Trials

Dec. 5, 2011

by Claudette Walker & Matrix Filia

Permission granted for use of the following experts from the book to Crime Magazine by Abacus Books, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 by Abacus Books, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

With Postscript  by Laura Schultz

Excerpt from Chapter 1

WHY?

No other single word is less relevant or more relevant in the death of Caylee Anthony. A lovely child, she was allowed only 34 months to dance on this earth.

Caylee Anthony, not quite three years old, had been missing for 31 days before a police report was filed. That, we believe, is what brought worldwide media attention to this case. Since that day, the media has brought every detail they could find to the attention of the public, including the arrest of the child’s mother, who will be tried for first-degree murder over the next month.

The media has provided us with everything from pictures of the beautiful child to pictures of the mother out dancing during the 31 days she did not report her child missing. We have heard the 911 calls and seen thousands of pages of discovery documents filed in the court by the prosecution and defense for the upcoming criminal case. All which are available online in a click, from the media. TV coverage from the Discovery Channel, 48 Hours, Geraldo Rivera, True TV, and Nancy Grace has played week after week during the three years the criminal charges have been pending. Some of that coverage has been because of the peculiarities of the case, some of it because the defendant is a pretty young white woman, and some of it because of Florida’s position among the top five states in both death row population and the imposition of executions.

The mother, Casey Anthony, has been tried in the media and presumed guilty by most who have heard the massive media coverage. Now the questions are what of this information will be admissible and what other evidence yet unknown will make the courtroom? Who will judge her on that evidence and what will the result be under the judicial system of the United States of America? 

Lawyers have debated this case on national TV. The defense team’s lawyers have granted interviews for pretrial publicly. To us, that is simply stunning – their job is not to aggrandize themselves but to defend their client, and most of the media interviews seem to be the former and not the latter. Casey has a legal dream team that has been paid in part by her parents, in part by her sale of photos of her child, in part by taxpayers, and in part pro bono (without pay) except for the massive media advertising the lawyers are receiving for free. And the people of the State of Florida are paying for all other costs: investigators, costs of prosecution, discovery documents, hearings, judges, bailiffs, and so forth. The list is unending, and the dollars spent are said to be in the millions.

Nov. 14, 2011

Marie Besnard

In France, in the 17^th Century, alchemists became wealthy grinding arsenic rock into a colorless and odorless powder and selling the powder to their countrymen who wanted to do away with a wealthy old parent, grandparent, uncle or aunt. There was even an “epidemic” of arsenic poisonings in the year 1670 so that the substance became known as the “succession powder.” Three centuries later, kind and homely Marie Besnard amazed her female friends when she described arsenic as an excellent substitute for divorce. They thought she was joking. But was she? 

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

Illness and death were no strangers to Marie Antigny, yet, cradling Auguste, her dead husband, in her arms she sobbed uncontrollably.

Marie was 31 years old and she and Auguste, who was two years her senior, had been married for seven years. The two were first cousins – her mother was his father’s sister – and Marie had fancied Auguste since she was 17 years old, but it was not until she was 18 that her parents allowed the two to step out together, and another six years had to pass before they’d given their consent for the two to walk down the aisle. By then Marie was 24 and Auguste 26, and what doctors had described previously as his weak constitution had been diagnosed as tuberculosis. It was 1920 and tuberculosis was an incurable, even untreatable illness, but in Marie’s own words, “We were in love!”

Marie was born Marie Josephine Philippine Davaillaud in the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé, 200 miles south-west of Paris, in the Vienne department close to the beautiful Loire valley.  Her parents, well-to-do farmers, adored her because before she arrived, they lost two infant sons to long illnesses. Her father Pierre Eugène used to cuddle her when he came in from working his fields, and her mother Marie-Louise never failed to tell her that she loved her “for three,” including the girl’s two dead brothers in her affection.

Nov. 7, 2011

Casey Anthony 

Not since O.J. Simpson’s murder trial in 1995 has national media attention focused so intently on one case, and not since Simpson’s acquittal has the public been more shocked by the verdict that exonerated Casey Anthony of any responsibility in the death of her toddler daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony.   

by Denise Noe

The case of Casey Anthony, a young mother accused of murdering her small child, triggered a ravenous media feeding frenzy not seen since the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial in 1995. The parallel was magnified when public outcry at the Casey Anthony verdict echoed the outrage over the Simpson verdict.

A Time magazine article proclaimed the case “the first murder trial of the social-media age.” It noted that hundreds of people began showing up each day as early as 2 a.m. to land one of the 50 courtroom seats reserved for the public at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando. 

Millions of people followed the trial every day on live-stream video feeds provided by TruTv and HLN. Both CNN and NBC built two-story structures in a lot across from the courthouse to catch every possible detail of the trial and transmit it to eager viewers. Hundreds of media vehicles often surrounded the Orlando courthouse.  Prominent TV personalities such as Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren covered the trial but no one was more incessant in publicizing this case than Nancy Grace. A former prosecutor and author of three best-selling books, she is known as an outspoken advocate for victims’ rights. Her Headline News’ (HLN) program, called Nancy Grace, garners high ratings. The program focused incessantly on the Casey Anthony trial with its hostess making no secret of her belief that the accused was guilty.

July 18, 2011

An excerpt from Peter Manso’s recently published book Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen.

by Peter Manso

May 16, 2011

Kathleen Marshall

Andrew Fitzherbert was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on the basis of DNA evidence alone.  His case shows that it is often not the technology or the science but the supervising biologist’s subjective interpretation of the results that is the crucial factor in assessing whether a suspect sample and a crime-scene sample “match.”

 by Mary Garden

 On Friday, February 27, 1998, between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., veterinarian Kathleen Marshall (subsequently dubbed the “Catwoman”) was murdered in the downstairs clinic of her home in Wilston, on Brisbane’s northside. Her decomposing body with 52 shallow stab wounds was not discovered until Sunday afternoon when two directors of the Cat Protection Society of Queensland (CPSQ), of which Marshall was president, visited her home. Sixteen cats and three dogs, unfed and distressed, were upstairs.

The police investigation initially focused on members of the CPSQ where power struggles and infighting had been a common occurrence, intensifying during the six months before 52-year-old Marshall’s death. In April, however, Ken Cox, a forensic biologist from the John Tonge Center, announced that he had found male blood in the crime-scene samples. Investigators decided to eliminate every male person involved in the deceased’s life, beginning with male members of the CPSQ and any male connected to a female member.

Sept. 27, 2010 Updated Dec. 2, 2011

Gurparkash Singh Khalsa

The author’s account of her role as jury foreperson at a 2010 murder trial in Stockton, California.

by Joan Bannan

Ajmer Singh Hothi, a 23-year-old trucker from Jalandhar, India was shot and killed in the cab of his parked big rig in Stockton, California on March 27, 2007. The weapon that killed him was a 9mm handgun that discharged nine bullets into the cab – six of those into Ajmer’s body. The one that entered his heart killed him instantly. He had been in the United States for 10 years, primarily residing with his parents. His mother and sister, who were in great fear for his life, had not been able to reach him for a couple of hours so they drove to the yard where he parked his truck. They found his lifeless body and called 911.

Four days after the murder, the San Joaquin Sherriff’s Department arrested Gurparkash Singh Khalsa, the father of Ajmer’s former girlfriend, Kirin Pannu. Several months later, the evidence, all circumstantial, was sent to a grand jury. After the four-day grand jury session, Khalsa was indicted on the charge of first-degree murder.

Fifty-eight year-old Khalsa, a prominent member of the local Sikh community and owner of a local trucking firm, avoided trial for three years by changing attorneys. In March 2010, a jury was selected for Khalsa’s murder trial.  I would become Juror No. 7.