Day 25: Afternoon Testimony -- Cindy Anthony Takes the Stand

I lost my appetite after lunch with testimony about fatty acids in substances during cross-examination. A lot, I mean a LOT, happened today, including explosive testimony (God, I hate cliche, but I can't think of a better adjective) from Cindy Anthony, who took the stand later in the day. But there was some action prior to Cindy taking the stand.

Prosecutor Jeff Ashton is behind the wheel of a Mack truck, according to Judge Belvin Perry. Ashton resumed his aggressive line of questioning of Dr. Barry Logan, the forensic toxicologist called by the defense this morning to rebutt Dr. Arpad Vass' testing of carpet and air samples from Casey Anthony's car trunk. In short, he testified he couldn't replicate Dr. Vass's results in his lab, questioning Vass's findings. Can you ever do that? I think not.

Without stepping on the eggshells of chemical analysis, of which the State has already established was not Morgan's area of expertise, Ashton got him to admit his lab was not equipped to test air samples in the first place.

Now for the good stuff. A now defiant Cindy Anthony took the stand and testified everyone in her household had access to the desktop computer. She said she researched chloroform on the computer after looking up chlorophyll at first. She was concerned about her two Yorkies, and about a 'hand sanitizer scare' in the Orlando area during the same time period, that being March 2008, three months before Caylee was last seen. This seems to dispute the State's contention that Casey looked up chloroform, a substance the State says was used to kill Caylee.

She dropped another H-bomb by saying the trunk of Casey's car possessed a stain when it was originally purchased in 2000. The state contends the stain came from human decomposition.

An already adversarial relationship got even more so (that was awkward) when prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick, on cross-examination, confronted Cindy about her work hours, implying she could not have been home at the time the Internet searches for chloroform were performed on March 17, 2008. Cindy said it was possible she could have been home, but couldn't remember exactly when she went home on that day. She said there is no record of her work hours because her e-mails, where she tracked her hours, were password protected, and only she had access.Cindy didn't know if the company she worked for backed up those e-mails, adding they would be 'virtually impossible to back up.'

Cindy said she became aware of law enforcement's concerns of chloroform searches in September 2008, but Burdick countered by saying she did not mention anything about chloroform in a deposition taken in 2009, and when questioned by lead detective Uri Melich in September 2008.

Burdick reminded Cindy that she denied in that deposition she searched for neck breaking, shovels, making weapons out of household products, inhalation, and other topics that the State alleges Casey researched. She says she now recalls searching for some of these topics because she changed her medication, but others she could not remember. .

The rest of the day's testimony proved anti-climactic. Next on the stand was Orange County computer forensic examiner Linda Osborne,who testified she examined a deleted history the computer's hard drive, but not much was revealed.

The final witness was Orange County computer forensic examiner, Sgt. Kevin Stenger. Baez questioned Stenger about the data retrieval software used in its investigation of the computer's hard drive. He talked about problems with date and time differences between the two programs used. He also testified that on March 19, 20 and 21 of 2008 a Myspace account was visited 82, 83 and 34 times sequentially. Earlier testimony showed a chloroform Web site was visited 84 times in one day. Data from the program giving erroneous data was not mentioned during the State's case, and the examiner who created the report in question testified not about his report but Stenger's report on the correct software, according to Baez.

This testimony calls into question the accuracy of the software, and potentially casting doubt on the State's case.

Is Cindy Anthony falling on her sword, under threat of perjury, to protect her daughter? Perhaps Cihdy's attorney, Mark Lippman, had some insight when he said yesterday Cindy and George will do anything they could to keep Casey off death row. Does this include lying on the witness stand?

How much was the State's case set back by today's events? In the big picture, I think not much. Kind of hard to explain away Casey's lies, the drowning theory (which has yet to be addressed by the defense), and the odor of decomposition testified to by numerous expert witnesses that was emanating from the trunk of Casey's car. Remember this is a circumstantial case. A strong circumstantial case.

Defense wins the week perhaps. However, I'm not too sure about the ultimate fate of Casey Anthony. I wrote in an earlier blog Casey could walk. She could walk away from death row, but perhaps not out of prison. But in the words of the great Yogi Berra, "It ain't over 'till it's over."

More to come!