Court Adjourns Early After Casey Anthony Becomes Ill
ORLANDO (CBS4) – Casey Anthony's trial in the death of her daughter has ended early for the day in Florida because she is ill.
Judge Belvin Perry announced the news after sending the jury home for the day, asking them not to speculate about why court was ending early.
Earlier in the day, Casey Anthony turned away and sobbed as images of her 2 year-old daughter Caylee's remains were shown in an Orlando courtroom on Thursday.
Jurors viewed a series of photos depicting the wooded area near the Anthony home where Caylee's remains were found in December. Duct tape was on the child's skull.
Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the girl's death and prosecutors say she used duct tape to suffocate her daughter in the summer of 2008; Caylee's remains were found roughly six months later. The defense says Caylee drowned in the family's above-ground swimming pool on June 16.
Prosecutors recalled Lee Anthony; the brother of the woman accused of killing her child, returned to the stand Thursday morning in the first-degree murder case and said his sister told him a nanny took Caylee in June 2008.
Lee Anthony testified his sister provided this version of the toddler's disappearance while she was free on bond in August 2008. According to his testimony, Casey Anthony told him the nanny, called Zanny, met her in an Orlando park and held her down with the help of her sister.
This is the first time testimony was given as to how the alleged babysitter Zenaida Fernández-González kidnapped Caylee Marie.
Lee Anthony said Fernández-González's sister helped hold Casey Anthony down while they took her daughter.
"She told me that she met Zanny who was her nanny as well as Zanny's sister and her children at Jay Blanchard Park which is here in Orlando," Lee Anthony said. "During that meeting Zanny held Casey down and told her she was taking Caylee from her and she did that with the help of her sister."
His sister told him the women took Caylee because "Casey was not being a good mother to Caylee or wouldn't be a good mother to Caylee. [They took] Caylee from her to teach her a lesson."
Her brother told jurors that Casey Anthony was told not to go to the police by the nanny. Lee Anthony also testified that his sister told him she didn't stop the nanny from taking Caylee because she was scared and "didn't know what to do."
Casey Anthony's brother told jurors that she told him the nanny took over her MySpace and was sending her messages with instructions on where to find Caylee. He then went on to say his sister told him she had to "fulfill obligations" in order to see Caylee again.
According to Lee Anthony's testimony, the nanny changed his sister's MySpace password to timer55; Casey Anthony told him the password had to do with the number of days between when Caylee was taken and August 9, 2008, when she would have turned three.
Casey Anthony described the babysitter as a 100-pound, Hispanic woman with dark skin. Investigators said that woman does not exist.
Lee is excused. He did not look at his sister when he left the courtroom, the Sentinel reported.
A computer programmer whose software revealed searches for terms like chloroform, inhalation, death, and neck breaking on a computer at Casey Anthony's home was the first witnesses questioned Thursday.
John Dennis Bradley, the CEO and founder of SiQuest Corporation, spoke briefly about how pages are refreshed on a computer. He was dismissed after his brief testimony.
On Wednesday, Bradley said someone searched those terms and others on Google and Wikipedia.
It's unclear who at the Anthony family home on Hopespring Drive actually performed the searches on the computer.
Bradley was among several witnesses with knowledge of programming or computer forensics who testified for the state Wednesday.
Orange County Sheriff's Office computer forensic experts Sgt. Kevin Stenger and Det. Sandra Osborne described the forensic searches they performed on two computers, two digital cameras and Casey Anthony's cellphone.
They testified that they never encountered anyone named Zenaida Fernández-González in Casey Anthony's cellphone, Osborne said. However, they uncovered searches for chloroform.
A second dog handler involved in a search of Casey Anthony's backyard also testified about a cadaver dog named Bones who detected possible human remains in the east Orange County property nearly three year ago.
Osceola Sheriff's Sgt. Kristin Brewer and her K-9 partner, Bones, swept Anthony's backyard in July 2008 to look for evidence of a dead body.
Brewer said Bones gave a "trained final alert," indicating possible human remains in the backyard of the home Casey Anthony shared with her parents on July 17, 2008. Another Orange County K-9 named Gerus also alerted to a spot close by in the backyard.
Casey Anthony, 25, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of her daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony. She alleged that Fernández-González had kidnapped Caylee.
Her defense team argues the child died after accidentally drowning in the backyard pool and George Anthony disposed of the body, a claim which he denies.
The state's theory is that Casey Anthony used duct tape to kill her daughter.
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