The most astonishing thing is that both sides “concur” that it’s a “legal issue” serious enough to require stopping the proceedings, and unrelated to the usual bickering. Both sides haven’t concurred about anything for quite a while.
Sounds like a problem with the jury. Juror misconduct, maybe.
Possibly a plea agreement? In a normal trial that would be a possibility, but I don’t know about this one.
Update: For some reason the Christian Science Monitor seems to have some of the best reporting on all this.
Several issues present themselves. First, there are phone records pertaining to meter reader Roy Kronk, helpful to the defense, that appear to have been withheld by the prosecution. This is what is known as a Brady violation. Whether it’s serious enough to warrant halting the trial I don’t know, but it seems unlikely.
Second, there was a contact between the Department of Defense and prosecutor Jeff Ashton regarding defense expert witness William Rodriguez, who was the subject of much controversy last week. Apparently the DoD informed the prosecutor’s office that if Mr. Rodriguez testified for the defense he would be fired from his job at the DoD.
Now this is very interesting and also representative of so much that goes on. The DoD would be happy of Rodriguez were testifying for the prosecution; but since he is testifying for the defense he is slated to be canned. Institutions like the DoD and the Florida state’s attorney’s office have an affinity for each other that is not shared with defense attorneys. As you might imagine this makes getting witnesses very difficult for criminal defendants, a hundred times more difficult than it is for the prosecution, and that’s just one area where prosecutors have a huge advantage.
Why on earth would the DoD contact the prosecutor’s office about a defense witness out of the blue? It makes no sense at all.
Ashton denies any wrongdoing, and denies he contacted the DoD first. I do not believe him. Maybe it wasn’t him personally, but someone in that office did. It is a fair inference from the mere fact that there was any contact at all between the state’s attorney’s office and the DoD that the state’s attorney’s office was trying to sabotage the defense case behind the scenes. In fact, it is the only reasonable inference.
That would be serious enough to derail the whole thing. Yet the judge indicated that the reason for the abrupt halt had nothing to do with these witness issues.
There is also speculation that Casey Anthony wants to fire her attorney Cheney Mason because he screwed up yesterday. This seems unlikely, but it would fit with certain other observations from the morning’s festivities. And this would also be a serious enough development that it would justify halting the trial.
So it’s anyone’s guess, but the Christian Science Monitor seems not only to be on top of it, but perhaps the only media outlet just reporting and not editorializing and sensationalizing the whole thing.
Lawyers on Strike 
Man oh man. I cannot verify this to be 100% true but I read this is about Cheney Mason and how Casey was FURIOUS after court yesterday with him “opening the door” with line of questioning regarding her being handcuffed at her house and now the jury knowing her mother wanted her arrested with credit card theft. From what I read Casey wants him off the team. Maybe it has to do with Cheney being a “Death Penalty Qualified Attorney”
If it’s true that she wants him off ,how does that work?
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Media Pap. Mason was after “detenion” then no Miranda. Judge problem. Paniced prosecution. Their case is falling apart.
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A little more info……..
from wftv dot com:
“Casey, along with her attorneys, was gathered in Judge Belvin Perry’s chambers. Casey eventually walked back into the courtroom, clearly upset, and began tearing up and dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
After about 45 minutes, Judge Perry walked back into the courtroom and said that due to an unrelated legal matter, court was recessed until 8:30am Monday.”
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To Marion,
I have to be nice in my reply to you cause Atticus said to be nice here. Other than the lynch mobish call for the defense counsel to quit, be disbarred, held in contempt, and the accusations that they are liars helping a guilty person etc and the entire defense team is incompetent and should throw themselves at the mercy of the court to be removed as ineffective counsel, i think the more likely legal issue is one of the two raised yesterday:
1) witness tampering by the prosecution of Rodriguez. (very bad.)
2) witholding exculpatory evidence. (equally very bad.)
I doubt a trail can be stopped at this stage, when you have a team of lawyers, for ineffective counsel. The defense team looked pretty chipper to me in the court room this morning and when media followed them out. The prosecution looked a little worried. These are my subjective opinions about how it looked.
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Well I guess we’ll see on Monday if Cheney is there. Obviously it’s all speculation at this point.
It saddens me you don’t WANT to be nice with your replies. (sarcasm implied)
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Sounds like misconduct. Or could be what one of the Fox commentators mentioned. Possibly a plea deal. BTW, I’ve been sick to my stomach after reading up on JP’s sexual harassment. He nakes Weiner seem like Brad Pitt in comparison. Yuck.
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The line of questioning Mason was leading to was suggestive of the violation of Miranda rights. But, right away, the court instructed the jury to disregard anything about check fraud as anything relevant to the case at hand. How is this ineffective counsel? This is possibly be true if:
1) Cheney Mason intended to direct witnesses all day today, and having been fired, could not conduct the direct.
2) Casey is following the legal issues of this case and understands the implications.
But, I did not see any anger in Casey yesterday during that portion of the case, nor at the end of the day. There was no side bar, just a brief matter of fact discussion, no follow up questions relating the check fraud by the prosecution, as I recall. I did not see Casey in tears this morning as some blogs have reported, although there was a lot of back and forth. And, there were personal witnesses lined up outside of the court room–why couldn’t they have testified. Given the holiday coming up, the jury fatiguq from sequestration, it seems highly unlikely the whole of today would be recessed.
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Bluebird, actually this wasn’t about her check fraud but her credit card fraud which were like within a month and a half of each other. If she murdered Caylee the timeline of criminal record would be something like this: Beginning June: steals moms credit card. Mid June: Kills child End of June: Breaks into family shed and steals gas cans. Beginning July: Steals friend’s checkbook for shopping spree Mid July: Arrested for child neglect
Quite a month and a half…….parents must be so proud.
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As a follow up to my post above, here is a video of that portion of the hearing . Casey looks OK, and actually laughed at a joke by Mason during this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uuw0PhDliz8&feature=related
I’ll look through it to the end to see if I see an ANGRY Casey.
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Written News Report from Channel 13 News in Orlando:
No one would offer up an explanation as to what legal matter caused court to end. All Baez and Mason would say before crossing Orange Avenue was “See you Monday.”
Apparently, Mason did say “see you Monday” to reporters.
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I too believe that it is related to one of Ashton’s many tricks and underhanded if not illegal tactics in this case. Here is the first part of that hearing Saturday.http://www.wftv.com/video/28355927/index.html
They had a side bar that Attorney Mason called after they finished the discussion of the problem with prosecution wanting more time to review the deposition. It looks to me that this side bar was on a totally different topic. Take a look at minutes specifically: 9:59 to 11:12. It is the prosecution who is extremely upset about what he was hearing at that side bar. He looks like he knew he is busted, caught with his pants down….. and the look on his face at the ending time of: 11:12. (he later gets his color back when approaching defense counsel’s table prior to going into the back with attorneys and court reporter)
In part two of Saturday’s trial video…http://www.wftv.com/video/28356011/index.html at minute 19:50
I think that whatever was reported/discussed at that at the bar earlier, is continued for Judge Perry aka Judge Bias, and after he addressed counsel, as he was leaving the bench, he told the court reporter to come with him, they had something they “got to do”. There appeared to be “someone” in his chambers who the court reporter needed to take a transcript of a statement on.
I so hope the Judge is now forced to deal with Ashton! All his unethical and ILLEGAL tactics in this case are clear, yet have gone virtually unattended to by the Judge. He has chosen to ignore ANY of Ashton’s disturbing behavior, and that is simply a failure of our court system. Criminals trying accused criminals.
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Just thought I’d share the latest rumblings are the defense team filed a motion for judge to recuse. If that’s the real story I’m sure that makes most of you happy…
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Interesting. That’s a new one I had not heard until now. But why would Mason bring it up and not Jose Baez?
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Don’t know but I think Mason has been the one to argue mistrial the last few times. Maybe Baez got tired of doing it.
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Here is a minute by minute description of what happened on Saturday. it details glances, who spoke, who got up and went where. Very interesting.
http://www.clickorlando.com/casey-anthony/28355538/detail.html
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