Chief Judge Belvin Perry, shortly after 1:00 pm, on Day 9 of jury selection, abruptly indicated that court will be recessed for the rest of today until Thursday morning at 8:30 am.
“Mr Mason have you had an opportunity to discuss the matter with Ms. Anthony,” Perry asked Cheney Mason, one of Casey’s defense attorneys.
“I have your honor,” Mason replied.
Perry then asked him if he had “anything more to add”, to which Mason replied “no”.
“This court will be in recess until 8:30 tomorrow morning,” Perry said.
Perry’s adjournment caught almost everyone off guard, perhaps except for the defense and prosecution, as just before the lunch break he signaled that opening arguments in the Casey Anthony case will commence next Monday, at the Orange County Courthouse, “if we have a jury.”
It is unclear at this point what the “matter” was that Perry made reference to when he asked Mason if he had discussed it with Casey.
Some court watchers speculate that a plead deal might be in the works.
Throughout the nine days of jury selection, Perry has struggled to seat a 12-person jury, although some 200 potential jurors have been questioned by both the prosecution and defense teams.
Up to this point, some 11 potential jurors have passed both phases of inquiry, but the defense and prosecutions teams have challenged jurors every step of the way. So far, the prosecution has utilized seven of their peremptory strikes, with three more to go. The defense has struck nine potential jurors and has only one peremptory strike left.
Besides, the pace of jury selection has crawled, because of the extreme pre-trial publicity, and there is hardly a potential juror who has not heard something about the case.
Casey Anthony is charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. She had initially claimed her daughter was kidnapped by a baby sitter, but that “story” was later debunked by her defense attorneys.
Court watchers believe that, based on questions posed to potential jurors by the Anthony defense team, it is almost certain that factors such as sexual, verbal, and emotional abuse will loom large as part of the Casey defense strategy. How these dots will be connected to Caylee’s murder, is anyone’s guess.
But, perhaps the defense strategy might be moot, if a plead deal is agreed to by the defense and prosecution.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
