Jury selection starts in Casey murder trial

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of an Orlando woman charged with killing her daughter.

The trial of Casey Anthony, the young mother accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, is drawing so much media attention that the judge kept the location of jury selection secret until the proceedings begin Monday.

The trial will take place in Orlando, but jurors are being selected at a courthouse about 100 miles away because of intense media coverage. The first panel of potential jurors met with the judge and
attorneys Monday morning in Clearwater.

At the center of this media maelstrom is the ponytailed, 25-year-old Anthony, who could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

She also is charged with aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and providing false information to law enforcement. She has pleaded not guilty and says a baby-sitter kidnapped Caylee.  

Anthony waited a month before telling her mother that Caylee had disappeared in the summer of 2008. Anthony's mother then contacted authorities.

Over the next several weeks, hundreds of volunteers scoured central Florida in search of any clues to Caylee's whereabouts. Meanwhile, numerous photos surfaced of Casey Anthony drinking, some of them allegedly taken during that first month.  

The heart-tug of a missing apple-cheeked girl contrasted with images of the hard-partying, single mother and proved irresistible to TV talk-show hosts and bloggers. The Anthony case became a media sensation, as HLN talk show host Nancy Grace gave her the moniker "Tot Mom." Protesters suspecting Anthony had a role in her daughter's disappearance demonstrated outside the home Anthony shared with her parents.

So far, about 600 media credentials have been requested. "The pretrial publicity I've seen in this case is unprecedented in the state of Florida," said Circuit Judge Belvin Perry.  

Caylee's decomposed remains were found in December 2008 by a municipal meter reader in woods not far from where the little girl lived with her mother and grandparents. Detectives said residue of a heart-shaped sticker was found on duct tape over the mouth of her skull. The local medical examiner, Jan Garavaglia, who once had her own national television show, "Dr. G: Medical Examiner," ruled that a cause of death could not be determined. The autopsy said that Caylee's bones didn't suffer trauma.   Some outside experts said the lack of a cause of death could make it hard to get a first-degree murder conviction.   "If you can't say how she died you're kind of hamstrung on saying what the defendant's intent was," said David Hill, a criminal defense attorney. Prosecutors will have to make strong links for the jury between the circumstantial evidence and Anthony, if they are to succeed, said LeRoy Pernell, dean of the Florida A&M University College of Law in Orlando.  

"Failure to show exactly what is the cause of death is a challenge, but it's not necessarily a fatal challenge," Pernell said.   In their arsenal, prosecutors have physical evidence and Anthony's own misleading statements to detectives.  

Forensic testing found in the car's trunk traces of chloroform, which is used to induce unconsciousness and also a component of human decomposition. In an emergency call to police, Cindy Anthony described the vehicle as smelling "like there's been a dead body in the damn car." 

Jurors selected in the case will have to put their lives on hold for almost two months. They will be transported to Orlando and sequestered at a hotel. The estimated cost is $300,000. "I'm not naive enough to think we'll encounter no one who has heard of this case," Perry said recently in court. "But the goal is to find people who have not been oversaturated with media."