Former death row prosecutor John Tanner: 'Too many loose ends' for Casey capital murder conviction

Was it a stretch for the Casey Anthony prosecution team to have a jury see her as a viable death row candidate, nervermind the archetypical killers like Ted Bundy or Aileen Wuornos?

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- 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 it 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 of 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," he said of the Casey Anthony prosecution strategy. "In fact, there wasn't evidence there to even tie it up."

"There were just too many loose ends that weren't tied up," he 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, born-again Christians prayed some 50 times with Bundy, Tanner had no jurisdiction in his case. Tanner stressed it's not the number of victims killed as much as strong evidence as to 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 an alleged murder 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 over reached 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 charges for Casey Anthony would have been involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, both far below murder.

"These may have been more palatable to the jury." 

Editor's Note: Henry Frederick also witnessed Aileen Wuornos' execution as a media representative.

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