"How did Caylee die?"

Defense attorney Jose Baez repeated the question several times during his closing argument Sunday, and he said that was only one of many questions the prosecution left unanswered.

Baez said his greatest fear was that jurors would base their verdict on emotion rather than evidence. He accused prosecutors of tailoring their case to make the jury angry, claiming that the fist two weeks of their case consisted of "completely irrelevant" testimony that made Casey Anthony look like a "lying, no-good slut."

"Caylee Anthony was a beautiful, sweet, innocent child who died far too soon," Baez said, but "to parade her up here to invoke your emotion would be improper." Pointing to prosecutor Jeff Ashton's closing argument that began with a video of Caylee playing with Casey, he said that is exactly what the prosecution has tried to do.

Even so, many of those witnesses who testified about Casey partying and lying also said that she was a good mother and Caylee loved her. "A child cannot fake love," Baez said. In six weeks of testimony, the jury did not hear about a single instance of child abuse.

He described the state's case as a "checkbook prosecution," sparing no expense to bring in the best crime lab in the country and explore new areas of forensic science that have never been used in a Florida courtroom before. Throughout his closing, he hammered the point that the prosecution's case was driven by desperation and a lack of evidence.

While he was barred by Judge Belvin Perry from accusing Casey's father George Anthony of sexually abusing her, he repeatedly cast suspicion on him for potential involvement in the cover-up of Caylee's death. He began by bringing up the smell in the trunk of Casey's car, which he suggested George called authorities' attention to. He cited several witnesses, including investigators and Casey's friends, who were around the car at various times and testified that they did not smell anything.

He said mockingly that when George supposedly smelled human decomposition in the trunk on July 15, 2008, "of course he did what any responsible parent would do, and that is nothing." He said that was because George was trying to "distance himself from the situation."

Discussing the physical evidence in the case, Baez referred to "the state's fantasy of forensics." He began with the "phantom stain" of decomposition fluid in the trunk of the car. If there was decomposition, he argued there should have been DNA. He said prosecutors want to get the jurors riled up so if they "stare a little harder you just might see it."

Baez pointed out that more FBI lab technicians testified for the defense than the state, asking why it was necessary for the defense to call 10 FBI experts to testify so the jury would hear about the evidence. "Is this a straightforward, straight-up prosecution?" he asked. He said the FBI tested hundreds of hairs in this case and only found one that displayed banding that might be consistent with decomposition.

"I thought to myself this has to be a joke," Baez said of when he first heard authorities were testing evidence for chloroform. He said that theory began with Dr. Arpad Vass—who he dismissed as "this guy who's selling a sniffer machine"—and the tests that Vass claimed showed "shockingly high" levels of chloroform in the trunk. Baez pointed out that the tests were qualitative, not quantitative, and the actual level was not measured.

He suggested Vass may be doing great, groundbreaking work, but it is not established science yet. "This is the level of absurdity, of desperation" that the prosecution had to go to because some of the most advanced forensic tools available failed to link Casey to Caylee's death.

Baez said that the state's computer forensic evidence involving chloroform research, a central element of their premeditation argument, was used to mislead the jury and that the flaws in that evidence infected their entire case "like a cancer." He pointed out the discrepancy between the first analysis the sheriff's office did that showed one visit to a website about chloroform and an analysis done later with a newer program that appeared to show 84 visits. But, according to Baez, the first report showed a progression that made it clear that the 84 visits were actually to MySpace. He said the extent of the chloroform research Casey allegedly did was three minutes of searching three months before anything related to this case.

Instead, he claimed the chloroform searches were connected to an image posted on Casey's then-boyfriend Ricardo Morales' MySpace page around that time. He said it was not unreasonable that a woman who sees that on her boyfriend's profile might want to research it, and he pointed out that the first chloroform search was done right after a visit to MySpace.

"The truth starts here. The nonsense stops right now," Baez said before moving on to the "phantom heart sticker" on the duct tape. He said there was a heart sticker found 30 feet from the remains on a piece of cardboard in an area the prosecution acknowledges was essentially a trash dump, and there were heart stickers in the Anthony home among other stickers that would be common in any house where a 2-year-old girl lives.

He then addressed Dr. Jan Garavaglia's autopsy. "You would think that you could get a medical examiner to come here and talk to you about medicine," he said, arguing that every scientific test done for the autopsy was inconclusive so she just relied on observations about where the body was found and the fact that the death was not reported to authorities.

He also dismissed the testimony of "Mr. Fantasy man" Dr. Michael Warren, who showed the jury a video simulation of duct tape covering Caylee’s mouth and nose in a picture with Casey smiling right next to her. "There's your new murder weapon of the week," he said. The only reason to show that to the jury, Baez said, was to inflame their emotions.

He displayed a chart of Casey's "imaginary friends," emphasizing that she started inventing them years before Caylee died. He said detectives should have realized that "there was something wrong with this girl" when she led them to Universal Studios to the office she did not have before admitting she made up her job.

"I'm not proud of the way Casey behaved," Baez said, but that does not constitute murder. He called the theory that Casey killed her daughter so she could have freedom to party "nonsense." "None of that makes sense and the reason it doesn't make sense is because it's not true."

He then focused on evidence that supported the defense's theory that Caylee drowned in the pool at the Anthony house. Baez seemed to take advantage of the fact that prosecutors proved Cindy Anthony was a liar during their rebuttal case, saying that she also lied when she claimed she did not leave the ladder attached to the pool. But he said it was a fact that she went to work on June 17, 2008 and told co-workers somebody had been swimming in her pool.

Even if the jury discounted Cindy's testimony completely, he presented two photos that he said they could not dismiss. One showed Caylee opening the back door of the house, which he said proved it was possible she snuck out to go swimming on June 16. The other showed her climbing the ladder into the pool with very little help from Cindy. "They cannot rebut this. They can't do it. It's impossible."

Baez's closing argument was halted briefly when he noticed Ashton smirking and referred to him as "this laughing guy right here." Prosecutors objected and Judge Perry recessed court while he viewed footage of that moment. When they returned to court, both attorneys apologized and Baez asked that Ashton not be held in contempt. Perry accepted the apologies from both sides, but he warned that if it happened again the offending attorney will be excluded from the remainder of the proceedings and the other consequences would be "quite unpleasant."

Returning to his attack on George Anthony, Baez said that the man testified against his own daughter "almost with bit of joy." He questioned the sincerity of George's January 2009 suicide attempt, calling his suicide note "a self-serving, self-preservation document." He said the attempt came soon after detectives started coming back to the Anthony house asking questions and collected George's gas can again.

"George cares about George," he said, "not about his wife, not about his daughter, not about his family, about himself."

Baez pointed out that Caylee's remains were found with no shoes or socks, which was consistent with someone who died at home. The shorts found with her body were too small and had not been worn for months when Caylee disappeared. If the jury is having trouble finding the truth, he said, that is because the state’s case has not been proven.

"Reasonable doubt lives here…You can't trust this evidence," he said. "You can't."

The final major issue Baez addressed was that of Roy Kronk, the man who found the remains. He noted that the state did not call Kronk to testify, but he said the defense did to reveal the suspicious circumstances surrounding the discovery. He insisted that the defense is not suggesting Kronk killed Caylee or that he gathered her remains and took them home, but "he knew where she was and had control of that for at least four months."

He said Kronk's son impeached him by testifying that Kronk called him in November 2008 and told him he knew where the remains were. He claimed Kronk also impeached himself by changing stories about whether skull rolled out of the bag when he found it in December. "There's something not right here," he said.

Baez closed his statement by returning to the unanswered question of how Caylee died. He said the way the investigation was carried out and the leads authorities chose not to pursue prevented them from finding out what really happened. "All of the lies that you've had to swim through don't get you any closer to the truth," he told the jury.

Defense attorney Cheney Mason followed up, repeating many of the points Baez made, but he spent much of his time emphasizing how high of a burden guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" is for the prosecution to overcome. He also reminded jurors that they cannot hold the fact that Casey Anthony did not testify during the trial against her.

He ran through a list of elements of the case that he believed were not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, most dealing with the lack of forensic evidence. He dismissed the chloroform issue as a "media baby" and said the prosecution was not even clear about how they were alleging it was used.

Mason also challenged Garavaglia's autopsy findings and her claim that there is no reason a child should have duct tape on her face. "Well, there's no evidence that she did," he said, noting that even Dr. Warren only said that the tape "could" have been covering Caylee's nose and mouth.

Whenever the jurors have questions about evidence, he said, "ask yourself, what would Mr. Mason argue about that?"

While Judge Perry intended for prosecutors to present their rebuttal argument Sunday as well, it was nearly 6:30 pm when Mason finished, so Perry sent the jury back to their hotel for the night.