Real Estate for Denver & Naples

ORLANDO, Fla. — Casey Anthony, the young mother whose seeming heartlessness at the disappearance of her daughter transfixed America for three years, was located not guilty Tuesday of killing the girl, Caylee.

Immediately after nearly six weeks of testimony, a jury of seven females and five men rejected the prosecution’s contention that Anthony had murdered Caylee by dosing her with chloroform, suffocating her with duct tape and dumping her body in a wooded location. They did, on the other hand, find her guilty of lesser charges, of providing false details to law enforcement officers.

In a sign that jurors had small difficulty reaching a verdict, the jury did not ask to review any evidence and reached a decision in fewer than 11 hours. Jurors, who had been imported from the Clearwater area and had been sequestered for six weeks, declined to talk with reporters and returned dwelling to Pinellas County.

When the verdict was read, Anthony, 25, who faced a probable death sentence, cried quietly, the relief made plain on her face. Right after the jury left the courtroom, she broke down and sobbed, hugging her defense attorney, Jose Baez, tightly. She has spent almost three years in prison awaiting trial. She is expected to be released soon for the reason that she just isn’t most likely to serve any much more time for misdemeanors. Anthony also was identified not guilty of aggravated child abuse.

Her parents, George and Cindy, who lost a granddaughter and then listened in court as Baez blamed the family members
for Caylee’s death, sat stone-faced after the verdict was read. Prosecutors, who had entered the courthouse with broad smiles and to cheers, sat stunned.

The defense had argued from the begin that Caylee drowned accidentally inside the family members swimming pool and that the death was concealed by a panicked George Anthony and Casey Anthony.

It was unclear if that version of Caylee’s death swayed jurors. But the circumstantial nature of the prosecution’s case seemed to be insurmountable. There was no direct evidence tying Anthony to the death of her 2-year-old daughter. Forensic evidence was tenuous and no witnesses ever connected her to Caylee’s murder. Investigators located no traces of Anthony’s DNA or irrefutable signs of chloroform or decomposition inside the trunk of Anthony’s auto, where prosecutors stated she stashed Caylee just before disposing of her body.

The prosecution also was hurt by nobody understanding precisely when or how Caylee died; her body was too badly decomposed to pinpoint cause of death. And it permitted Baez to create a reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds — despite the prosecution’s relentless portrayal of her as a callous liar who sought to kill Caylee so she could lead a carefree life of boyfriends and bars.

“The ideal feeling I’ve right now is I know I can go property and my daughter will ask me, ‘What did you do currently?’ and I can say, ‘I saved a life,’” Baez said at a news conference.

Baez also denounced the death penalty, saying Anthony’s acquittal is an example of why “we all will need to quit and look and believe twice about a country that decides to kill its own citizens.”

This case was widely reported in real time via Twitter and cable Tv, and outrage over the verdict came swiftly as did criticism of the media. But the public was equally captivated by the saga, with some people flying in to grab a hard-to-get seat in the courtroom.

Cheney Mason, Baez’s co-counsel, lashed out at reporters and pundits for “media assassination” in maligning Anthony’s character and sprinting to an assumption of guilt.

“I can tell you that my colleagues coast to coast and border to border have condemned this entire method of lawyers getting on tv to talk about instances they do not know a damn thing about,” Mason said.

Outside, Lawson Lamar, the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Court, praised prosecutors for their meticulous function but added that it was a tough trial because it was a “dry bones case,” a reference to Caylee’s decomposed state, with “no smoking gun.”

Caylee was last seen June 16, 2008. Her remains had been discovered Dec. 11 in a wooded lot near the Anthony home. Anthony failed to report Caylee missing for 31 days and produced a tangle of lies, which includes that a baby sitter kidnapped Caylee, to cover up the absence.

The defense conceded Anthony’s lies but said they happened for 1 reason: She had been sexually abused by her father and had been coached to lie her entire life.

Prosecutors argued all along that Anthony killed her child so she could carouse with her boyfriend, go clubbing and live the “bella vita” — beautiful life — as her tattoo, carried out after Caylee’s disappearance, proclaimed. They employed jailhouse recordings of Anthony and photographs of her reveling with pals to show she was clearly not grieving.

One prosecutor, Jeff Ashton, called it “absurd” that Anthony, a former homicide detective, would find Caylee dead in the swimming pool and, rather than call 911, cover up the drowning, wrap dead Caylee’s face with duct tape and dump her body.

“It is really a trip down a rabbit hole into a bizarre globe exactly where men who love their granddaughters come across them drowned and do nothing,” Ashton stated.

Anthony, who had testified tearfully during the trial, denied abusing his daughter and locating Caylee inside the swimming pool.