Software Designer Reports Error in Anthony Trial

[blueclown]

Source: New York Times

MIAMI — Assertions by the prosecution that Casey Anthony conducted extensive computer searches on the word “chloroform” were based on inaccurate data, a software designer who testified at the trial said Monday.

The designer, John Bradley, said Ms. Anthony had visited what the prosecution said was a crucial Web site only once, not 84 times, as prosecutors had asserted. He came to that conclusion after redesigning his software, and immediately alerted prosecutors and the police about the mistake, he said.

The finding of 84 visits was used repeatedly during the trial to suggest that Ms. Anthony had planned to murder her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, who was found dead in 2008. Ms. Anthony, who could have faced the death penalty, was acquitted of the killing on July 5.

According to Mr. Bradley, chief software developer of CacheBack, used by the police to verify the computer searches, the term “chloroform” was searched once through Google. The Google search then led to a Web site, sci-spot.com, that was visited only once, Mr. Bradley added. The Web site offered information on the use of chloroform in the 1800s.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office had used the software to validate its finding that Ms. Anthony had searched for information about chloroform 84 times, a conclusion that Mr. Bradley says turned out to be wrong. Mr. Bradley said he immediately alerted a prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, and Sgt. Kevin Stenger of the Sheriff’s Office in late June through e-mail and by telephone to tell them of his new findings. Mr. Bradley said he conducted a second analysis after discovering discrepancies that were never brought to his attention by prosecutors or the police.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19casey.html?_r=3&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

---

Why was this type of evidence not revealed by the prosecution, as per Brady Law?

This was the bedrock of the prosecution's case; they stated that Casey used choloform to "kill" Caylee, and they showed "evidence" that Casey searched for chloform on the internet 84 times.

It turns out that this wasn't true, and the prosecution had a duty to disclose this. They did not.

This is just another example of prosecutorial misconduct. I wonder if we'll ever see an acknowledgement of this by all the media assassins on cable TV.

[joeybee12]

1. It's prosecutorial misconduct, obviously, and you wanna bet that slugs like Nancy Grace

dedicate a great deal of time to this? NOT

[RockaFowler]

2. Nope - no word of it.

They can't even let her leave the courthouse in peace. Now that they already condemned her, the media just wants more and more.

[veganlush]

4. she killed a little kid or in any case she knows why the kid is dead

and decided to obstruct justice (i wonder why?)

[RockaFowler]

5. How did she kill her kid??

Do you know or are you a psychic?? Because the prosecuter couldn't even tell us how the poor little girl died.

[Taverner]

17. Silly rabbit, he just 'knows' Shouldn't that be enough?

:P

[jbnow]

29. To be fair, just knowing your child is dead would be enough

to keep most people from partying and looking and acting quite happy, not like anything is wrong. That is what reports and pictures show she was doing in the first days and weeks.
It is understandable that some people would look askew at that, at her/

It doesn't justify the correct information not being put forth.

It's a strange programming error that changes 1 site visit to 84, but I don't know programming

[veganlush]

30. you didn't read my post.

[veganlush]

31. As Bill Maher pointed out,

her baby went missing for thirty days, and casey went looking for her at a wet tee shirt contest. The point is, she made up really lame stories to cover the fact that the child was dead, either by accident or murder. The circumstantial evidence makes it clear that she knew the child was dead. She deliberately lied to prevent justice from being done, one way or another. She should have gotten manslaughter at the least. If I had been on the jury I would have hung it for a mistrial. Someone needed to step up and prevent that stupid, wasteful outcome.

[Hepburn]

32. The "someone" who should have stood up is...

...the asshole prosecutor who waaaaaaaaaaay over charged this case without sufficient evidence to back it up.

[naaman fletcher]

7. I don't know,

But clearly we should just lynch her, or, absent that, lets pass allow allowing us to lynch the next person who comes along in this situation.

[Taverner]

16. "She's guilty! I know it! There's no evidence but I just know it!! My gut tells me!!"

[elleng]

3. Misconduct

Assertions by the prosecution that Casey Anthony conducted extensive computer searches on the word “chloroform” were based on inaccurate data, a software designer who testified at the trial said Monday. . .

According to Mr. Bradley, chief software developer of CacheBack, used by the police to verify the computer searches, the term “chloroform” was searched once through Google. The Google search then led to a Web site, sci-spot.com, that was visited only once, Mr. Bradley added. The Web site offered information on the use of chloroform in the 1800s.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office had used the software to validate its finding that Ms. Anthony had searched for information about chloroform 84 times, a conclusion that Mr. Bradley says turned out to be wrong. Mr. Bradley said he immediately alerted a prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, and Sgt. Kevin Stenger of the Sheriff’s Office in late June through e-mail and by telephone to tell them of his new findings. Mr. Bradley said he conducted a second analysis after discovering discrepancies that were never brought to his attention by prosecutors or the police.

Mr. Bradley’s findings were not presented to the jury and the record was never corrected, he said. Prosecutors are required to reveal all information that is exculpatory to the defense.

“I gave the police everything they needed to present a new report,” Mr. Bradley said. “I did the work myself and copied out the entire database in a spreadsheet to make sure there was no issue of accessibility to the data.”

Mr. Bradley, chief executive of Siquest, a Canadian company, said he even volunteered to fly to Orlando at his own expense to show them the findings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/us/19casey.html?hp

[Theo Haffey]

8. I think Casey Anthony should sue

Can't you sue when you find out that someone is out to set you up?

[elleng]

11. Should have incurred damages for a foundation upon which to sue;

Not Guilty, I'd argue, no damages.

Basis of your question, Yes.

[Taverner]

18. I think Casey Anthony should hide

Yes, she has a case, but for her own safety she should hide.

There are a lot of angry sheep looking to enact 2nd Amendment Solutions right now...

[bemildred]

6. Time to prosecute the prosecutors. nt

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

12. Well, if C.A. can get prosecuted for lying to cops ...

then the law enforcement community should be held to the same standards.

Or higher standards.

[bemildred]

13. The rule of laws, not of men.

That would be a pleasant change.

[YBR31]

9. It may be mis conduct but even once is kind of suspicious

After all how many times do you need to read about the stuff to use it

[w4rma]

14. The link that was clicked on was on how it was used in the 1800s.

How much information do you think was gleaned from 200 year old historical information?

[closeupready]

28. What do you mean? I've looked up all kinds of weird things - "the rack", "drawing &

quartering", the 'Iron maiden' - all kinds of things, doesn't make me a murderer.

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Disgusting.

[Taverner]

15. And people here still wonder how a "stupid jury" let her "get away with murder"

Boggles the mind...

[plumbob]

19. This "expert" has confessed to his own incompetence. Why should I

believe his now story over his then story?

Luckily, either way, his story did not convict the defendant. She was found not guilty, so a moot point.

[daleo]

21. Prosecution continued to rely on the evidence, though

Even after they were informed of it's inaccuracy. I suspect that might have been grounds for an appeal, had she been convicted.

[plumbob]

22. I suspect you're right, but the only question now seems to be whether

to indict the witness for perjury.

[daleo]

33. Or the prosecutor for misconduct

As I gather the prosecute didn't inform the judge of the inaccuracy after learning of it.

[Enrique]

20. someone tell Nancy Grace

so she can inform her viewers, some of whom have tried to kill people they think is Casey Anthony.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. If anything happens toi her,

the media and the prosecutors will be totally at fault. I wouldn't want to be her right now -- and for the record, I've had doubts about her guilt and even if the child was murdered since I first heard of this case.

[atreides1]

24. Personally I could care less

It's over and done with...the jury made their decision based on the evidence or lack thereof...and it doesn't seem that this particular bit played much of a part in their 11 hour deliberations.

And since the prosecutor has decided against bringing perjury charges against Cindy Anthony...I'd say it was even!

Everyone needs to let it go and get on with THEIR OWN LIVES!

[Blue_In_AK]

25. I agree with you 100%

I really didn't follow the case much, but I know the media did. All I was saying was that they would share the blame if some crazed individual decided to take her out.

These kinds of cases go on all over the country every single day, but for some reason this one got all the attention. People like Nancy Grace turned the whole concept of "innocent until proven guilty" right on its head. In a perfect world, there would be some sort of restraint on pretrial publicity, but then there's always that old First Amendement, freedom of the press thing, that gets in the way.

[closeupready]

26. No, nobody will say anything about this, much as the four men in Virginia whose

lives were destroyed by prosecutorial misconduct are still either imprisoned or registered as sex offenders based upon a crime with which they had no part whatsoever in committing.

[Xithras]

27. There's an excellent analysis of the error here:

There were two tools run on the Anthony drive to examine its browser history. One got it right and said that the browser had viewed the page once. The other got it wrong and said that it had visited the page 84 times. Dual-tool verification (running two different analysis tools against the same evidence to verify its authenticity) is fairly common in computer forensics. Unfortunately, when the Anthony prosecutors discovered that the results from the dual-tool verification were inconsistent, they simply picked the results more favorable to their case rather than investigating the discrepancy. When the author of the second tool brought the possibility of an error to their attention as well, they simply ignored him.

This analysis was written by the author of the first tool run on her drive (the tool that got the number correct) as he was investigating the discrepancy.

http://www.browserforensics.com/?p=134

In a nutshell, the old Firefox history database uses a very confusing database format that dates back to Netscape Navigator in the 1990's, and which was never intended to be human-readable. The database used an odd sequential addressing algorithm that is probably over the heads of most DU readers, but the result of it is that correct reading of the data assumes that all of the previous data is intact. The Anthony file had a number of blank cells, which screwed up attempts to pull the data in any useful manner without doing logical backflips. The creators of Firefox themselves have acknowledged this problem (and the uselessness of the data stored in that database), and completely abandoned that file format in Firefox 3. The Anthony prosecutors acted improperly when they based their prosecution on this data in the first place, compounded their stupidity when they ignored the discrepancy between the evidence collecting programs, and passed into potentially criminal territory when they further ignored the warnings of the softwares author when he informed them that the number favorable to their position was likely based on a computing error.

[Courtesy Flush]

34. Does anybody else think this is pointless?

First, you get the same information by doing one web search that you get by doing 84.

second, who the hell needs chloroform to take down a two-year-old?