Casey Anthony Lawyers Appeal Probation
Casey Anthony’s lawyers plan to appeal the court order that she must serve one year of supervised probation on a check-fraud conviction, her attorney confirmed Monday.
J. Cheney Mason, Anthony’s lawyer, filed the motion which calls the corrected documents “a fraudulently filed product of a previously disqualified judge,” CNN has reported.
Orange County Chief Judge Belvin Perry ruled that Casey Anthony had until noon on August 26 to report to a state Department of Corrections facility in Orlando.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Anthony had been convicted of felony check fraud for writing five checks for $644.25 dollars from a friend’s stolen checkbook. Orange County Superior Court Judge ordered Anthony to serve a year probation following her acquittal of the murder charges involving her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Anthony. However a clerk misunderstood and crafted an order that Strickland signed instructing that Casey Anthony serve the probation while in jail awaiting trial.
On August 1, the order was amended adding the words “upon release” and Judge Strickland required that Anthony return to Florida within 72 hours.
Anthony’s attorneys filed a motion to “quash, vacate, and set aside the court’s order,” making the argument that the judge cannot change his sentence, signed in January 2010, because over 60 days had passed.
“She has done her probation, if you all go read what we just filed you’ll see how blatantly clear it is and how blatantly wrong Mr. Strickland was,” said Attorney Cheney Mason, who filed the emergency notion.
Judge Strickland stepped down from the probation case on Wednesday, August 3. The circuit judge did not give any reasons as to why he was recusing himself from the case. However, Anthony’s lawyers have accused Strickland of prejudice following his public interviews about Anthony’s acquittal.
Perry, who presided over Casey Anthony’s murder trial, took over the probation case. According to CNN, he said that Strickland’s verbal order was binding and “to bar the court from correcting a clerical mistake and to permit the defendant to serve probation in jail while awaiting trial on a totally unrelated charge without any possibility of complying with the terms of the probation order would clearly thwart society’s interest in extracting a full, fair and just punishment for a crime.”
According to Judge Perry, the check-fraud case does not violate double jeopardy and since the fraud crimes and the murder charges, of which she was acquitted, are clearly different – Anthony could not have complied with the probation terms while in jail.
Casey Anthony is required to live in Orange County unless the probation office allows her to leave, the order stated.
A corrections department spokeswoman said that Anthony has not received any such approval, according to CNN.
