Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton said Monday he wants to take another look at Florida’s public record laws.
Ashton retired as a prosecutor in July soon after the highly publicized trial in which Anthony was acquitted in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
He is campaigning for state attorney of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, serving Orange and Osceola counties.
Ashton spoke to the Clay County Bar Association Law Day event Monday at the Country Club of Orange Park.
“We must take efforts to keep the media from trying to replace us as the ultimate determiner of facts because they are not very good at it. They have no rules. They have no hearsay rules of evidence (which lawyers are required to adhere to). Opinion is often mistaken for fact and, to me, is the great threat to the justice system as a whole,” said Ashton.
Ashton had been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years in the Ninth Circuit before the Anthony trial and has been recognized as a pioneer in the use of DNA evidence to convict defendants.
Despite that experience, he acknowledged he was surprised at how big the case became.
“When the Casey Anthony case first happened, we all knew that it was going to be big, but I don’t think any of us ever imagined the insanity that would ensue with this case,” said Ashton.
The atmosphere around the trial became a source of discomfort for Ashton as he walked into the courthouse each day.
“One of the strangest events I experienced during the trial was the actual atmosphere outside the courthouse. Some of the spectators at the trial actually picked teams, which was disturbing to me,” he said.
“There were groups of individuals that actually cheered when their favorite attorney walked in. It is such an unseemly scene to see people treating the trial like it was a team sport,” he said.
He said that at times, he wanted to scold the spectators.
“People started looking at this case not like it was determining the truth about the death of a little girl, but rather like it was a team sport. I just wanted to turn around and say to them, ‘Just stop it. This is about something far more serious than who wins or who loses. This is about this child and what happened to her,’” said Ashton.
The Casey Anthony trial involved the disappearance of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony who was reported missing in July 2008 in Orlando. Her remains were found in December 2008 in a wooded area near her home.
Her then 22-year-old mother, Casey Anthony, was tried for the first-degree murder of the child and was acquitted. She was convicted of misdemeanor counts of providing false information to police officers.
“I think that is what the media failed to emphasize. It was all about who can come up with the latest information,” said Ashton.
“As lawyers, we need to find a way within the U.S. Constitution with respect to the First Amendment, to rein in the press’s hunger for deciding cases on little or no information,” said Ashton.
He looked at the media’s accessibility to most documents produced during the trial as a hindrance to the judicial process.
Time magazine called the Casey Anthony case “the social media trial of the century” because there was such widespread access to information generated from the trial, including Facebook pages to support the search for Caylee, poll questions and surveys drawing immediate response from the audience and streaming live video of the trial available on most media websites.
“One of the problems I think we have with the media and its effect on the court is that you have a 24-hour news cycle. Today people have to fill the void of silence in a 24-hour news cycle,” said Ashton.
“When you can’t fill it with the facts, what is the next big thing you can fill it with? You fill it with opinions. The problem we have now is that we have a system of trial in the media that has no rules at all. People accept fact as opinion,” said Ashton.
Ashton has released his book “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony.”
He is of counsel for the Law Offices of Troum & Wallsh in Maitland.
“Despite the fact that you may not like a particular result, the criminal justice system deserves support. It deserves your faith. One of the reasons I chose the title ‘Imperfect Justice’ is to communicate to people that no system involving human beings is ever perfect, but it is the best system we have,” said Ashton.
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