Casey Anthony: Defense attorney calls Cindy’s 911 call ‘contrived and planned’

Casey Anthony: Defense attorney calls Cindy’s 911 call ‘contrived and planned’

— posted by halboedeker on June, 21 2010 5:48 PM

A July 15 hearing in the Casey Anthony case will focus on Cindy Anthony’s 911 calls and whether they will be admitted at the murder trial.

Why does the defense want the calls excluded?

“Cause it’s not admissible evidence,” defense attorney Cheney Mason told WESH-Channel 2’s Michelle Meredith. “Anybody can pick up a phone and say anything. I could borrow your phone right now and call 911 about you.”

Mason jolted the case with his comments today. He told reporters that Cindy Anthony hadn’t told her co-workers about her concerns there was a dead body in Casey’s car. Cindy Anthony told “Good Morning America” last week that she exaggerated in a 911 call to get the attention of police.

The prosecution wants the jury to hear Cindy’s 911 calls; the defense wants them excluded as hearsay. Casey Anthony, Cindy’s daughter, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee.

WFTV-Channel 9’s Kathi Belich said, “The defense is trying to convince Chief Judge Belvin Perry that Cindy really wasn’t excited so it’s not really legally an excited utterance – that it’s merely hearsay, which is inadmissible.”

Attorney Mason told Belich that Cindy’s emotional 911 call ”was contrived and planned.”

Belich said the defense “completely reversed itself” on whether Texas EquuSearch volunteers in summer 2008 searched the woods where Caylee’s remains were found in December of that year. The defense is “now agreeing with investigators that the area was not searched because it was underwater,” Belich said.

Still, the defense is challenging prosecution experts’ contention that Casey Anthony put Caylee’s body in the woods in June 2008, Belich explained.

“What do you have that shows she was not there in June? That’s when Caylee disappeared,” Belich asked Mason.

“We don’t know when she disappeared,” Mason said.

WOFL-Channel 35’s Holly Bristow turned to the Texas EquuSearch volunteers’ search in the summer two years ago. At the hearing next month, the defense will seek a list of every volunteer who searched for Caylee, Bristow reported.

“The public has been made to believe that these people searched the exact area where the body was, or tried to and couldn’t,” Mason said. “The fact is they didn’t try to, and they didn’t. They weren’t there. And it was impassable at the time.”

Mason explained that point is central to the defense’s theory of establishing a reasonable doubt that Casey couldn’t have put the body there.

WFTV’s Belich also reported that the defense is “backing off its claim that meter reader Roy Kronk, who found Caylee’s remains, should be a suspect in Caylee’s murder because of wild accusations that Kronk’s exes made against him.”

WESH also provided an update about Casey Anthony’s tooth after she fell at the courthouse.

WESH’s Meredith said, “Sources us tell us that that tooth has been repaired and that it looks good, like it never happened.”

That can’t be said about too many things in this sprawling case.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2010/06/casey-anthony-defense-attorney-calls-cindys-911-call-contrived-and-planned.html