Casey Anthony: Is the defense gaining any ground or not? - Hal

Casey Anthony: Is the defense gaining any ground or not?
posted by halboedeker on June, 22 2011 5:42 PM

Do you think the defense team in the Casey Anthony trial made progress today with the jury?

“No, I just don’t,” WKMG-Channel 6 legal analyst Mark NeJame said simply.

Attorney Hal Uhrig on WOFL-Channel 35 blasted the defense. “They’ve done a terrible job of having their own witnesses prepared and prepped,” he said. “Too many times, they’re asking questions they don’t know the answers to, and they don’t like the answers, and they wind up being combative with their own witnesses.”

But Judge O.H. Eaton Jr., legal analyst for WESH-Channel 2, said the defense seemed to prepare today’s witnesses better. “The name of the game today was to show lack of evidence, and they were successful in doing that,” Eaton said.

Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee.

WKMG legal analyst Mark O’Mara said the defense today paraded its witnesses, who said they had found nothing to connect Anthony to the crime. Yet O’Mara added that prosecutor Jeff Ashton did “a good job” of countering that those witness responses don’t mean a lot.

WFTV-Channel 9 legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said, “At the end of the day, the defense show was something about nothing. They raised all of these questions, and you don’t know why they’re raising these questions or these issues.” Sheaffer told WFTV’s Kathi Belich that the points the defense is making aren’t relevant to its theory of what happened.

WFTV’s Steve Barrett summed up the day in court: “It appears the state at this point is spending more time trying to disprove this drowning theory than Jose Baez himself is proving it. Today, he still seemed transfixed with the state’s evidence.”

Yet WESH’s Eaton said the main event for the defense will be backing up the opening statement that Caylee died in the family pool. “I think they’re trying trying to get all this forensic stuff out of the way before they do that,” Eaton said.

The jury is a major topic in the Anthony coverage. WKMG’s Tony Pipitone explained the days of the Anthony jurors, who can get on the Internet to pay bills and make phone calls to relatives. Court spokeswoman Karen Levey said the jurors are holding up well psychologically. “We haven’t lost a juror yet,” she said. Pipitone also revealed the jurors can dine out, have an alcoholic beverage and share intimate time with a spouse or significant other.

WESH’s Bob Kealing said the jury seemed “a lot more engaged today — they didn’t seem to be zoning out on so much technical testimony.”

WOFL’s Holly Bristow said she saw a little note-taking by the jury but they followed testimony closely as if they were watching a tennis match. “I just don’t feel the attorneys are connecting the dots,” Bristow said. “It’s going to be very difficult for the jurors when they end up deliberating.”

Judge Alex Ferrer, host of “Judge Alex,” told WOFL that the dots would be connected in the closing arguments. “Frankly, I think the state’s going to put a better picture together than the defense, based on what I’m seeing,” Ferrer said. “But the defense’s case isn’t over yet.”

Uhrig, also on WOFL, returned to a bombshell from the case this week: He was astonished that the defense hadn’t examined the Anthony computer records for June 2008, the time the defense says Caylee drowned. “If the state has what they purport to have, it may change the entire defense strategy and keep them from putting her [Casey] on the stand,” Uhrig said.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2011/06/casey-anthony-is-the-defense-gaining-any-ground-or-not.html