Photos for Headline Surfer / TOP: Casey Anthony and inset photo of murdered daughter Caylee Anthony, 3. LEFT: Was it a stretch for the Casey Anthony prosecution team to have a jury see her as a viable death row candidate, never mind the archetypal killers like Ted Bundy or Aileen Wuornos, both of whom were executed for their heinous crimes involving multiple victims?
By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Then-State Attorney John Tanner prayed with serial killer Ted Bundy before he got the electric chair in 1989, and 13 years later, he watched the nation's most notorious female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, have her life taken away by the poisonous needle.
Tanner said the state didn't have a prayer in the world that such a fate would befall Casey Anthony.
"I was not surprised by the Casey Anthony verdict," said Tanner, former longtime state attorney, who is now chairman of the board of trustees at Daytona State College. "The jury worked with what was presented. They did not have circumstantial evidence convincing enough to bring a first-degree murder verdict and death sentence."
Tanner, turned out of office in the 2008 election, after getting juries to put nine killers on death row sandwiched between the Bundy and Wuornos executions, said the seemingly universal condemnation of the Anthony jury could have been avoided had the state been more realistic about the limitations of its case.
While overzealous prosecutors, fueled by national media hype from the onset, were all too eager to seek a death sentence before the toddler's body was even unearthed, Tanner said they are now reaping even more backlash with her walking out of jail a free woman this morning after the light sentence for the misdemeanor convictions of lying to police.
"There were just too many loose ends that weren't tied up," Tanner said of the Casey Anthony prosecution strategy. "In fact, there wasn't evidence there to even tie it up."
While overzealous prosecutors, fueled by national media hype from the onset, were all too eager to seek a death sentence before the toddler's body was even unearthed, Tanner said they are now reaping even more backlash with her walking out of jail a free woman this morning after the light sentence for the misdemeanor convictions of lying to police. "There were just too many loose ends that weren't tied up," Tanner said of the Casey Anthony prosecution strategy. "In fact, there wasn't evidence there to even tie it up."
Wuornos, condemned to death for blasting away at seven men along Central Florida highways, including one near Ormond Beach, was Tanner's lone serial killer case.
Though he and his wife, Marsha, were born-again Christians, he and Bundy prayed some 50 times, but Tanner had no jurisdiction in Bundy's case. Tanner stressed it's not the number of victims killed as much as strong evidence as to the suffering of one or more victims that sways juries. In putting together a capital murder case, the state has to be prepared to convince a jury that an alleged murderer is especially "heinous, atrocious and cruel."
This jury never got that far because of the gaps in the evidence, even for a life of up to life, never mind a death sentence, Tanner said.
"There was no surprise for me that the jury found her not guilty of killing Caylee," Tanner said. "The prosecution overreached by charging her with first-degree murder. They upped the stakes way too high with a case this marginal for a possible death sentence."
Tanner suggested a more appropriate charge for Casey Anthony would have been involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, both far below murder.
"These may have been more palatable to the jury."
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