In the year 2008, a young woman Casey Anthony was accused a first-degree murder of her two year old daughter Caylee .She was also charged with other offences which include; aggravated manslaughter, providing false information to the law enforcement and aggravated child abuse. Casey Anthony was accused of providing false information by pleading not guilty of the charges and that the baby was kidnapped by a baby sitter .The case drew a lot of media attention and this forced the judge to keep the location of the jury selection secret for a very long time. The charges against Anthony gained ground due to the fact that after her daughter Caylee had disappeared, she only informed her mother of her daughter’s disappearance after a period of one month. Her mother took the initiative of informing the concerned authorities and the following weeks were of thorough search in Florida by thousands of volunteers. As this transpired, several photos emerged of Casey Anthony drinking and having fun even during the first month. The behaviors of Casey raised a great deal of suspicion and she eventually became a sensation to the media and a few days later, suspicious protesters demonstrated outside Casey’s home which she shared with her parents.
In the month of December that same year 2008,Caylee's remains which had decomposed were found by a municipal meter reader in the woods not very far from where the toddler with resided her mother and grandparents. Detectives gave a reported that residue of a heart-shaped sticker was found on duct tape over the mouth of her skull. Jan Garavaglia, a local medical examiner, gave a ruling that a cause of death could not be determined and autopsy said that Caylee's bones did not suffer trauma.
In July, 17 2008, Casey Anthony was finally arrested after deputies said she told them that she worked at Universal Orlando Resort, but after being taken there, she admitted she lied. Judge Stan Strickland initially denied bond, because Casey case was of high profile but was later released on bond with an ankle-monitoring device .She was later rearrested and thereafter followed by a series of trials. In October 14, 2008 Casey was indicted for murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter and four counts of providing false information. This was classified as a capital crime and Casey was sentenced to death .However, several other trials continued through the years to 2011 where Casey was found innocent of the charges and was released from jail.
There were tests also done by forensic experts to find some digital evidence to the case. Casey’s car was seized by detectives and sent to a forensics bank after they found evidence of possible human decomposition. A series of examinations were done and it was found that there were some traces of chloroform in the car's trunk, chloroform is used to induce unconsciousness and also a component of human decomposition and a hair which was found to be "microscopically similar" to one in Caylee's hairbrush .Also in a 911 call by Cindy reporting Casey for stealing her car, the detectives found that Cindy Anthony described the vehicle as smelling "like there's been a dead body in the damn car."The forensic search also found 3-Dimensional images of the area where Caylee’s remains were found and including animated flyovers.
Casey Anthony’s case was a tough one and the court had a hard time in making a ruling based on the digital evidence provided .The evidence provided had some links with the accused to the crime but the evidence is not exact and provide insufficient grounds to make one guilty. This is always common with most digital evidences which end up being excluded from the trials. An example in this case is the traces of chloroform which eventually was not used as evidence. The case was affected by a software issue since the software that was used by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to validate its finding that Casey Anthony had searched for information about chloroform about eighty four times turned out to be wrong .In a research done by Mr. Bradley he said he did a second analysis after finding out the discrepancies that were never brought to his attention by prosecutors or the police. However, these findings were never presented to the jury for correction. This therefore was an omission that was very critical and in my own point of view, it would have affected the ruling of the case.
Referrences
Ashley, H. (2011, June 6). Casey Anthony not guilty of murder, other charges in daughter's death. Consulté le May 25, 2013, sur CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/05/florida.casey.anthony.trial/index.html
Central Florida News. (2013). THE TIMELINE IN THE CASE AGAINST CASEY. Carlifonia: Bright House Networks.
