ORLANDO, Fla. — The Fifth District Court of Appeal decided Friday to uphold two of Casey Anthony’s convictions of lying to law enforcement and toss the other two.
A state appellate court was asked to decide whether Anthony was in police custody when she made the statements that led to her being convicted of lying to law enforcement officers.
Anthony lied to Orange County Detective Yuri Melich on July 16, 2008, and led investigators on a wild goose chase in search of her daughter, Caylee, only to claim later at her murder trial that her daughter drowned on the day she disappeared.
The appeal hearing was held last week, but the court waited until Friday to announce its decision.
“We reject Appellant’s first and third arguments, but conclude that double jeopardy principles require that two of her four misdemeanor convictions be set aside,” the court said Friday.
In 2011, a jury found Anthony not guilty in her daughter's killing, but jurors convicted her for lying to law enforcement.
Anthony had tried to fight all four convictions for lying by claiming that she was in custody and not told of her right to remain silent, because she was briefly handcuffed at her home over an unrelated credit card theft accusation made by her mother.
The appellate court rejected that argument and rejected the argument that she was in custody when she was questioned for a second time in a conference room at Universal Studios behind closed doors.
But the court found that the misdemeanor involves providing false information not false statements, so it found that since she gave investigators "false information" during two interviews, she could only be charged with providing false information twice.
A substantial portion of the alleged lies included the story of "Zanny the Nanny," a lie that has a woman with the same name, Zenaida Gonzalez, suing Anthony in civil court.
Now that the court has ruled on Anthony's appeal, lawyers for Gonzalez plan to move forward on questioning Anthony under oath.
Anthony may no longer be able to take the fifth and refuse to answer their questions, because she can no longer use the argument that answering their questions could affect her appeal.
"They are entitled to know all they can surrounding the death of this child that occurred prior to the time that Casey Anthony made the statement that the child was kidnapped," said WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer.
Anthony is being sued by Gonzalez for allegedly accusing her of disappearing with her daughter, Caylee, in 2008.
The child was found dead in a swamp near Anthony’s house.
Gonzalez said she still suffers, because some people still believe she had something to do with Caylee's death.
Anthony waited three years to claim at trial that Caylee drowned accidentally the day she disappeared.
Anthony has served all of her probation after being convicted of stealing money from her best friend's checking account.
WFTV
