On Sunday, November 25, 2012, more than 16 months after Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her two year old daughter, Caylee, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has acknowledged a glaring error in the investigation. Investigators admit that they missed an Internet search performed on the Anthony family computer on the day Caylee was last seen alive: June 16, 2008. Who performed the search is unclear, but the content is startling. Someone used the computer’s Mozilla Firefox web browser to search for “fool-proof suffcation [sic].” Investigators only analyzed the computer’s Microsoft Internet Explorer application for online searches prior to trial and overlooked the Mozilla application, which was often used by Casey Anthony.
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton told Orlando television station WKMG that, “it’s just a shame we didn’t have it. This certainly would have put the accidental death claim in serious question.” The defense team knew about the search prior to trial, and attorney Jose Baez theorized that George Anthony, Casey’s father, conducted the Internet search in a suicidal state following Caylee’s accidental death.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has allegedly corrected their procedures and now works with the FBI and/or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on forensic analysis of computers. In the technologically driven world in which we live, and in the growing world of E-discovery in which we practice, the importance of a full and complete forensic analysis of electronic information is essential. Although this can be a very expensive process for the defense, it is of paramount importance in representing a client’s interests.
For more information on the Casey Anthony case, visit the Associated Press or http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/11/26/casey-anthony-case-detectives-overlook-crucial-google-search-evidence/
Posted On Monday, November 26, 2012
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In a written release by the SEC this morning, Chairman Mary Schapiro announced her resignation, indicating she will depart the Commission on December 14, 2012.
Chairman Schapiro was appointed by President Obama at the beginning of his first term, taking over the reigns of the Commission at a low point in its history. Prior to Schapiro’s appointment, the SEC had sustained significant criticism for being impotent both in the run-up to and during the financial crisis of 2008. It’s most publicly embarrassing legacy was the failure to discover Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, despite receiving specific tips regarding the scheme for several years prior to Madoff turning himself in at the end of 2008.
Chairman Schapiro led the Commission through a period of significant change, including a marked increase in enforcement actions, investment in the upgrading of the SEC’s market intelligence capabilities, and implementation of rules for the SEC Whistleblower Program as mandated by Dodd-Frank. According to the release announcing Schapiro’s resignation, “In each of the past two years, the agency has brought more enforcement actions than ever before, including 735 enforcement actions in fiscal year 2011 and 734 actions in FY 2012.”
According to several news outlets, the favorite to replace Chairman Schapiro is Mary J. Miller, currently serving as an under secretary in the Treasury Department. Miller was reported to have played a significant role in support of Secretary Geithner in the debt ceiling debates in 2011.
A dark-horse candidate is Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), and a former federal prosecutor. He ruffled some feathers with his outspoken criticism of Secretary Geithner and others regarding how TARP was executed. He detailed many of these concerns in his book, Bailout: An inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Mainstreet While Rescuing Wall Street. It is not believed that anyone within the administration has floated Barofsky’s name as a candidate, though a strong argument in his favor was made by Professor Simon Johnson in the Economix Blog of the New York Times, on November 22. Here is a link to his post: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/mary-miller-vs-neil-barofsky-for-the-s-e-c/.
The link to the entire release announcing Chairman Schapiro’s resignation is here. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-240.html
