After eleven hours of deliberation, the jury composed of seven women and five men concluded that Casey Anthony did not murder her daughter, Caylee, by rendering her unconscious with chloroform, covering her mouth with duct tape to suffocate her, and then dumping her deceased body in the woods as prosecutors claimed. The two-year-old Caylee went missing on June 16, 2008. Casey then partied for the next month before being forced by her mother to report her child's disappearance. Casey cried as the jury read her convictions and announced that she was found guilty only of providing false information to law enforcement officers (Alvarez). .
To the angst of many of Americans who followed the case closely, the prosecution's case did not prove to be airtight, as highlighted by the jury's verdict. Forensic evidence did not produce definite answers, and no witnesses ever stepped forth to claim Casey's part in the murder. No trace of DNA or solid signs of chloroform or decompositions inside the trunk of Casey's car were produced by the prosecutors, who claimed that Caylee's body was stashed in the trunk. Furthermore, Caylee's exact cause of death could not be determined because her body was too badly decomposed when it was found (Alvarez).
Jose Baez, Casey's lawyer, used the prosecutor's spotty evidence to put reasonable doubt in the juror's heads. "They throw enough against the wall and see what sticks," Baez told the jury, "right down to the cause of death" (Alvarez).
Baez approached the jury with a different story. The defense argued that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool, and her panicked grandfather, George Anthony, helped Casey to conceal the death. Furthermore, they argued that Casey had been sexually abused by her father and had used lies her entire life to dull the pain (Alvarez).
Jeff Ashton, one of the prosecutor's questioned why George Anthony, a former homicide detective, would conceal Caylee's accidental drowning, wrap her dead face with duct tape and dump the body instead of calling 911 (Alvarez).
