Casey Anthony civil hearing ends without a ruling - OS

Casey Anthony civil hearing ends without a ruling
5:28 p.m. EST, March 23, 2012|

By Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel

After about three hours of argument on Friday, the question of whether a civil defamation lawsuit brought against Casey Anthony will be allowed to proceed to trial remains unanswered.

Judge Lisa Munyon decided against ruling on a pair of motions — one from each side — that could either help bolster the claims of the plaintiff, Zenaida Gonzalez, or reject her entire suit.

The suit charges that Anthony damaged Gonzalez's reputation in 2008, when Anthony, 26, told authorities that a similarly named nanny had kidnapped her then-missing daughter, 2-year-old Caylee.

Investigators later determined that Caylee was dead, and the nanny Anthony described didn't exist. She was charged with her daughter's murder, but acquitted on that and other major charges in July.

The central question for much of Friday's legal debate: Did Anthony identify Gonzalez specifically enough when she told detectives a nanny with a similar name had taken her daughter?

Attorney Keith Mitnik, arguing for Gonzalez, pointed to discrepancies between Anthony's interactions with law enforcement and comments she made to her mother, Cindy Anthony, in 2008.

Anthony ruled Gonzalez out as a suspect when shown a photo by detectives, Mitnik said, but told her mother in a video recorded jail visit that she had never seen the picture.

"She said, 'They did not show me a picture. They did not show me a picture of that lady from Kissimmee'" Mitnik said, recounting the video of Casey and her parents.

Mitnik said Cindy Anthony relayed that information to the media, perpetuating rumors that Gonzalez was still a suspect in Caylee Anthony's disappearance.

Anthony also linked the fictional nanny to the Sawgrass Apartments, Mitnik said, where Gonzalez, who lived in Kissimmee, had filled out paperwork. That led investigators to question her, he said.

Anthony defense attorney Charles Greene interpreted the events differently, stressing that Anthony told detectives the woman in the photo they showed her wasn't the right person.

"There is nothing she said about this plaintiff, except she said it's not [the nanny]," Greene said.

Greene told the judge Gonzalez was seeking her "15 minutes of fame." Her reputation was damaged, Greene argued, "only after she asked the world to identify her as 'Zanny the nanny.'"

"She got what she asked for," Greene said, adding that "this case is a publicity stunt from its inception."

Greene also went through more than a dozen physical and personal characteristics from Anthony's description of the fictional nanny to detectives, noting that none matched Gonzalez.

That includes the name, Greene said. Anthony told detectives the nanny was named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, as opposed to Zenaida Gonzalez, the plaintiff's full name.

He likened the case to the fairy tale Cinderella. In Gonzalez's case, Greene argued, the glass slipper just doesn't fit.

"The plaintiff is not Cinderella and she is definitely not Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez," he said.

The hearing Friday addressed a pair of motions, one from the defense, asking for a full ruling in their favor, and another from Gonzalez, seeking a partial judgment.

Gonzalez's attorneys are asking the judge to rule that Cindy Anthony was acting on her daughter's behalf when she relayed information from Casey — in jail at the time — to the media.

Munyon did not rule on either motion on Friday. She said she plans to issue a written order within the next 60 days. Barring a ruling for the defense, the case is slated for trial Jan. 2, 2013.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-23/news/os-casey-anthony-zenaida-gonzalez-hearing-20120323_1_cindy-anthony-zenaida-fernandez-gonzalez-anthony-defense-attorney

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