Several witnesses have testified that in the summer of 2008 Casey Anthony’s car contained a strong odor that resembled the stench of a decomposing body.
This is where the distinction between trash and garbage becomes crucial. Defense lawyers say the stench in Anthony’s car was a result of her mistakenly leaving that plastic bag of “garbage” in her car trunk for several days in Florida’s hot summer sun.
Prosecutors counter that the stench is the lingering evidence of the mother’s crime against her daughter. A plastic bag of “trash” is incapable of producing such a strong and distinctive smell, they say.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that investigators found maggots and other insect activity on a wad of paper towels in the white plastic bag. Prosecutors have suggested that the paper towels may have been used to clean up fluid that had flowed from Caylee’s decomposing body while it was still in the car trunk.
Dr. Haskell was asked a hypothetical question that directly tracks the state’s theory in the case. If the body of a young child was stored in the trunk of a car for some time and then moved, would that fit with the insect activity he had found?
He said based on the type of insects he’d found in the paper towels he estimated the body would have been in the car trunk three to five days.
On cross-examination, Defense Attorney Jose Baez challenged Haskell’s assumption that whatever was on the paper towels that attracted the insects must have come from human decomposition. Wouldn’t left-overs from a restaurant forgotten in a hot car attract the same flies, Mr. Baez asked.
Not that quantity, Haskell said.
That’s when Assistant State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton asked Haskell the difference between trash and garbage.
“To my thinking garbage is primarily decomposing organic material,” he said, “versus trash which is any inorganic stuff you are throwing out.”
Haskell said the insects he studies are searching for decomposing organic material, both animal and plant, to “colonize and try to raise their kids in it.”
He said the white plastic bag contained trash – a collection of inorganic materials that were not decomposing.
“You had no idea the evidence would be altered,” Baez asked.
“No,” he said.
The routine drying may have undercut the state’s investigation as much as defense efforts.
Had they been preserved as found and immediately tested, the maggot-covered paper towels might have provided a direct link between Caylee’s dead body and her mother.
Haskell said it is possible to retrieve human host DNA from lice, maggots, and even bed bugs. It is unclear whether the procedure was attempted given the state of the evidence.
The crime scene investigator didn’t know that evidence could be altered when drying it? Then it was unclear whether tests had been attempted. Can you imagine sitting in a jury and the crime scene investigator is shown to not know what he is doing? That alone would cause reasonable doubt about anything those investigators say.