Sonne
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Thank you for the HLN programming information. At least CNN often provides transcripts of Issues. I strongly believe that Prosecution has already transferred discovery to Defense. Lately the guest lawyers, the consultants on many HLN shows, have been highly critical of their fellow ABA members.
Here's the part of the transcript pertinent to our discussion:
...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Well, it sounds like a good idea. Now, since little Caylee`s remains were found, one of the key forensic questions has been were Casey`s fingerprints on that duct tape that bound Caylee`s head? In fact, it was over the child`s mouth, and it had a heart sticker on it. Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla said this on "NANCY GRACE" last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST, "NANCY GRACE": Leonard, what do you know, if anything, about sources reporting fingerprints were lifted off the duct tape?
PADILLA: I heard this morning that there were fingerprints and that the prints are Casey`s.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right. Wendy Murphy, I have with me right now some duct tape. Let`s see. We`ve got it right here.
It was so hard, first of all, to get the duct tape off, to peel it off. This was after a couple of minutes. But would it come down to whether it`s on the outside -- if it`s on the outside, there could be an argument, "Well, this was taken from the home by the mysterious Zanny with the nanny or whatever." And along with all the other things, the bedding and yada yada. And that Casey had touched it previously.
But if it were on the inside, OK, especially if it was way on the inside, wouldn`t it be hard to argue that that was something that was put there previously?
WENDY MURPHY, LAW PROFESSOR: Yes, but in this case, the defense has made crazier arguments. It`s a harder argument to make. But, you know, the chance that a jury with a brain would ever believe that her fingerprint just happened to be on the inside of the super sticky part of the tape and it was because she touched it when she was doing lawn work months earlier and it, oops, just happened to also be the same piece of tape that landed around the face of her dead child. Oh, reasonable doubt, I don`t think so.
Look, I`m not shocked to find out that her fingerprint is on the tape. The child`s decomposed body parts were in her trunk.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Oh, yes. It obviously would be the coupe de gras to all the other forensic evidence that has been gathered against her that the prosecutors plan to present when this case goes to trial, whenever that might be. And you just hit on one of them, the smell of death in the car, the hair showing signs of decomposition that reportedly matched the hair taken from the skull. The list is long.
But let me ask you this question, Drew Findling. This is what Leonard Padilla is saying. Now, we know that 300-plus pages of discovery were released just a couple weeks ago. It wasn`t in there. The remains were found in mid-December.
Wouldn`t this have gone through the system and been released to the defense`s discovery and then, by extension, given to the public, this information, at this point, or not?
DREW FINDLING, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Thank you for that question, Jane, because that is the central issue here. You know, this defense team has been fighting for discovery, fighting for the opportunity to conduct scientific testing. The law is very, very specific and strict about that.
If this took place, and if these results are in, and somehow this profiteering bounty hunter has access to that information before the defense, who hasn`t even conducted their own test, you could be assured that the court is going to come in, and they are going to be sanctions flying out of that judge`s chambers like crazy.
MURPHY: This just drives me crazy, that Drew would say, "The defense is going to have lots to say about this." It`s terribly unfair that the truth about the fingerprints might come out when the defense, from one shill to another, from Cindy on every damn talk show she could get on, to make us go chasing these fake Caylee sightings. So the defense can lie with impunity.
FINDLING: Cindy is not a defense attorney.
MURPHY: I don`t care.
FINDLING: And Cindy is a mother without constitutional rights.
MURPHY: The defense has filled the public with nonsense.
FINDLING: Casey has constitutional rights, and her rights are evoked through her attorney.
MURPHY: The defense has no constitutional rights. Nonsense in the court of public opinion. And then forget about it when the truth comes out.
FINDLING: We don`t care about the court of public opinion.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Calm down, everybody.
FINDLING: We don`t care about the court of public opinion. We care about...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Let me jump in with a question. And you can just ask yes or no -- answer yes or no. Wendy, if in fact it is true that Casey Anthony`s fingerprints are on the duct tape, is it game, set, match for the prosecution?
MURPHY: No, because the defense is entitled to come up with an explanation that they think is innocent. I don`t think it will be a plausible one, but they`re entitled to make that...
VELEZ-MITCHELL: But Drew, I don`t understand how they could come up with an innocent explanation. You could argue that the mystery nanny, which prosecutors say doesn`t exist, took the bedding and took things, the dolls, all the other stuff that was found, like the toy horse, because that`s what a nanny would have.
But duct tape? I mean, a nanny doesn`t walk around with duct tape from the Anthony home.
FINDLING: Well, Jane, as you know better than any of us, from your coverage of O.J. Simpson, there`s a thing called residual doubt. And when you have people make drastic mistakes, like if this were -- is her fingerprints, leaking it to this bounty hunter before the defense team, that`s the kind of thing that kills investigations and kills prosecutions.
...
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0902/12/ijvm.01.html