This originally aired on wftv.com
Now that a date has been set for Casey Anthony’s first-degree murder trial, could she still face the death penalty?
A decision has not yet been made, but she still could face the death penalty. The decision won’t be made until all the evidence is back and it isn’t yet.
The State Attorney’s decision not to seek the death penalty against Casey Anthony in her daughter Caylee’s murder was made the week before Caylee’s remains were found near her house with the duct tape still stretched across her mouth and with a heart sticker that had apparently been stuck over the duct tape.
Now that Caylee’s been found, everything is different.
“We do not know what all the evidence is and what the evidence absolutely means. There’s a mountain of forensic evidence that has not been disclosed yet,” WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said.
On the surface, many of Florida’s death penalty legal arguments could apply. The murder could be cruel and atrocious, cold, calculated and premeditated. It may have happened while Caylee was being abused. Also, Caylee is younger than 12 and she was particularly vulnerable because she was allegedly murdered by a person she trusted.
But Sheaffer, who is a former prosecutor, says this is a circumstantial case, so the evidence linking Casey to Caylee’s murder must be very strong for the State Attorney to seek death even if the legal arguments for the death penalty, called aggravators, outweigh the arguments against it, called mitigators.
Sheaffer says prosecutors always consult with the State Attorney General’s Office before seeking a death sentence, because the Attorney General has to defend it before the Florida Supreme Court.
“It’s a much harsher standard that the court applies in looking at the evidence as to whether the death penalty should be upheld,” Sheaffer said.
There is no deadline for prosecutors to decide. What usually happens is, once they make the decision, they inform the defense right away so they can begin to prepare.
