Systems forensics analysis of the Casey Anthony trial

Casey Anthony

Digital forensics can be a useful tool when applied in the correct manner. The recent case of Casey Anthony and her murder trial demonstrated the role that digital forensics may play in the setting of justice. The purpose of this essay is to describe the role that the digital evidence played within the not-guilty verdict of Casey Anthony nearly over two years ago. This essay will address the problems with this approach and also provide recommendations on how to improve on the practice.

Casey Anthony was brought to trial for the murder of her baby daughter Caylee whose body was found in the woods near the Anthony residence. It appeared that Ms. Anthony was a dispassionate parent who sought refuge in the party lifestyle and drugs and alcohol. Prosecutors were very confident that they could convince the jury that she was responsible for the death of her daughter. Much surprise hit all those following the case when Ms. Anthony was found not guilty on murder charges but was found guilty on lesser charges of lying to the police. Bello & Welch (2011) concluded that "that despite the seemingly endless hype surrounding the investigation and trial, the prosecution's case simply didn't hold up. There was no forensic evidence -- such as DNA or fingerprints -- directly linking Anthony to her daughter's death. In fact, the precise cause of the girl's death was unclear."

Role of Digital Forensics

Digital forensics played a role in this trial, which eventually led to the not guilty verdict in this case. It was suspected that Ms. Anthony searched for "chloroform" on her internet search engine, indicating a possible clue as to how the Caylee was killed. To prove their assertion that Anthony searched the Internet for homemade chloroform recipes, prosecutors called on digital forensics experts who recovered searches from Anthony's laptop, even after they had been erased. This is a common practice for investigators. The analysts used computer programs to recover data that has been deleted but was stored in unallocated space on the hard drive.

The software NetAnalysis (v1.37) was used to comb through Ms. Anthony's computer hard drive to look for clues to the death of her daughter. According to the digital forensic website Digital Detective, " Forensic tool validation is certainly at the forefront of our thoughts. Whilst it may not be possible to validate a tool, it is possible to validate the results against known data sets. If two forensic tools produce completely different results, this should at least warrant further investigation." In actuality the digital forensic experts failed miserably within this trial and produced results that were not true regarding Ms. Anthony's web search for the word chloroform. When Ms. Anthony's mother was revealed as the true culprit in looking up this word in her web browser on unrelated terms, the prosecution took a mighty fall and appeared incompetent due to this faulty understanding of forensics.