Prosecutors Hid Screw-Up in Anthony Trial: Witness

The prosecution witness who testified that Casey Anthony ran online searches for “chloroform” 84 times says he screwed up—and that prosecutors ignored him when he let them know. The prosecution used John Bradley’s software to make its assertions about Anthony’s search habits. But Bradley tells the New York Times that he redesigned the software in June, and discovered he’d been wrong—the search had only been run once, and led only to a single site, which dealt with 19th-century chloroform use.

Bradley says he immediately alerted police and prosecutors, and even gave them spreadsheets of the new data. Yet prosecutors never told the defense, and continued to refer to the 84-search figure in court. By law, prosecutors must reveal all potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. “If in fact this is true … it is more than shame on them. It is outrageous,” says one of Anthony’s lawyers. “This was a major part of their case.”