Casey Anthony Trial - A Mixed Bag - Orlando Magazine

Jun 8, 2011 12:56 AM
Casey Anthony Trial - A Mixed Bag

Excerpt:

Trash Talk
Gerardo Bloise took center stage once again Tuesday morning. Bloise, if you recall, collected evidence from Casey Anthony's white Pontiac Sunfire, including a white bag of trash removed from the trunk of the vehicle. Part of the job description of the CSI Level 2 investigator is to sift through some of the worst stuff, like someone else's garbage, after it has sat in a steamy Florida trunk in July. It's hot enough to bake a pizza!

After he set the garbage aside, he noticed that it no longer imparted the horrible odor of human decay and it took on a much more palatable aroma of baked rubbish, so what that proved to him was that wherever the smell came from, it wasn't from the contents of that bag. As he examined bit after bit of goo and muck, he photographed every morsel of it for the jury's viewing pleasure. And ours. Eventually, to preserve the goods, he placed the wet stuff in a dryer. All-in-all, there were 37 items in that bag and all of it was accounted for.

On cross examination, Jose Baez told him, “You know, that wet trash was wet until you put it in the dryer.”

While some might think of that as a mundane statement, it did get better. He showed his lawyer side by telling the witness that by drying some of the contents, the evidence was altered. Poor Bloise may have destroyed DNA in the process.

Linda Drane Burdick wasn't buying it. When she asked the investigator why he dries things, he responded with, “The purpose of drying is to preserve evidence. Wet items can very easily become moldy.”

I think it's clear who made more sense in that exchange.

More: http://www.orlandomagazine.com/Blogs/Casey-Anthony-Trial/June-2011/A-Mixed-Bag/