Casey Anthony Murder Case | Mental State & Personality | Guilty or Not?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can talk about the Casey Anthony murder case so Casey Anthony was charged with killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee Anthony and this crime allegedly took place in 2008 so I'll be kind of taking a look at a lot of different factors in this case including potential mental health and personality factors but just to be clear I'm not diagnosing Casey Anthony or anyone else involved in this case so I'll give kind of a quick summary then take a look at the state's case against Casey Anthony the defense the outcome and then again take a look at the mental health and personality side another question I'll try to answer here's many people have asked what my opinion is did she commit the murder or not and I'll talk about my opinion toward the end of this video on that topic from an outside observers point of view this case started on July 15th 2008 when Cindy Anthony called the police and reported that her granddaughter was missing for 31 days she also reported a dead body smell in Casey Anthony's car later on she kind of backed away from that statement she said that it smelled like someone died and that was a figure of speech but again that's not what she told the police on July 15th now Casey Anthony was interviewed by police about Kaylie's disappearance and she said that the nanny kidnapped Caylee of course this turned out not to be true and she said she was too frightened to call the police none of this was true she actually lied to the police several times so the next day charges of making a false statement to law enforcement were filed against her as well as child neglect and obstructing an investigation later on she would be charged with first-degree murder aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child and this was in October of 2015 there was some other kind of events that occurred in between these two dates some cheque fraud that was unrelated to this case and some other things but in terms of like the major points she was charged the day after the phone call that Cindy made to the police and again in October in December in a wooded area near their house Caylee's body was discovered so going into the trial which started in 2011 there were really two theories of the crime that kind of emerged so on the state side their theory was that Casey bought chloroform used it on Kaylie and then suffocated her and on the defense side they said that it was an accidental drowning the trial took place from May to June 2011 so now taking a little bit more of a detailed look at the state's case would we see kind of unfold in the trial well really their case was fairly straightforward they brought in witnesses that said that there was evidence of a decomposing body in Casey Anthony's car and some hair that may have belonged to Caylee but they couldn't really establish that for sure they looked at the skeletal remains of Caylee and said it looked like murder they pointed out the lying and suspicious behavior of Casey Anthony Casey Anthony Vaughn herself a lot of behavior that seemed very suspicious given the circumstances like partying and going out with boyfriends and having sexual relations with them and getting at tattoo and just didn't seem at all interested or even really aware that Caylee was missing so all this was used by the state and their case they also used some evidence that they thought they have a time which was a search for chloroform online that was allegedly performed by Casey Anthony and allegedly occurred 84 times she searched the term chloroform 84 times as it turns out it was a software error and the search was only made one time so they kind of lost a lot of steam I think on that point they're really pushing the chloroform angle and that piece really kind of fell apart a medical examiner reported that the death was by undetermined means which the state used but that really wasn't a strong point for them and they had some evidence that a blanket that was at the scene where Caylee's body was buried matched bed at Casey Anthony's house in terms of motive which of course is very important to convince a jury that somebody committed a crime the motive that they came up with was that Caylee interfered with the partying lifestyle of Casey Anthony and that Casey Anthony couldn't spend enough time with her boyfriend because of Caylee moving over to the defense we see that they brought up this idea that George Anthony sexually abused Casey Anthony and engaged in other bad behavior but interestingly there was no real evidence of this and this is still one of the components of this case that's still debated should the defense has been allowed to bring that particular argument because really almost nothing supported that argument so they got that in it wasn't taken out of the trial the jury did get to hear that they also brought up a defense that there was no DNA in the car and under the theory of the crime maybe there should have been which I think was a good point for the defense they also had a forensic pathologist come in and reject the prosecution's claim that duct tape was used to kill Caylee and this is part of the state's case that duct tape was used as part of the suffocation mechanism so this hurt the state's case the forensic pathologist indicated that the tape was probably placed on Kaylee's mouth and nose after the body was already decomposing they also brought up a point that there was no way to know who searched for the chloroform and then later on we see that Cindy Anthony actually takes responsibility for that and said she was looking up the term chlorophyll and then looked up chloroform because she thought they might be connected so she was apparently concerned about chlorophyll because of pets eating vegetation in the backyard so that kind of took apart the chloroform case even more so the state already lost traction with the software error and then they kind of lost the rest of it with Cindy Anthony's testimony we also see evidence the defense brought up that Casey Anthony was actually a good mother and had no motive to commit the crime so as we see as we move to the end case the defense theory of the case was that Kaylee died in an accidental drowning that was covered up by George Anthony the grandfather so they weren't necessarily saying he was involved in a criminal act at that level but it was accidental the sexual abuse of course they were alleging a criminal act the prosecution rested on June 15 15 days later the defense rested and between the prosecution and defense there are over a hundred witnesses but Casey Anthony was not among the witnesses she did not testify in this case so as the case went to the jury I think that most people in this case we're expecting a guilty verdict with some sort of homicide involved not necessarily first-degree murder but one of the homicide related charges and it turns out that the jury found that Casey Anthony was not guilty of any of the homicide or homicide related charges in this case but rather just providing false information to a law enforcement officer so she was convicted of four counts of lying to law enforcement and sentenced to one year per count but when you take into account how long she'd already been in jail and the good behavior time she'd earned she was released shortly after the verdict so what turned out to be a very surprising verdict she was found not guilty of murder later on as well two of the four convictions with lying the law enforcement were overturned as well so really she was only convicted of two counts of lying to law enforcement when everything was done and over with so that's a summary of the case and what happened here I want to go through some of the opinions that different people had in this case as we move to kind of talking about whether she really committed this crime or not I think it's is interesting the different perspectives so the judge in the case actually believed that the state did prove its case and he was pretty sure that Casey Anthony was going to be found guilty of some form of homicide and was surprised when of course she wasn't we see the medical examiner believed that the jury really rejected scientific evidence she believed it was clear that the body was hidden because it had been put in two plastic bags then put in a canvas bag and then thrown behind a rotting log so she argued that there was no proof of an accidental death and she felt like the jury didn't really get that right if we look at one of the detectives that talk to Casey Anthony he thought that she was really kind of nonchalant and most people in that situation would have been frantic about missing a child and Casey Anthony just wanted to talk about how she had aspirations of being a personal trainer so he found her behavior to be really inconsistent with what was going on now I'm always kind of skeptical at law enforcement when to make statements like this because it seems like this is what they find a lot of the time like you rarely hear about a detective interviewing somebody and I'm saying well yes they acted completely normally in terms of their behavior they're always suspicious of people it's kind of how they're trained and they point out what they believe our discrepancies between what's going on and behavior even though they have no mental health training so this one I mean it's interesting what he thought but in terms of its value as evidence I don't wait it very heavily now the defense attorney Casey Anthony's defense attorney of course believes that she is not guilty and that she was really actually a very loving mother and what happened was that because her daughter went missing she kind of shut down and then just fabricated a story so he's one of the few people that believe Casey Anthony's version of events and believe that sexual abuse and other factors kind of led to Casey Anthony not being capable of handling the information about her daughter being missing and then led to all these problems like lying to the police so that's just some of the reactions from people involved what about the jurors though because these are really the crucial people when the case was turned over to them they had the power to decide what happened to Casey Anthony and it's interesting because the jurors in interviews after the trial indicated that the state just didn't produce the they didn't produce evidence of how when or where caitli died and this was important to the state's case because they had a specific theory of the crime so the jury was really saying is the state failed now it's interesting because they also found George Anthony to be suspicious they didn't like him as a witness and of course this kind of played into the defense theory of the crime now a number of people have blamed the jurors in this case but if you look at the evidence they did appear to really agonize over this decision and they weren't looking for evidence here and evaluating it carefully in a sense it seems like they did believe the Casey Anthony did it they just didn't believe the state proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt so in a sense one could say instead of blaming the jurors credit the defense and perhaps blame the prosecution for not bringing a stronger case of course with this acquittal jeopardy is attached so Casey Anthony cannot be tried again for these murders because of the double jeopardy provision she can't be tried again for the same crime so with that acquittal the case is over and can never be brought back so we have some points of view from the judge the medical examiner the defense attorney a detective as well as the jurors what I find interesting in this case is the point of view of two of the mental health professionals I believe they are both psychologists who were hired to assess Casey Anthony and all their notes from their depositions are available online one was a hundred and forty nine pages now there was 298 pages so it took a while to read so as I go through kind of what they found it's important remember this is a summary there's really just too much to cover in a video like this but I'll try to summarize it efficiently so we see that one of the mental health clinicians here gave Casey Anthony and MMPI and the result was normal so what's this mean so the MMPI is the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory and actually it is considered the gold standard for personality assessment especially when you're talking about pathological personality traits it's used to screen law enforcement and other people who would be in sensitive positions and even though it's not perfect and this is talking about in a deposition it is a fairly reliable and valid instrument so for the behavior that we saw from Casey Anthony you know in terms of the way she behaved during the time when her daughter was missing and then moving over to what we see with the MMPI it really doesn't make any sense it makes you think that one of the accounts has to be wrong but her behavior during the time when her daughter was missing is fairly well-established then again on the other side the MMPI is reliable and valid so it's tough maybe the administration was not scored correctly maybe something changed maybe she was coached to how to answer I don't know it could just be random error but to me that seems to be one of the most unusual elements of this case that somebody could do what she did now again she was acquitted the murder so we don't know she did that but she definitely had this odd behavior while her daughter was missing and again that just seems completely inconsistent with a normal result on the mfp I just really makes no sense another thing that's interesting about that first deposition is the clinician said that even if he believed what Casey Anthony said so he just took her at her word there would still be no mental disorders present so even if we look at the MMPI and we say okay it was scored incorrectly or she answered the way to get around the response distortion items that were built-in somehow beat the test even if you just go by what she said there were no mental disorders evidence and if you look at the deposition it's pretty clear that this first clinician has a moderate to high level of skill he seemed pragmatic and logical moving to the next clinician this is the 298 page deposition we see this clinicians a little bit different than his style he has a psychodynamic approach to this case which isn't unusual based on when he earned his ph.d it was 1963 so the psychodynamic school thought was very popular then he seemed to rely more on defense mechanisms like Freudian defense mechanisms like denial and suppression to explain why Casey Anthony behaved in such an unusual way when her daughter was missing so in a way with this deposition her behavior seemed almost expected and I think when you look at that deposition again you see kind of a moderate to high level of skill but somebody who's very attached to the psychodynamic theory so I felt like that was a little less convincing than the first deposition but either way you have to fairly well trained mental health clinicians that appear to be competent saying that there's no evidence of a mental disorder and nothing going on really with mental health except for perhaps some V codes which are areas that can be the focus of treatment but they're not psychopathology so for example a V code might be if somebody was abused when they're a child that would be a V code in the DSM but not a mental disorder so two clinicians again seeming to agree that there was nothing unusual about Casey Anthony in addition to finding no evidence of mental disorder they also said there was no psychopathy at work no sociopathy at work and only a normal level of narcissism for her age which seems extremely surprising giving her really immature and self-centered behavior so again I think this is one of the more interesting elements of this case rarely do we have the evidence directly from the mental health clinicians who examine somebody in a situation like this and here we do and it seems highly contradictory with the behavior that we observed before so the last question no answer here is do I think she committed the murder and this is really a tough one answer I will try to give my best answer this the short answer of course is I don't know legally of course she was found not guilty as I mentioned Jeopardy's attached so there will never be another trial but I found some I think interesting things some interesting observations in her behavior in a recent interview and some other things that she did that main anything but I think in a case like this where we just don't have a lot of evidence there's no video recording of her committing a murder anything like that we are left to kind of look at these small details and interpret them which of course can be a little hazardous because that's not really scientific but I found some interesting things in her behavior if you look at a recent interview she did she said that she really sees a lot of parallels between her case and the OJ Simpson case I find this to be pretty interesting because I think most people would say that Oh J Simpson was guilty even though he was found not guilty so it's kind of unusual case to think of as a parallel if somebody was really not guilty if they really didn't do it they wouldn't look at the OJ Simpson case and say oh you know that case is similar right something else we see is that she was talking about a case that she was working on because apparently she lives with and works with the lead investigator for her defense team so she helps him I guess do some research on cases or something and she was talking about an individual who's accused of like DUI manslaughter and how she looked at him and thought that this is a kid that almost lost his life for something that the state couldn't definitively prove that he did I found this to be a very interesting way of looking at that circumstance again if somebody's really not guilty if somebody were falsely accused of murder would they run out into the street or wherever they were allowed to run but they run out and you know if I'm a microphone and say that the state can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I did it is that really what somebody who's not guilty says or did they say I didn't do it did they say this is a travesty of justice a miscarriage of justice this is unfair this is the system working against me instead you know she seemed to take a different angle which is you know the state couldn't technically prove their case against her and that's what she's I think seeing in these other cases so I find that pretty interesting and that same interview she says that she's lived that experience firsthand and she didn't do what she was accused of doing again that just seems like an unusual statement given the severity of the charges she was charged with murder she was facing potentially the death penalty and her daughter was dead and all this she's kind of thinking I didn't do what I was accused of it just seems like kind of a weak statement given the severity of the charges in particular if you think about it from the point of view if they weren't true she was falsely accused again her response just doesn't seem to match we have to be a little bit careful with this of course because some people's emotional responses don't match the situation and that could explain a lot in this case if she just has unusual reactions to stressful events that could explain what I'm talking about here after the fact as well as what happened before the police were called so we have to be careful again when kind of interpreting some of these different bits of information but either way if I'm to kind of give my opinion on whether she did it or not we have kind of three categories I think emerge here one is kind of the worst case she did it and it was premeditated the next is like second-degree murder or manslaughter so maybe she was being reckless or negligent and that caused the death of Kayleigh and then of course the third possibility was that she was telling the truth and it was neck sound drowning and that she worked in a conspiracy with her father to cover it up so under any theory she did something really wrong but of course the most strong will be that first-degree murder if I had to guess I would say that she probably did commit first-degree murder again I don't know it's just a guess everybody has a theory on this and if I were just to guess I would say that she probably did commit premeditated murder and my next guess would be some other type of murder that was not premeditated again murder two or manslaughter the axonal drowning story and the cover-up they just don't really ring true to me I think that's a hard sell it's possible I suppose a lot of things are possible but again if I had to guess I would say it was in fact homicide and that she did it and I understand why the jury said the state did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt but in terms of just preponderance of the evidence which of course is not the standard for a criminal case but just in terms of a preponderance the evidence I do think that she was guilty so I know a lot of people have that same opinion if not really even more definitive a lot of people are very convinced she did it where is the room for doubt here well her history seems inconsistent with somebody who murders that doesn't mean she didn't do it but she had a fairly good history in school she was a good student and she was never in trouble as a kid so that doesn't quite fit in with somebody who commits first-degree murder another thing that kind of I think is frustrating about this case in terms of the evidence and leaves I think a little bit of room for doubt is the possible role of Cindy and George Anthony were they involved I don't know I don't think they were but there's I think one real key thing it's a little hard to believe and that is why wouldn't you call the police if your granddaughter was missing for 31 days the granddaughter lived with them Casey and Caylee lived with them so 31 days go by and that's when you think to call police that just seems a little bit odd to me but maybe it wasn't unusual for Casey to take Kaylie on trips for a while I don't know maybe this was something that was considered normal or maybe Cindy and George were very busy and just wouldn't notice but there's a little room for doubt there right not much but that part of the case just never really made a lot of sense to me in terms of like what behaviors people usually engage in so this case is really frustrating because we never really found good answers there's a lot of theories and some of these theories will involve contradictory evidence and it's kind of confusing but that's kind of my take on the case I'm certainly open for a lot of different opinions here I know whenever I talk about cases like the Casey Anthony murder of Caylee the gonna be people that agree and disagree with me and have other opinions please put those opinions in the comments section I think they'll generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found this description of the Casey Anthony case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 630,652

Rating: 4.8599081 out of 5

Keywords: Casey Anthony, murder, Caylee Anthony, Cindy Anthony, George Anthony, sexual abuse, making a false statement to law enforcement, first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child, chloroform, suffocation, accidental drowning, not guilty, Danziger, Weitz, mental state, personality, immature, odd behavior

Id: IDm4KDZVmoI

Length: 24min 41sec (1481 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2019