Casey Anthony: Defense claims investigators destroyed crucial smell - Hal

Casey Anthony: Defense claims investigators destroyed crucial smell
posted by halboedeker on February, 11 2011 9:23 AM

“Only on 6: Evidence Destroyed?” WKMG-Channel 6 titled its Casey Anthony story last night.

“Anthony is accusing detectives of intentionally destroying evidence,” anchor Lauren Rowe said in introducing the story.

“They’re talking about a bag of garbage,” reporter Mike DeForest explained.

WESH-Channel 2’s Bob Kealing succinctly summed up the development that late Thursday “the defense filed a motion to have any reference to the so-called smell of death in Casey’s car excluded due to mishandling of evidence.”

WKMG’s DeForest supplied the details. Although Casey’s parents said they smelled a dead body in her car trunk, there was a bag of garbage there as well.

“The defense team is claiming investigators intentionally destroyed the smell of that garbage and now they want other evidence thrown out,” DeForest reported. DeForest held up a white garbage bag and took a whiff when he got to the word smell.

Cindy Anthony, Casey’s mother, famously referred to “a bag of pizza for like 12 days in the back of the car.” DeForest listed the garbage bag’s contents: an empty pizza box and empty boxes of lunch meat, cheese, frozen dinners and detergent.

Anthony’s defense team claims that investigators let those smells air out and that the garbage bag “poses a major obstacle in the state’s attempts” to prove there were smells of human decomposition in the car.

Casey Anthony is accused of first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, 2-year-old Caylee. The trial is scheduled to start in May.

On Thursday, Chief Judge Belvin Perry ruled that he will allow evidence of Anthony’s history of lying and stealing, her “Bella Vita” tattoo, her MySpace entries, her borrowing of a shovel from a neighbor and her failure to tell a former boyfriend that Caylee was missing.

WFTV-Channel 9’s Kenneth Moton said, “Perry handed Casey Anthony’s defense team a major blow motion by motion.”

WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said the evidence was crucial to showing Anthony’s conduct, which was inconsistent with that of a mother whose child is missing. “This is a circumstantial evidence case, and each link in that circumstantial evidence chain is of equal dignity,” Sheaffer said.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2011/02/casey-anthony-defense-claims-investigators-destroyed-crucial-smell.html