible stories, but she does watch the Investigation Discovery channel, which focuses on crime.

WFTV-Channel 9’s Kathi Belich highlighted a prospective juror’s comment that the media are mostly liars, a remark that caused Casey Anthony and defense attorney Jose Baez to smile. “But Casey is charged with four counts of lying to investigators who were trying to find Caylee,” Belich added. Anthony is also charged with first-degree murder in her daughter’s death.

Belich and WKMG-Channel 6’s Tony Pipitone also focused on a mother who revealed that her son had died in a car accident.

Pipitone said the “eloquent words” from the woman “cast a pall over the courtroom.”

“To lose a child is the worst thing that this earth has to serve on anyone,” that mother said. “It changes the way you see the world. It is out of the natural order of things.”

The woman said she couldn’t be fair in the Anthony case, because Caylee hadn’t been reported missing for a month. “I would see that as guilt by omission,” the woman said. Chief Judge Belvin Perry thanked the woman for her candor, and she was dismissed.

The prosecution didn’t want a 21-year-old Sears fragrance counter clerk who had tweeted that “cops in Florida are idiots and completely useless.” In court, the man said he didn’t really meant the tweeted comment.

“That tweet was from last September after he called 911 to get police to help him trail a drunk driver who, he said, had backed into his car and the police refused,” Pipitone said.

Belich’s take: “The state used its first challenge today after busting a 21-year-old for not admitting he tweeted disparaging comments about law-enforcement officers.”

By 6 p.m., Belich said there were 11 possible jurors, including one who has served on a jury before and one who doesn’t believe in the death penalty.

Pipitone reported that jury selection will continue Monday and he estimated there could 15 jurors by Monday afternoon. ”So it’s anyone guess whether things will get off the ground Tuesday,” Pipitone added. “I’m not going to hazard a guess.”

WKMG legal analyst Mark O’Mara did hazard a guess. He said he doubted that jury selection would end Monday and predicted that the defense and prosecution could use most of their peremptory challenges to remove people from the jury.

And what of the six people in a row who said Anthony is guilty?

“It may be coincidence, it may be that jurors are getting more used to talking about it,” O’Mara said.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2011/05/casey-anthony-donald-trump-elvis-presley-and-eloquent-words.html