Casey Anthony trial: prosecution, the defence get last chance to argue their point - Chicago Tribune

When the jury hear the arguments of closure Sunday in Casey Anthony murder trial, they will be reminded that submissions of counsel are not evidence - and not the facts Panel must make its verdict.

Yet the trial counsel maintains that closures are essential to their business. They represent the last time lawyers to speak directly to the jury to pass the merits of their case. As its name indicates, closing arguments are focused on what legal defenders should do better: support.

"Perhaps the most important goal of the argument of the close is to provide sympathetic jurors at your side with points that will allow them to convince undecided or incredulous jurors," said a Florida Bar Journal 2003 column entitled "Avoiding the pitfalls in closing Arguments."

"This is an opportunity to explain how the promises you made in the opening have been met, and conversely, how the promise of the other side have been neglected," authors Ronzetti Tucker and Janet l. Humphreys noted in the article.

With counsel for the defence of Casey Anthony José Baez so bold promises in his opening statement, many legal experts and advocates of this case say that Baez will have a difficult time today to reconcile what he argued from the beginning with what his team has shown in recent weeks.

The greatest promises in the minds of most experts include claims that Casey Anthony has suffered sexual abuse by his father, George; only his daughter, Caylee, died in an accidental drowning; and that his father knew about drowning and helped dispose of the body.

"No there was absolutely no evidence to support", said the Miami-based criminal defense attorney and former Prosecutor Daniel Lurvey. "I cannot my head around what thought [Baez]." His closing argument got to be what it would have been from the beginning: they [the State] have not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt. »

Unnecessary burden

The problem with Baez opening is that it has created a competing theory for how Caylee is dead - and an unnecessary burden for the defence. In fact, he has insisted that it was an accident. Jurors now are "Comparing theories," Lurvey said, instead of just assessment hypothesis of the prosecution.

This tactic could have helped the defence had made a convincing argument on the death of Caylee, but each legal expert familiar with this trial, contacted for this story and others, accepted the defence did not a credible alternative theory.

Lurvey and others suggest that closing arguments, Baez must abandon claims at the beginning.

"Flawed,"Lurvey said,"with hindsight, Yes, he has to ignore it."

Casey Anthony, 25, is charged with first degree murder in the death of Marie of Caylee daughter 2 years in 2008. If the alleged convicted, she faces a possible death sentence. If issues would be higher for lawyers of these closing arguments.

For the prosecution, experts expect to see veteran Deputy Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick give another clinical presentation which focuses less on Caylee and more about his mother, the accused. It will be designed to help jurors reconstruct large circumstantial evidence in the case.

They say that the prosecution can play dramatic 911 calls from July 15, 2008, when Cindy Anthony discovered her granddaughter had been absent for a month and thought that she had been removed.

"You always want to send to the Board in the deliberations with a few image in their minds," said Bob Jarvis, Professor of law at Nova Southeastern University. "I think that it's going to be extensively examined why this circumstantial evidence in Casey and only Casey points." And why it could not be all these other theories which have spun out.

Some experts recognize that the defence will claim that the State did not meet its burden of proof, then that he was driving home to the point that the prosecution knows yet exactly how Caylee is dead.

Jarvis said he expected Baez suggests it is the story of a "" dysfunctional family terribly, an accident and a camouflage... not a murder. ""

"The defence has nothing to do." The defence is always the presumption of innocence, "said Jarvis. "The problem of defence [Casey Anthony] is that José excessive Baez in his opening statement." The jury sits there saying, ' is that really all you have? Why did you tell us all these things? » "