Casey Anthony jury goes home for the day

ORLANDO, Fla. - Jurors did not reach a verdict Monday in the Casey Anthony murder trial after deliberating for almost six hours on the prosecution's claim that the woman killed her 2-year-old daughter Caylee because the toddler interrupted her carefree partying and love life.

The jury began considering the case around noon after prosecutors gave a rebuttal closing argument and said the defense's assertion that Caylee's death was an accident made no sense.

Anthony is charged with first-degree murder and six other charges. If convicted of first-degree murder, she could be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Photos: Casey and Caylee Anthony Personal Photos
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The sequestered jury of seven women and five men was scheduled to resume deliberating Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. They were chosen from the Tampa Bay area because of exhaustive pretrial media coverage in the Orlando area and have been sequestered in an Orlando hotel. They have listened to 33 days of testimony and another two days of closing arguments.

All the evidence has been sent back to the jury room, but jurors will be brought into open court if they want to watch any of the video evidence. Equipment for video viewing is not available in the deliberation room.

Anthony's attorneys say the girl drowned in the family's pool. They have said Anthony panicked and that her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a homicide by placing duct tape over the child's mouth and dumping the body in some nearby woods. George Anthony has denied that.

Anthony also is charged with aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. The child abuse and manslaughter charges each carry a 30-year prison term if she's convicted.

Prosecutor Jeff Ashton told the jurors no one makes an innocent accident look like murder.

Casey Anthony case goes to the jury

"That's absurd. Nothing has been presented to you to make that any less absurd," Ashton said. He also spent significant time reminding jurors about forensic evidence that he said links Anthony to her daughter's death, including the smell and chemical signature of decomposition in her car.

Attorneys wrapped up their closing arguments earlier Monday. Prosecutors charge Anthony suffocated the girl with duct tape because Caylee got in the way of her love life and would soon be old enough to reveal the many lies she told her parents.

The judge rejected a defense motion for a mistrial after the prosecution closed their arguments.

Criminologist Casey Jordan told "Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill she was "impressed" with lead prosecutor Jeff Ashton, saying he "finally really hammered about the motive which they had really ignored. ... painted a picture of this party girl who could not have the life of independence she wanted as long as her daughter was in the way. And I think he was extremely effective with that, and then he went through the forensics and methodically laid it out. (It was a) highly effective closing."

Jordan said lead defense attorney Jose Baez, on the other hand, "methodically walked through what he believed the 'fantasy forensics' were. He kept saying it didn't add up, there were problems with this, problems with that. He was a little bit disorganized. But (fellow defense lawyer) Cheney Mason tried to bring it all together in the end and simply hammered on the idea that, if you can envision an accident, and remember, he says, that the biggest gorilla in the room was that Casey didn't take the stand.

"But the truth is the biggest gorilla in the room was that what they presented didn't match their opening statement. So what he ended up doing was simply reminding the jury, if you can envision an accident, any kind of accident, if they did not rise to a level of murder, then you must vote not guilty. He really simply said if you have any question in your mind, then you have a doubt and that doubt equals not guilty, which was effective."

Lead prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick followed Ashton, telling the jurors that prosecutors presented every piece of evidence they promised in May during opening statements. Without saying it, she was pointing out that defense attorneys never presented direct evidence backing up their contentions that the child drowned.

She then hammered on the lies Casey Anthony, then 22, told from June 16, 2008, when her daughter last seen, and a month later when sheriff's investigators were notified. Those include the single mother telling her parents that she couldn't produce Caylee because the girl was with a nanny named Zanny, a woman who doesn't exist; that she and her daughter were spending time in Jacksonville with a rich boyfriend who doesn't exist; and that Zanny had been hospitalized after an out-of-town traffic crash and that they were spending time with her.

"Responses to grief are as varied as the day is long, but responses to guilt are oh, so predictable," Drane Burdick said. "What do guilty people do? They lie. They avoid. They run. They mislead, not just to their family, but the police. They divert attention away from themselves and they act like nothing is wrong. That's why you heard about what happened in those 31 days."

Burdick concluded the state's case by showing the jury two side-by-side images. One showed Casey Anthony smiling and partying in a nightclub during the month Caylee was missing. The other was of the "beautiful life" tattoo she got a day before her family and law enforcement first learned of the child's disappearance.

"At the end of this case, all you have to ask yourself is whose life was better without Caylee?" Burdick asked. "This is your answer."

Anthony sat stone-faced during much of the prosecutors' arguments, but occasionally shook her head in disagreement and spoke under her breath.

Defense attorneys contend Anthony's lies and erratic behavior were brought on by her grief over her dead child and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child from her father. George Anthony has denied that allegation, and the judge said no evidence has been presented to support it.

Defense attorney Jose Baez said during his closing argument Sunday that the prosecutors' case was so weak they tried to portray Anthony as "a lying, no-good slut" and that their forensic evidence was based on a "fantasy." He said Caylee's death was "an accident that snowballed out of control."

Baez began his closing argument Sunday with his biggest question: How did Caylee die? Neither prosecutors nor the defense have offered firm proof.

He attacked the prosecution's forensic evidence. He said air analysis of the trunk of Anthony's car, which allegedly showed air molecules consistent with decomposition, could not be duplicated. No one could prove a stain found in the trunk was caused by Caylee's body decomposing there. And witnesses showed maggots found in the trunk came from a bag of trash that was found there, he said.

"They throw enough against the wall and see what sticks. That is what they're doing ... right down to the cause of death," Baez said. He conceded his client had told elaborate lies and invented imaginary friends and even a fake father for Caylee, but he said that doesn't mean she killed her daughter.

Baez also attacked George Anthony as unreliable. He said a suicide note that George Anthony wrote in January 2009 that claimed no knowledge of what happened to Caylee was self-serving and the attempt was a fraud. He said George Anthony claimed he was going to kill himself with a six-pack of beer and some high-blood pressure medicine.