Today,
Jose Baez called as his first witness
Krystal Holloway, a woman who also uses the name River Cruz and claims to have had an affair with George Anthony. The relevance or otherwise of her testimony is that she claims George told her that the death of Caylee was
an accident that had spiralled out of control. However, yet again Mr Baez appears to have grossly overstated the relevance of the testimony and to have significantly altered the context.
To begin with, Miss Holloway is considerably younger than George, secondly, from one of his communications with her she appears to have been on friendly terms with Cindy as well. Under cross-examination, Jeff Ashton implied that she had sought out of the friendship of the Anthonys when they were in the full glare of publicity. She did not appreciate the cynicism in his voice when he suggested she had sold her story to the notorious tabloid the
National Enquirer because it was the only media outlet that would present her story fairly.
And what was her story? Leaving aside whether or not she had an affair with George Anthony, it amounted to a claim that he, George, believed Casey had not murdered her daughter, that there had been some sort of dreadful accident, and that it had spiralled out of control from there.
Although the commentators at WFTV considered she had performed reasonably well, it has to be said that at the very best she nibbled at the edges of the evidence. By the time she left the stand, there were some 88,000 live bloggers on-line at this site.
In the legal argument that followed her departure, we were treated to yet another display of Mr Baez over-reaching himself, and to Judge Perry displaying his encyclopaedic knowledge of case law. Citing no less than three cases, Perry handed down an instruction for the jury to consider in its deliberations when assessing the evidence of the witness.
The witness and the jury were then recalled, and she was excused with no further questioning. Judge Perry then gave his direction to the jury, which amounted to an instruction to consider her testimony only as far as assessing the testimony of George Anthony.
The case continued with the recall of
Dominic Casey.
