Casey Anthony not guilty in high-profile murder case
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A Florida jury handed down a not-guilty verdict Tuesday in the case of Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008 in a case that has gripped the United States.
The seven-woman, five-man jury, who deliberated for just a day after a trial lasting more than six weeks, also found the 25-year-old not guilty of child abuse and aggravated manslaughter.
She was found guilty on four counts of providing false information to law enforcement -- misdemeanor charges that will likely see Anthony set free, after time served in prison awaiting the trial.
Had she been convicted of first-degree murder, Anthony could have faced the death penalty in a widely publicized trial that became a media circus centered on the Orange County, Florida courthouse.
Prosecution lawyers claimed Anthony had suffocated her daughter with duct tape, dumped the body in her car for a few days and then hid it. The skeletal remains of the little girl's body was found just under six months later.
The defense team maintained the toddler drowned accidentally and that Anthony along with her father George covered up the death.
Prosecutors had played up witness testimony of Anthony's apparently fun-loving lifestyle after Caylee's disappearance in June 2008, moving into a boyfriend's house, partying at Orlando nightclubs, even getting a new tattoo that read "Bella Vita," Italian for "beautiful life."
Minutes after the verdict, defense attorney Cheney Mason lambasted pundits and media legal commentators who had spoken on the trial, but who he said "didn't know a damn thing" about the case.
"I hope that this is a lesson to those of you who have been indulged in media assassination for three years, bias and prejudice and incompetent talking heads saying what would be and how to be," Mason said.
The case had earned extraordinary media coverage from the opening drop of the gavel, with the proceedings often airing for hours on cable channels, and spectators even resorting to fistfights last month as they waited for tickets for the public seats in the courthouse.
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