Note to blog subscribers: I inadvertently published the wrong draft of this post. I apologize for erroneous information included in that draft. It should never have been published. I have absolutely no knowledge about the Casey Anthony murder trial, other than what I have read or heard in the press.

Yesterday after the prosecution in the Casey Anthony trial rested its case, Judge Belvin Perry denied the pro-forma defense motion for a directed acquittal for several reasons, all but one of which made perfect sense. As I understand it (and I am not a lawyer, thankfully), Judge Perry reiterated several fundamental principles of U. S. law:

• The jury, not the court, is the finder of fact.
• When considering a motion for acquittal, a trial judge must always view the people’s case in the most favorable light.
• The prosecution had demonstrated that the defendant had motive, means, and opportunity to commit the crime.

Sidebar: Judge Perry also explained that under Florida law multiple acts of life-threatening child abuse is a first-degree murder crime.

Of everything he said, only one concept strikes me as completely illogical, even though I’m sure he’s right about it being the law, namely, that the last person with whom a murder victim is seen is “whodunit.”

It seems to me this is chop logic, a tautology. The last person with whom a two-and-a-half-year-old child is usually seen is her mother. It’s only suspicious when it’s someone other than a parent.

In this case, the last person who saw the victim with her mother is the grandfather—which makes George Anthony the defendant’s primary accuser. It wasn’t as if Caylee was last seen with Casey by a crowd of strangers with no stake in the issue.

Judge Perry cited several child-murder cases in which the principal evidence against the defendant was the fact of having been the last person seen with the victim. If I’m not mistaken, though, none of the defendants were the children’s parents. I’m sure that in at least one case the defendant was an estranged boyfriend of the mother.

Sidebar: The motive in one boyfriend case was, apparently, to seek revenge on the child’s mother for dumping him. Oddly, Judge Perry said that the prosecution had demonstrated that Casey’s motive was “her relationship with her mother,” meaning Cindy Anthony. I suppose he meant that Casey was jealous of Cindy’s domineering affection for Caylee, but try as I might I can’t see how a daughter who loved her mother so much that she would be jealous of her mother’s love for her own daughter would to want to kill the daughter, whom she also loved. Was Casey hoping to regain her mother’s affection by doing away with her chief rival? It seems to me that—in fact—there is literally no love lost between Cindy and Casey. If Casey wanted to kill anybody it would more likely be her mother. (And, by the way, don’t we all know a few mothers and daughters who don’t get along?)

One case the judge cited was from Massachusetts, I believe. He noted that it was not the law of Florida but was nonetheless illuminating or illustrative or some such word. He read the circumstances to the court:

A boy was found injured in the basement of an apartment building, naked and moaning. The boy was hospitalized and eventually released to the custody of someone in the building (a parent? I’m not sure. Why the cops did not arrest someone when the boy was first found—obviously the victim of abuse or neglect—is a complete mystery to me.) Anyway, eventually the boy was murdered and the last person he was seen alive with was convicted of his murder, based solely on the fact that he was the last person the boy was seen alive with.

This is a real puzzle. There is absolutely no similarity between the Massachusetts case and the Anthony case—unless the judge was saying that in his mind George Anthony’s highly questionable testimony about seeing Caylee last with Casey was sufficient evidence to convict Casey. The most critical difference is that there was a history of abuse in the Massachusetts case, but there was also a difference in that the victim was found murdered in the apartment building where he lived.

Of course, Caylee was last seen with her mother. Every witness including George and Cindy Anthony said that Casey was never seen without Caylee until she disappeared. And Casey admits that she was present when Casey died.

It’s issues like this that make me wonder what lawyers learn in law school. It sure isn’t logic.