Maybe so, but let's not validate the jury's decision by saying the state screwed up. I saw the interviews with the jury foreman and Jennifer Ford, and the things that came out of those two's mouth were mind boggling in their stupidity.
I disagree, and I'm pretty shocked by your statement about the jury.
The jury had no choice. The FBI crime lab had put everything about Casey under the microscope and the evidence did not connect Casey Anthony to the crime. There were fibers, there was DNA, none of it from Casey. None of the fiber, DNA, hair, nothing at the scene was from Casey. The soil in Casey's trunk was not a match to the scene. The residues and soils on Casey's clothing and shoes were not a match to the scene.
And all the cornerstones of the state's case were refuted by testimony. The state maintained that decomposition had begun in Casey's car trunk on June 16 or thereabouts, yet all the witnesses testified that there was no smell from June 16 to June 30. There was the partial DNA on the duct tape on Caylee's skull that was from SOMEONE ELSE. (One of the lab workers and the neighbor BB were not excluded, and the jury must have wondered why the state didn't compare it to anyone else in the case. Likewise with the Q107 hair, not from Casey or Caylee, or from the crime scene investigators, and state lost interest and did not compare it to others.) The jury must have been wondering about the fibers. Obviously there wasn't any match to Casey or her car or home or the state would have mentioned it. (We knew as much from discovery.)
The state maintained the murder date must have been June 16, and no witnesses had seen Caylee after that date, yet the jury saw from testimony that Casey wasn't alone on that day....the jury had to wonder why only Casey's clothes and shoes were all sent to the FBI, why no fiber studies elsewhere etc.LOL. The state claimed right up til closing argument that only Casey had access to the items found with Caylee but that obviously was not true. (Even if the jury didn't know about the Winnie blanket being in photos at the Glenwood townhome earlier in 2008 for example, they did know from testimony that Casey wasn't the only person who had been at the A home. They may have known about the Globe photos showing the T-shirt at the townhome, I don't remember if this was spelled out for them. They did hear Cindy say she hadn't seen the shorts for months, and the Winnie blanket since May.
And, the state maintained it was human adipocere on the napkins with the pizza box in the trash, (the focus of the maggots), yet, the jury saw that the state never investigated the source of the napkins, the apartment, which didn't make much sense. Not to mention that the state didn't send the napkins to the FBI to determine if the substance was in fact adipocere. LOL.
And, the state maintained that Casey used chloroform on Caylee, yet the jury saw that it was Casey's ex-boyfriend who had a joke about chloroform on his myspace....not Casey. No evidence was presented that Casey had ever obtained or made or had chloroform, or that there was ever chloroform in the A home. And, the state showed no interest in the bottle/syringe with traces of chloroform which were found in the Disney bag 6 inches from Caylee's skull (because of the fact the bottle/syringe also had traces of testosterone? or because the Q107 hair was from someone else and might have been with these items?) The state just dropped this evidence.
The "mountain of evidence" against Casey that the state kept claiming they had just didn't exist. It wasn't there. There wasn't even any evidence of human adipocere in the car trunk from the FBI, for example. There was only the maggot evidence inside the trash bag on the napkins. But the state didn't have the contents of the maggots analyzed by the FBI.
Can you imagine how disappointed the jurors must have been, they may have thought during the state's opening argument that they would be able to convict Caylee's killer. But then the evidence simply wasn't there to indicate that
Casey was the killer. There was only a mountain of suspicion due to Casey's failure to report and her strange stories, but no evidence connecting Casey to the crime (or ruling out others). Don't blame the jury! Who could pronounce a person guilty when someone else's DNA was on the duct tape on the skull and there wasn't a whit of evidence connecting the defendant to the crime? LOL Who could do that?