Lawyers for Michael Jackson's doctor want jury sequestered

Arguing that the Casey Anthony trial in Florida exposed a dangerous new order in TV coverage of high-profile cases, lawyers for Michael Jackson's doctor have demanded a sequestered jury for his upcoming trial.

In court papers filed Thursday, the attorneys for Dr. Conrad Murray wrote that bombastic, opinionated

commentary from cable personalities like Nancy Grace "demonstrated the danger that is created to a fair trial when basic information is managed for the purpose of entertainment and television ratings."

The judge for Murray's manslaughter trial, which is set for next month, has said previously that he does not believe around-the-clock isolation of jurors is necessary.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor has also said the cash-strapped court system cannot afford the expense of hotel accommodations for the jury.

But in their filing, defense lawyers urged him to reconsider, writing that in the Anthony case, in which sequestered jurors delivered a verdict at odds with much of the television analysis, underscored the need for the panelists to be kept away from media coverage. Anthony was found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

"Would [the Anthony jurors] have been so sure of the facts if the 'experts' had informed them on a nightly basis that they were wrong?" defense lawyers Nareg Gourjian and Edward Chernoff wrote.

Murray is accused of causing Jackson's 2009 death from an overdose of surgical anesthetic. He maintains that Jackson administered the fatal dose himself.

If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Murray faces a maximum of four years in prison.

In their filing, Murray's lawyers predicted that viewership of the trial on the Internet and television would exceed that for Anthony's trial, given Jackson's global fame.

"There is reasonable expectation that Dr. Murray's trial will be the most publicized trial in history," they wrote.

The attorneys noted that in an aborted attempt at jury selection this spring, a process scuttled by unrelated delays, only one potential panelist said she had never heard of the case.

"And she could not speak English," they added in a footnote.

Representatives for Grace did not return a message seeking comment, and her network, HLN, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment. A hearing is set for Aug. 25.

Attorney Cheney Mason Says He Always Believed Casey Anthony

Controversial defense lawyer Cheney Mason said he always believed in Casey Anthony’s story ever since he met her.
Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday, the attorney told Savannah Guthrie, “I do believe her story. I

believed it from the first time I met her which was several weeks before I was formally on the team. I went to her home, her room where all the photographs are, and talked with her.
“I have never for one minute had any doubt at all. She did not kill her child. Period.”
While Mason and his team of defense lawyers, including lead attorney Jose Baez who has notably garnered much fame after the trial, buy Casey’s story, little is known about what really happened to 2-year-old Caylee, whose remains were found in December 2008, nearly six months after she was last seen.
However, as much as the defense has tried to portray their defendant’s innocence, the prosecution and the public have remain unconvinced. Though she was found not guilty of first-degree murder, manslaughter, and child abuse, polls indicate that many still believe Casey Anthony had something to do with her daughter’s death.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors hoped to present evidence to the jury that showed that Casey did in fact murder Caylee. They accused her of suffocating the 2-year-old with chloroform, placing duct tape over her mouth, putting her deceased body in the trunk of her car, and dumping the body in the nearby woods.
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But the high levels of chloroform in the trunk of Casey’s car, the smell of “human decomposition,” and the unaffected behavior of Casey following the death of her daughter were not enough evidence for the jury, or at least beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even all of the lies that the defendant told her family and her friends after her daughter went missing left jurors still grappling for more solid evidence.
During the brief interview, Guthrie asked Mason, “If this trial proved anything beyond a reasonable doubt it’s that she is an accomplished liar. You’re a veteran defense attorney, why do you think she’s suddenly telling the truth?”
“Well I don’t know that it’s sudden,” he responded. “I don’t think her story, her position has changed from the very beginning. People’s awareness of her is certainly greater than it used to be.”
Mason continued to defend his client and stated that though there was no question she told a lot of stories to a lot of people, it was from a protective mechanism and not out of guilt of murder.
He also clarified why the defense team had asked the judge to determine whether Casey was competent to stand trial towards the end of the trial.
“She’s under a lot of pressure. Not only [was] she on trial for her life, but when she [was] not in the trial then she [was] back in lockdown. And just imagine 23 hours a day for 3 years, most people would be drooling. She’s tough, but we needed to find out if she was okay.”
“She’s not mentally ill now.”
Asked if the defense’s accusation of molestation by George Anthony was a “brilliant defense strategy or a dirty trick,” the attorney revealed that it was not the latter.
“The allegation wasn’t new in trial. It had been made in the public eye from letters written in the jail sometime before that. Sometimes evidence or testimony in trial doesn’t turn out to be what you expected it to be.”
And in other unexpected turns, Casey had also decided at the last minute to not testify during the trial. Mason said that it wasn’t because she was afraid to take the stand, however. She had just chosen not to, and was the only person who would ever know why.
Perhaps it was for the best, however, since throughout the trial much of the public had criticized Casey’s demeanor and expressions, which were cold one second and crying the next. Many felt she was putting on an act.
Though nobody coached her on her mannerisms before the court, Mason did say that he and his lawyers did try to keep her emotions down, which he explained was “pretty hard to do when family [testified] against her and people [were] calling for [her] blood like a lynch mob.”
Prosecutors tried to use testimony from her mother and father against her in court, with both Cindy and George denying the defense’s claims that they were involved in the death of their granddaughter. Casey’s parents also purportedly told the family lawyer that they did not believe in her innocence.
With obvious strains in their family, Mason told Guthrie that Casey’s relationship with Cindy and George is “pretty well burned,” though he thought that his client may one day have a relationship with her brother.
Speculation on where Casey will go after her release from prison on July 17 – less than a week away – is buzzing, with some saying that she will flee the country because of the negative reaction from the public. In a recent Gallup poll, about two-thirds of Americans believed Casey is still guilty of murder.
She, as well as Mason and her parents, have already received death threats following the jury’s not guilty verdict.
But Mason believes she won’t leave the country. “She just needs to have some time, counseling, and be reintroduced to society,” he revealed. “She’s been in lockdown for 23 hours a day, for 3 years.”

Casey Anthony will find final justice(Photo-Video)

Being retired, I was able to watch or listen to every minute of Casey Anthony’s trial.
Many people have been convicted via circumstantial evidence, a classic case being the Delaware attorney Thomas Capano, convicted in 1996 for murdering his lover Anne Marie Fahey. Her body was never found.

It’s my opinion that had they never found Caylee Anthony’s body, it would have been much easier to convict her mother based on her actions during those 31 days (in which she failed to report Caylee missing) and how she lied to the authorities. What disturbs me most is that the jury never asked to review any of the evidence and didn’t ask any questions after they deliberated.
Do I believe she’s guilty? I believe she acted suspiciously. I believe she acted like someone who did something wrong and didn’t want anyone else to know about it. I believe she is concerned about Casey Anthony and Casey Anthony only. I believe that everyone in that house knows more than they admit.
Again, do I believe she’s guilty? I want to believe that I would have voted to convict her. I want to believe that I would have sat there and not been swayed by any of the other jurors. I want to believe that the facts presented would have convinced me that she was guilty.
What I don’t believe is that Casey Anthony is “innocent.” She was found “not guilty” by the preponderance of evidence.
Do I believe that Casey Anthony killed her daughter? I believe that Casey Anthony was involved in the death of her daughter. Could I have convicted her based on the State of Florida’s presentation? I hope so.
I believe she is guilty of killing her daughter, but I also believe it doesn’t matter what I, the jury, or anyone else on Earth believes. I believe that it doesn’t matter what we decide is Casey Anthony’s fate. Her final fate and the ultimate decision will be left up to the higher power. What that fate is, no one knows. One day, we will all find out. The right verdict will be made.

Anthony jurors shattered (Photo-Gallery)

A juror in the Casey Anthony trial has broken her silence and said the jury was emotionally shattered by its own verdict of not guilty.
The juror, Jennifer Ford, 32, a nursing student, said that jurors were "sick to their stomachs" after acquitting Anthony of murdering her two-year-old daughter, Caylee, ABC News reported.
"I did not say she was innocent," said Ford, who was juror No.3.

"I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be.
"I'm still confused," she added. "I have no idea what happened to that child."
After issuing the verdict, jurors felt so overwhelmed that they could not speak to reporters, Ms Ford said.
"We were crying, and not just the women," she added. "It was emotional, and we weren't ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial."
Ms Ford described the other six women and five men on the panel as a "great bunch of people".
The jurors, from Pinellas County, spent nearly six weeks living out their own brand of isolation in a hotel in Orlando, in Orange County.

Publicity in the city had been so pervasive that the judge felt compelled to import a jury from another county. Jurors' rooms were watched by guards.
But, Ms Ford said: "There was high morale," adding: "We all joked. We are like a big group of cousins."
The interview with Ms Ford came as the television networks jousted on Wednesday for interviews with jurors and lawyers in the case, emphasising that they would not pay for the interviews.

Networks are known to license photos and videos to woo guests to their shows, a practice that some say amounts to de facto payments for interviews. Sometimes the licensing deals are lined up through brokers or other representatives.
In an interview at her home Wednesday night, Lynn Ford, Jennifer Ford's mother, said ABC News did not pay her daughter but treated her and four others to a trip to Disney World. ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co.

Earlier on Wednesday, a representative of another juror contacted each of the broadcast news networks, offering an interview contingent on a mid-five-figure fee.
The networks reported being approached by Rick French, a publicist from North Carolina. One network executive said the fee being asked was $US50,000. French did not return phone calls on Wednesday afternoon.

NBC's Today show and ABC's The View each interviewed Jeff Ashton, the 30-year veteran prosecutor in the case.
He said on The View that he was "shocked" by the not-guilty verdict because jury deliberations were so swift and seamless.
"I think ultimately it came down to the evidence," he said. "I think ultimately it came down to cause of death."
Anthony, 25, who was also found not guilty of aggravated manslaughter and felony child abuse, will be sentenced on Thursday morning US time for lesser crimes.
The jury found her guilty of four counts of lying to police investigators, which carries a maximum of a one-year prison sentence for each count.
But because Anthony has served more than 2 1/2 years in jail, mostly in isolation, she will most likely be sentenced to time served by Judge Belvin Perry jnr and walk free from the Orlando courthouse.
Where Anthony will go next and whether she will ultimately publish her own account are the next big questions occupying those who had closely watched the three-year case.
Prosecutors argued that Anthony killed her child to be free of the obligations of motherhood, preferring instead a carefree life of boyfriends and bars.
They said she dosed Caylee with chloroform, suffocated her with duct tape and dumped her body in the woods.
But medical examiners could never determine how and when Caylee died because her remains were nothing but bones when she was found.
Prosecutors also had no solid physical evidence or witnesses tying Anthony to the crime.
Instead, they portrayed Anthony as a liar - a point her lawyer, Jose Baez, conceded - and a callous mother who partied after Caylee's disappearance.

Casey Anthony trial: Judge fed up with bickering attorneys(Video)

The constant courtroom bickering between defense attorney José Baez and prosecutor Jeff Ashton may have had its final showdown Sunday.
The tension between the two opposing attorneys in the Casey Anthony murder case has been obvious since

the start and has led to at least one public courtroom apology to Ashton from Baez.
Outside the presence of the jury Sunday, Baez complained to Chief Judge Belvin Perry about Ashton's facial expressions during the defense attorney's closing argument.
Then, later in the day, during a heated portion of his closing argument, Baez referred to Ashton as that "laughing guy."
Ashton immediately objected — in a rare move for closings, Perry called a sidebar and then sent the jury out. There was concern among all the parties that the judge would find them in contempt or level some other sanction.
Perry called a recess and watched video from the courtroom — footage the lawyers also reviewed. Ashton, who also reviewed the tape, told the judge he appeared to be smiling behind his hand and apologized.
Baez asked that Ashton not be held in contempt but said the prosecutor's behavior needed to stop. Baez also apologized for his remark.
Perry said he accepted their apologies — for now.
 

Anthony Defense: Prosecution Evidence a Fantasy
"If it happens again, the remedy will be exclusion of that attorney from further representation at these proceedings," Perry said. "Enough is enough."
Perry last week issued an order outlining what prosecutors and defense attorneys cannot say during closing arguments, which began Sunday and will continue today.
Among his edicts: "Counsel shall avoid using derogatory terms or characterizations when referring to Defendant, a witness, or opposing counsel and shall not make any disparaging comments about counsel's occupation or performance in court."

Casey Anthony Trial Draws to a Close: What Will the Jury Decide?

After more than 33 days of testimony and 400 pieces of evidence, the Casey Anthony trial is finally coming to a close. On Sunday, closing arguments will begin and the lawyers will have their last chance to try to persuade the jury before they deliberate.
With each side's case deficient in definitive evidence, Florida A&M; professor Karin Moore said jurors might lean on the most glaring thing presented to them.

That could mean judging Casey Anthony's actions during the month Caylee was missing, Moore said.
"If she knew her child had died or was missing, she was not acting like a grieving mother," Moore said. "It may be enough for a jury."
Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder (which would mean a possible death sentence or life in prison if convicted), aggravated child abuse (a 30-year prison term), aggravated manslaughter of a child (a 30-year prison term), and four counts of providing false information to law enforcement.
What do you think the jury will decide?

Jurors suspect Blagojevich was tailoring testimony to them(Photo-Video)

Last year’s jury thought the prosecution’s case against Rod Blagojevich lacked a smoking gun.
This year’s jury called the same evidence “overwhelming.”
What changed?
Rod Blagojevich took the witness stand in his retrial. And the 11 women and one man on the former governor’s jury not only didn’t buy what he said — they thought he was in full spin mode.

Jury forewoman Connie Wilson, 56, of Naperville, said she thought she recognized what Blagojevich was up to when he started picking and choosing details from his personal history. The details appeared to mirror personal information that came out when the judge questioned the jury pool before testimony began, she said.
“I said, ‘Do you remember what he talked about . . . [while testifying about his home] library?’ ” Wilson said she told other jurors during their deliberations. “He pointed to something in the library that pertained to almost everybody on the jury.”
She said jurors started piecing it together.
Over his seven days of testimony, Blagojevich mentioned books, targeting a librarian on the jury; pointed out an interest in music, directing the comment toward Wilson, the former choral director at Holy Spirit Catholic Community in Naperville; and discussed the importance of education, to connect with a teacher, Wilson said. “He even brought out at one point something about Boston, and of course our gentleman was a huge Boston fan,” she said with a laugh, remembering the male juror’s many Boston-themed T-shirts.
That juror, John McParland, was the lone male in the group. He wasn’t having any of Blagojevich’s testimony.
Particularly unconvincing, he said, was the politician’s attempt to explain what he “meant” by comments caught on tape by the government.
“You’re talking in, like, two different languages, then?” McParland said in an interview.
The target-your-audience strategy may work with voters in politics, but it didn’t fly with this group.
It made juror Karen Woj­cieszak, 64, of Tinley Park, downright angry.
“We had heard seven days of Mr. Blagojevich’s ‘blah, blah, blah,’ ” Wojcieszak said. “I don’t care if he grew up poor on the North Side of immigrant parents. We’re all immigrants unless you’re a Native American.
“He really cheated the people of Illinois, or tried to,” she continued. “He took an oath to do what was best for the people of Illinois and he didn’t do it. So we’ll have another governor in jail.”
Even though they believed he was lying, many of the jurors still liked him.
“I almost feel like I’d want to apologize to him, but it’s not my fault, so why do I have those feelings?” said Maya Moody of Hyde Park. “Sometimes I think he was just surrounded by people that just didn’t have the heart to speak the truth to him. It’s either that or . . . that’s just how the political machine in Illinois is, and he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. But, either way it goes, you know, when you look at the law . . . it was all illegal.”
Juror Maribel DeLeon, 45, of West Dundee, described her decision to convict as “heartbreaking,” particularly after Blagojevich, during his testimony, frequently mentioned his love for his wife and two daughters. His testimony did little to sway her views, she said. “His answers weren’t consistent,” she said. “There [were] many times it was clear he lied.”
She said Blagojevich’s own words secretly recorded by investigators were critical in convincing her that Blagojevich tried to extort campaign cash and was looking to personally benefit by trading President Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat.
“The tapes were very convincing,” DeLeon said.
Deliberations took nearly 10 days because jurors worked hard to keep their personal feelings about Blagojevich out of their discussions.
“We really followed the letter of the law,” DeLeon said. “We kept going back to that, we were like ‘this is exactly what it says, this is what we’re going to do.’ That’s why it took so long.”
“I believe Rod was out there helping the people,” said DeLeon, who believes Blagojevich became “disgruntled” in office and started looking for a way out. “Everything was a snowball effect and he made poor choices,” she said.
Jessica Hubinek, of Carol Stream, said about 3 p.m. Thursday, on their ninth day of deliberations, she and her fellow jurors had decided: He was guilty of 17 of the 20 counts.
And in the careful, deliberate way they had discussed, reviewed and analyzed the evidence, they wanted to sleep on it and send their final decision to the judge Monday morning, said Hubinek, a 32-year-old librarian and married mother of a teenager.
Rosemary Bennett, 73, of Aurora, said the morning of the verdict she did something she did every morning before that.
“I prayed every morning that the Lord would help each one of us jurors to base our decision of evidence and nothing else,” she said. “It’s easy to judge on preconceived notions.”
While McParland said he feels for Blagojevich’s two daughters, he has little sympathy for Blagojevich.
“It’s hard to feel sorry about him,” McParland said, “because, why are you doing this in the first place?”
Karin Wilson, 48, of Palatine, wouldn’t say whether she voted for Blagojevich in his gubernatorial elections. But this summer, while hanging out with her daughter and 18-year-old son, she’s eager to read about Blagojevich’s first trial, which ended in a hung jury, and find answers to a few questions she wondered about during the second.
“It was the most interesting thing I’ve ever done,” Wilson said. “And the most boring thing I’ve ever done.”
Because Hubinek took the judge’s orders to avoid the media so seriously, she missed a bunch of other big news, too. A colleague asked her late in April if she watched the wedding?
“What wedding?” she said, unaware of Prince William’s royal extravaganza.

Casey Anthony trial enters 3rd week

The third week of the Casey Anthony murder trial gets underway Monday. On the second week, that ended Saturday, jurors had a front-row seat to the vivid yet imaginary world the Florida mother created in the weeks after 2-year-old daughter Caylee disappeared in 2008. The jury heard detailed stories from Anthony's mother and her brother, of her business trips to Tampa and visits to an old flame that later proved to be false. Jurors also heard recordings of Anthony's police interviews, jailhouse visits and a 911 call.

Anthony is charged with seven counts, including first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and misleading police in the 2008 death of daughter Caylee. The last time the little girl was seen was June 16, 2008. The girl's grandmother, Cindy, reported her missing on July 15, 2008. Caylee's body was found five months later, in a wooded area less than a mile from the Anthony family home in eastern Orange County. Anthony, 25, has denied harming her daughter or having anything to do with the little girl's disappearance or death. Her lawyer has said that once all the facts were known, it will become clear his client is innocent. In a July 16, 2008, police interview, which the jury heard Thursday, Orange County Sheriff's Sgt. John Allen told Anthony the time had come to reveal the truth. "By burying this ... you are not going to get yourself to a better place, OK?" Allen said. "What you're going to do is you're going to cause everybody else around you to suffer. And at some point this is going to come out; it always does." Anthony heard the same sentiment expressed during in a jailhouse phone conversation with her mother, also on July 16, 2008. When Anthony blames her mother for her being in jail, Cindy Anthony fights back. "Well, whose fault is your sitting in the jail?" she asked her daughter. "Blame yourself for telling lies." The excusesTestimony earlier in the trial in Orlando revealed that Anthony lied to her parents and avoided them for 31 days in the summer of 2008 while Caylee was supposedly missing. During the second week of the trial, jurors learned more about what Anthony told her parents during that time and what she was actually doing. From the witness stand Tuesday, Anthony's mother described heated confrontations with her daughter on July 15, 2008, after she learned Anthony had been lying about her whereabouts for a month. The stories began with Anthony saying she was having a sleepover with a nanny named Zenaida "Zanny" Gonzalez. Then, Anthony said she was out of town on a work trip to Tampa, Florida. By the fourth week, Anthony's story was that she was out of town visiting an old boyfriend named Jeffrey Michael Hopkins. Cindy Anthony caught her daughter in her lies by discovering she was, in fact, in Orlando with a different boyfriend. By the time her mother called 911 to report Caylee missing, Anthony had a new story. "I know who has her. She's been my nanny for about a year-and-a-half, almost two years," Anthony told the operator in the July 15, 2008, call, which jurors heard Tuesday. When asked by the operator why she waited so long to report her daughter missing, Anthony replied, "I have been looking for her and have gone through other resources to try to find her, which was stupid." The characters In the following days, Gonzalez's alleged role would expand from an occasionally-mentioned nanny to a central character in Caylee's disappearance. When initially questioned by Orange County Detective Yuri Melich on July 16, 2008, about Gonzalez, Anthony provided a description of her without hesitation. That interview was played Wednesday. Anthony said she'd known Gonzalez for four years after they met working together at Universal Studios. She provided a physical description of Gonzalez, her address, even her mother's name. Other characters were also fleshed out. Hopkins, a former Universal Studios co-worker, according to Anthony, lived in Jacksonville and had a son named Zachary who played with Caylee. And then there was Juliette Lewis, another co-worker at Universal, who now lived in New York, Anthony said. She also had a daughter Caylee's age. Anthony claimed she called Lewis and Hopkins when she realized Caylee was missing. But prosecutors claim Anthony was not looking for her daughter in the month she was missing. Instead, she was staying with her boyfriend, spending time in Orlando with friends, attending parties, going shopping and hitting nightclubs, according to testimony from friends, her former boyfriend, and acquaintances, who also said that she did not mention her daughter being missing during that time. Anthony's frustration level with her parents, particularly her mother, was rising around the time Caylee disappeared, friend Amy Huizenga testified Tuesday. "I remember she told me her mom had told her she was an unfit mother. She was extremely upset about that," Huizenga said. But Anthony also was agitated at her mother because she had to cancel plans "fairly frequently" when no one was available to watch her daughter, Huizenga testified. In late June, Huizenga said, Anthony told her that she was keeping Caylee away from her parents, as they were having marital problems and were considering divorce, and "she wanted to keep Caylee out of the drama." 'Fessing upOn Thursday, Detective Melich described the day Anthony was finally forced to admit her lies, at least in part. On July 16, 2008, Melich worked with Universal Studios to scour the employee database. Anthony was in the database, but she hadn't been affiliated with Universal for years. Melich also found no record of Gonzalez or Lewis. A Jeffrey Hopkins was found, but never worked for the company at the same time as Anthony. Gonzalez's supposed apartment had also been found vacant. Anthony voluntarily met Melich at Universal Studios to discuss the matter. Melich testified Thursday that he watched Anthony try to enter the park without a badge, then attempted to lead him to her office before being forced to admit she didn't have one. "I can tell you just for certainty everything you've told me so far has been a lie," Melich said in a recorded interview played for the jury on Thursday. "I've gone to every address that you've told me. I've looked up every name, I've talked to every person that you wanted me to talk or try to. And found out all these names you're giving me are people that either never worked here or been fired a long time ago, OK?" Anthony conceded she didn't work at Universal and that the people she had described as her co-workers did not exist. Yet she continued to blame Gonzalez for the disappearance of her child. Cindy Anthony said her daughter had been telling her about Gonzalez along with numerous other people -- a boyfriend, a co-worker and a man named Eric Baker, whom she believed to be Caylee's father -- for years before Caylee went missing. At the time, she said, she never had a reason to believe those people were fictitious. "I just found out they were imaginary people," she testified. A Zenaida Gonzalez was later found, but she had no affiliation with Anthony aside from having filled out a guest card at the Orlando apartment complex where Anthony claimed the nanny lived. The apartment where Anthony said Gonzalez lived was found to be vacant, and there was no record of Gonzalez in the Universal Studios employee database. Anthony has denied killing her daughter. She faces the death penalty if convicted.