Monday, June 27, 2011

Casey Anthony declared competent; trial proceeds - CNN.com

(CNN) -- Casey Anthony, accused of annihilating her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008, was determined able to continue with her chief assassinate trial after she was examined by three psychologists over the weekend, the justice said Monday.

The psychologists' reports ambition be sealed, said Orange County Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr. appearance the presence of the jury.

"Based on privileged communications among Casey Marie Anthony and her counsel, counsel reasonably believes that Ms. Anthony is not competent to support and help in her own defense and is incompetent to proceed," said the motion, filed by defense attorneys Saturday beneath stamp and made public Monday. "As a result of this well-founded care, counsel requests a full competency determination before the continuation of trial proceedings."

It was implied -- but not expressly stated -- that the motion was the reason for the precipitous rest Perry called on Saturday morn.

Anthony, 25, is charged with 7 counts, including first-degree murder, exasperated child abuse and misleading police, in her daughter's death. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty opposition her.

Anthony's defense crew is trying to discredit the prosecution theory that the Orlando woman rendered Caylee unconscious with chloroform, duct-taped her jaws and proboscis, and cached the body in her car trunk for a few days before dumping it in the woods.

The defense says Caylee deliberately drowned in the home pool and that Anthony and her father, George, dreaded and covered it up. George Anthony has denied that methodology.

Anthony's defense attorneys also filed a motion Monday asking Perry to reconsider an earlier decision and declare Florida's death penalty decree unconstitutional.

The motion cites a June 20 determination by U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez, which ascertained the usage accustom to approach a death sentence in Florida is improper "because it does not require a jury to make the discoveries of truth required to tax a death sentence."

Anthony's attorneys had previously filed a motion asking for the law to be affirmed unconstitutional, and Perry denied it. After the Martinez decision, they are asking him to reconsider.

"Because Florida's necrosis discipline procedure namely unconstitutional, the death penalty ought be excluded for a latent sentence," along to the film.

In the case Martinez ruled on, Evans v. McNeil, the jury recommended a sentence of death on a 9-3 vote but did not say on which aggravating ingredients it based the decision. A motion to revise or improve has been filed in the case -- basically a motion asking Martinez to reconsider.

Jurors heard Monday from two men who worked for Casey Anthony's parents, George and Cindy Anthony, after Caylee's vanish on June 16, 2008.

Private investigators James Hoover and Dominic Casey both said they catered security services at the Anthony home from "protesters" who would show up. Hoover said he was going as a citizen though he is a licensed private investigator.

The two said they spent two days in November 2008 searching a wooded area for Caylee's body. The search site was near where the remains were found a month later. A videotape of that search was played for jurors.

Casey told defense attorney Ann Finnell the search was prompted by a phone peak he received from a psychic.

Both defense lawyer Jose Baez and prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick accused Hoover of offering to money in on his association with the case by attempting to sell the tape of the search, but he denied that, saying he actually thought he had taped over the search and only discovered later he had not.

He did say he at one point was going to sell some photographs of the search and give the money to Casey and the Anthony family. "I didn't absence it,Designer Sunglasses UK," he said.

Jurors also listened from Kenneth Furton, a instructor of chemistry and biochemistry at Florida International University and director emeritus of the university's International Forensic Research Institute. Furton testified that he studies chemicals emitted by both live and dead people.

Chloroform can be given off in small quantities by a decomposing body. One prosecution adept,Designer Sunglasses Sale, Arpad Vass of Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, described the levels of the substance in the trunk of Anthony's white Pontiac Sunfire as "shockingly high." Several witnesses also testified for the state approximately odors that they said smelled like the unmistakable odor of people decomposition.

Furton said there are option explanations for the chloroform base in the trunk, noting the compound is base in a number of household items, especially bleach.

On his cross-examination, prosecutor Jeff Ashton held up the black leftover tire cover from Anthony's trunk. Furton acknowledged that if bleach had been poured instantly on the carpet, the cover would have showed some testify of that.

Also, Furton said, the chemical reactions that produce chloroform also generate additional materials. Testing was not done to decide if anyone of those materials were present, he said -- both at him alternatively at the Oak Ridge laboratory.

Furton said there is no instrumentation that can disc with technological validity the presence or want of human decomposition, and said his studies recommend there are chemical compounds solitary to human decomposition that were not present in Vass' analysis of the climate samples from the trunk.

On cross-examination, whatever, he acknowledged that a decomposing human body would explain the presence of the compounds that Vass found,Sunglasses Shop, but Furton said a sack of garbage that was left in the trunk for weeks could have contributed.

Before a lunch crash, Furton testified that the Oak Ridge laboratory should have done a quantitative inquiry to determine how much chloroform was present in the trunk in array to state its importance.

Orange County Sheriff's Office Detective Yuri Melich, the guide investigator in the case, was also recalled to the stand Monday. Baez questioned Melich in an exertion to hurl doubt on the thoroughness of the investigation.

Under questioning, Melich admitted that he did not subpoena George Anthony's cell spire records, showing where he was while cries were made or received. Asked whether that might have aided investigators,Mens Designer Sunglasses, Melich said it would have, "if I had had a reason to believe it would melodrama a chapter in this circumstance, which by the time I did not."

He said he also did not collar a computer belonging to Roy Kronk, the measure reader who discovered Caylee's remains in a wooded area close the Anthony family on December 11, 2008. Melich testified he had no cause to do so.

Melich also said that cadaver dogs were not deployed on George and Cindy Anthony's motorcars, only on Casey Anthony's. On cross-examination, Burdick inquired Melich whether anybody ever reported that either of those cars smelled like a dead body, and he said they did not.

Monday marks the opening of the sixth week of testimony in the trial, which started with beginning statements ashore May 24.

Perry originally told jurors, who are being housed in an Orlando hostel safeguarded from medium coverage of the trial, that the trial could last six to 8 weeks.

On Friday -- ahead Saturday's lag -- Baez said he anticipated the ward to recess on Wednesday or possibly Thursday. That would leave room as a rebuttal case from the prosecution and closing statements ahead the Independence Day holiday. Saturday was arranged as a full day in the trial, and it was illegible how the day's tarry would influence those plans. Testimony on Monday lasted until afterward 7 p.m.

Caylee was not reported lacking to police until July 15, 2008, when Cindy Anthony, trailed down her daughter Casey and claimed questions regarding Caylee's whereabouts. Prosecution witnesses depicted Casey Anthony's behavior in the month after Caylee was final penetrated as nonchalant, testifying that she spent time with her boyfriend, went shopping and to nightclubs -- but told no one her daughter was missing. They alleged they placarded no alteration in her demeanor.

Baez said in his opening statement that Anthony behaved as she did for annuals of sexual abuse by her dad had conditioned her to hide the fact and conceal her anguish.

George Anthony has denied the demands that he abused his daughter or helped conceal his granddaughter's death.

In Session's Grace Wong, Jean Casarez, Jessica Thill and Michael Christian contributed apt this report.

Watch Nancy Grace Monday through Sunday beginning at 8 afternoon ET on HLN. For the latest from Nancy Grace press here.

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