Casey Anthony Computer Crime

The Casey Anthony computer crime is a crime that involved the murder of Caylee Marie Anthony. Caylee was born in August 2005 and died in June 2008. The girl was reported to be missing in July, 2008; they lived in Orlando, Florida. The body of Caylee was later found in the wood, near where they lived, in July 2008. This led to the arrest of Casey Anthony who was the mother of Caylee and she was later introduced in court and accused of first-degree murder of her daughter, Caylee. The jury later acquitted her but she was convicted of lying to the law enforcement officers which was a count of misdemeanor (Budenz, 17).

Caylee and Casey lived with George and Cindy Anthony. They were parents to Casey and grandparents to Caylee. Cindy, the grandmother to Caylee, reported to the authorities of the missing of her granddaughter as she had not seen Caylee for more than a month and she claimed that the vehicle of Casey had a smell as though it had been used to carry a dead body. Cindy said further that Casey had produced explanations of her granddaughter that were varied and later finally admitted that she had not seen her for some time.

Casey, later after being asked about her child’s presence, made fabrications of a number of stories. She informed the police detectives that Caylee was kidnapped on the 9^th of June by a particular nanny who turned out to be a fictitious nanny.Further, she claimed that she had made attempts to find Caylee and she had been very frightened to inform the police of the kidnapping of her daughter. Even though the body of Caylee had not been found yet, detectives believed that they should charge Caysey of first-degree murder. They did this and Casey pleaded not guilty. Later, on December 11 ^th, the skeletal remains of Caylee were found near the home of the family wrapped in a blanket and put inside of a trash bag (Alt, 17). An investigative team report which later became a testimony during the trial stated that there was a duct tape that was found in front of her skull and also in front of the mouth in the skull. A forensic medicine expert informed the court that the duct tape was the reason of Caylee’s death. He categorized the death as “death by undetermined means”.

The trial lasted for six weeks, which was from May to July 2011. The prosecution felt they had a strong case and they demanded death penalty for Casey Antony. The state for the prosecution claimed that Casey Antony was responsible for murdering her daughter, Caylee. The prosecution stated Casey used chloroform and later applied a duct tape, as she thought she would gain freedom by doing this. A computer expert testified in court that a person had used a computer in the Casey Anthony’s home a month before Caylee’s death and searched in Google for how to make chloroform. Also, the person using the same computer had sought how to make weapons from household items in order to break a neck. This was a few days before Caylee had gone missing and later found dead. The searches had been found. The computer indicated that they had been deleted but the materials were still in the hard drive which was later retrieved and overwritten to produce the whole internet history.

The state for the defence led by Jose Baez attempted to counter the allegations stated by the prosecution. They claimed that Caylee had accidentally drowned in the swimming pool inside the home on June 16 ^th, 2008. Further, the defense claimed that Casey Anthony had lied to the police and others on the whereabouts of Caylee and all the other issues on the case because of her upbringing which they termed as one that was dysfunctional. The defense claimed that her upbringing included her being sexually abused by her father. The defense made no attempts of producing any evidence on the death of Caylee as they had claimed that she had drowned and neither did they also produce evidence of Casey having been abused by her father when she was a child. The defense made a spirited fight and challenged all the evidence that was produced by the prosecution and referred to the evidence as “fantasy forensics”. Casey did not testify during the trial. About 400 evidence pieces were presented to the court. A lock of hair was identified as similar to Caylee’s. The hair lock was used to show that it had root-banding; this is where the hair root forms a dark band after a person dies. This was consistent with the hair from the dead body, the hair lock was found in Casey Antony’s vehicle. Also, there were compounds in Casey’s vehicle that were associated with the process of a body to be decomposing. There was a huge smell of a decomposition of a human body according to the investigators. The blanket was represented as evidence as well. The girl was wrapped in this blanket which was similar to her beddings at home. The evidence on the computer searches was produced on John Dennis Bradley’s software. This software had been developed to make computer investigations, and the prosecution used it to show that a home computer had been used to search for the word chloroform and the extensive research, over 84 searches, had been conducted concerning the topic. But Bradley discovered later that there were flaws in the software and actually the word chloroform was only searched once.

Later on the 5^th of July, the jury gave a no guilty verdict on of first degree murder, aggravated manslaughter of a child and aggravated a child abuse, but the jury found Casey guilty of four counts of misdemeanor through her provision of false information to the police and other law enforcement officer who were investigating the case (Fanning, 80). Casey having served her jail sentence, she was released on July 17 ^th. The case was widely followed by the American public and the verdict caused a huge public outrage. It was a huge topic for discussion in the media, and the verdict was defended and attacked by legal observers and other sections of the media. Some of the people who commented on the debate claimed that the jury had not understood what reasonable doubt meant. Also, people claimed that the prosecution had a very weak motive of committing the crime, it is difficult for a mother to kill her child just to have a good time and party with her friends. Other people claimed that the prosecution did not argue this case well as they depended on the terrible moral character of the defendant since they did not conclusively explain to the court how Caylee died. The case was referred by the Time magazine as a trial by the social media of the century.