Will She or Won’t She?

Casey Anthony glared out of the corners of her eyes while  taking copious notes during her father’s emotional testimony yesterday, as the murder trial wore on.

Why would Ms. Anthony have the need for such detailed notes? I can think of three possibilities. One is that she wants to look busy and engaged for the jury. I doubt this is the case; otherwise, she would have been doing it throughout the trial. Another is that she wants to have a stronger voice in managing her defense. Perhaps so, as signs of friction between her and lead counsel Jose Baez seem to exist. The third, and most intriguing possibility is that she is preparing to testify to rebut her father’s testimony. This would be a powerful, albeit desperate, ploy by the defense that stands more chances of backfiring in their faces than anything else. Yet nobody has ruled it out.

Even if Ms. Anthony could make some points during a direct examination, she could be torn to shreds with the cross-examination talents of the prosecution team. It would be a great, big, humongous mistake for her to testify in her own defense. She doesn’t have to — the U.S. Constitution protects her right not to — and she shouldn’t. Nevertheless, the defense has shown regular flashes of self damaging behavior, to the incredulity of the assembled media circus performers at times, and it would not surprise me if they made this blunder.

If she does, she’ll be using what the monotonously droning, repetitious WFTV legal analyst, Bill Shaeffer, called “her soft voice.” (Shaeffer is annoying me, as you can tell. Not only is he of the “why use a sentence when a paragraph will do” ilk, but also his neologisms are vastly inferior to mine. “Hyperbolizing” just ain’t no word, Bill!)

Did George’s emotionality win points for the defense or the prosecution? I’ll be mealy mouthed and ambiguous in responding to that question. Baez probably cast some doubts upon Anthony’s credibility with his witheringly sleazy direct examination. However, George came across as sincere, a real person compared to Baez’s plasticity. I think that the end result will be a few points for the prosecution, which is why the defense might just be desperate enough at this juncture to recommend to Casey that she testify.

Other witnesses yesterday included meter reader Roy Kronk’s estranged son, who testified that Kronk had called him saying that he was going to be rich and that he should watch his dad, whom he hadn’t seen since he was eight years old, on TV. In the previous day’s testimony, Kronk had said that the phone call in question never occurred. I still believe Kronk. Nevertheless, this testimony could have planted some doubt in the jurors’ minds about him. The final witness of the day was a flaky grief expert from FSU. Her rambling answers confounded counsel on both sides, as they tried to reel her in, while she probably put half the jury to sleep. In the end, her testimony meant little, as she established only that grief can take on many different forms that differ from person to person. If I were awarding points, I’d probably give this one to the defense by a slim margin.

(If I were a fly on the wall listening to a conversation between the loquacious grief expert and the bombastically repetitive WFTV legal analyst, I would be sending out for a can of Raid.)

As adjournment neared, Judge Perry once again asked Baez when he thought he would be wrapping up the defense’s case. Baez responded that he saw no reason why the defense could not rest its case Thursday (today). Hallelujah! Given that the prosecution has scheduled some rebuttal witnesses, Perry told everyone not to plan any outside activities for Sunday or Monday (Independence Day), because although he could foresee handing the case over to the jury on Saturday, if anything went wrong with that schedule, he wanted to give the jury the option of working straight through the weekend.

There is still an open issue regarding the mistrial motion filed by Ann Finnell regarding the case in South Florida for which a Federal judge decided that Florida’s death penalty law is unconstitutional. If the judge grants the motion, we’ll have to do this whole damn thing all over again. With well over $300,000 having been spent thus far by the State of Florida, do you really think that Judge Perry is going to accept this motion?

Today, as the defense presumably will wrap up its case, there is a possibility of some Fourth of July fireworks if the mysterious Krystal Holloway, also known as River Cruz, testifies. The only reason for her to testify would be in essense to call George Anthony a liar and state that they did indeed have a sexual relationship as well as to represent that George had knowledge of the nature and time of the death of his grand-daughter. This would impugn George before the jury and possibly introduce some reasonable doubt. They probably have been sympathetic to George up to this point. I doubt that a wacko who renames herself River Cruz will have the needed credibility to change anything.

The big question looms, though. Will she or won’t she? We’ll find out today.