Presumed Guilty

by Jose Baez

  Gabe and I returned to the Orange County jail that night to visit Casey, as much to get to know her as anything else. When we went in there that first night, they wanted to put us back in a room with the glass divider between us. So I said to the supervisor, “You know which case this is.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I really need to talk and have unfettered access to my client because we’re talking about very sensitive issues. I’m trying to find out what’s going on here.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I’ll put you in the classroom.”

  And from that night on, I would always visit Casey in what we called the classroom, a huge room with six rows of desks and a whiteboard to the right. This was where the inmates held Bible study. The entire back wall is made of glass so the officers can look in and see everything that’s going on. Sitting there, you felt like you were in a fishbowl.

  From the beginning, the only thing I was certain about was that I wasn’t going to let the police talk to Casey. I explained to her the importance of not talking to anyone about her case and I kept stressing that and working on that with her. Until I could get a good grasp as to what was going on, my primary function was to protect Casey from making any incriminating statements. To accomplish this, I kept her from making any statements at all—frustrating the hell out of the police.

  That first night, Casey, Gabe, and I sat down at a table and as soon as we started talking, we heard a clicking sound coming from the intercom.

  “Gabe, did you hear that?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he said. Casey heard it, too, proof that though we were promised privacy, the police were listening in on our conversations. I immediately complained to the corporal who was on duty that night.

  I said to her, “Listen, I’m hearing clicking sounds.”

  She acted all upset. “That shouldn’t be,” she said. “You should be able to talk to her without having anyone listen in, and I’m going to talk to the powers that be. I’ll take care of it.”

  But we didn’t really trust her. I was very cautious about what we talked about in that jail, especially in the very beginning.

  I never pressed Casey about Caylee’s whereabouts or anything else. I had realized from the start that this girl had trust issues and I didn’t want to push her. This was her child who was missing. I decided that the prudent way of dealing with the situation was to let her know what my role was and to educate her as to what I was there to do. She was bright enough to let me know if there was something she needed to tell me. When I saw she wasn’t telling me certain things, I didn’t take that as a sign of dishonesty as much as I took it as a sign that we needed to get out of the jail so we could talk in private.

  “I met with your family,” I told Casey. “They’re actively looking for Caylee.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said.

  “I will do whatever you want me to do, but what’s important is for us to maintain a good relationship with them, because it will benefit you in the future,” I said.

  “I agree,” she said. “I understand.”

  I told her, “Being close to your family will give us information, and there is going to be a time when your interests are aligned, so they could help us.”

  I left the jail around ten that night and as I was walking out the door, I was ambushed by a local Orlando television reporter from WKMG by the name of Tony Pipitone. He started to question me on camera.

  “I can’t tell you anything we discussed,” I told him.

  He said to me, “What’s your reaction to the fact that cadaver dogs have just hit on something in the Anthonys’ backyard?”

  “I don’t have any reaction,” I said. “I just left the jail. I don’t know anything about it.”

  I was shocked by how much he knew. Why would the police be calling him, or any other member of the media for that matter, to say they were digging up a body in the backyard? It was really beginning to piss me off how much these cops talked to the media.

  When Pipitone turned off the camera, he said to me, “Sorry we had to sandbag you like that, but they just hit. The cops are digging up the body right now. I guess it’s time for you to start working on your insanity defense.”

  You motherfucker, I thought to myself. Who does he think he is? It was such a condescending thing to say—besides the fact that your ordinary insanity defense is always a loser.

  Gabe and I turned right around and went back into the jail to see Casey. I told her what Pipitone had told me.

  “They’re digging in the backyard,” I said. “You have to tell me if she’s back there.”

  Casey looked at me and said, “I don’t know where she is,” and it was one of the few times early on that I believed her. It was a unique moment between the two of us. I had a gut feeling she was telling me the truth.

  We walked out, and I said to Gabe, “I guess we’ll have to see what happens next.”

  And that’s what a lot of legal work in criminal cases is: reacting to things police do. I returned to my office, and the news of the cadaver dogs was all over the news. Again, I was shocked at how much the cops were talking publicly about the case.

  I mean, the cops weren’t talking to me. They were talking to the media. In fact, later on reporters would tell me this was an easy case for them to work because they didn’t have to go out looking for sources. All they had to do was sit around and wait for the police to call.

  I immediately began to work closely with the Anthony family because the strategy early on was simple: if we found Caylee, then Casey could get out of jail. I spent a majority of my time during the first couple of weeks sitting with the Anthonys. There were nights during that first week when I was in their home talking to them until one in the morning. Their object and strategy of inviting the media in was to get the word out that Caylee was missing.

  In their quest to find Caylee, George, Cindy, and Lee decided to make up flyers with Caylee’s picture on it and work with existing charity organizations for support. George announced he would set up a command center in front of a local Publix supermarket and, from his post at the command center, he would pass out flyers and T-shirts. Little did I know that a year later, a huge piece of evidence would come from that command center that would blow the case wide open.

  The news media descended on me almost overnight and came at me like an avalanche. Two days after I took the case, my secretary, Myrna, told me that a reporter from People was waiting in the lobby to talk to me.

  I walked into Gabe’s office and said, “People magazine is here.”

  “Yeah,” he said,” “they want to take you out to lunch.”

  “Look at these messages,” I said. “One is from 20/20, another from Dateline, and here’s one from the CBS Morning Show.”

  “Unbelievable,” he said.

  Myrna walked in.

  “The Osceola News-Gazette [is] on line three,” she said.

  I said jokingly, “I have People magazine in the lobby. I have 20/20 and Nightline to call back. Baby, the Osceola News-Gazette is going to have to get in the back of the line.”

  “It’s about the boat club,” she said dryly.

  Gabe and I had a good chuckle over that. And I did talk to them.

  I went to lunch with the reporter from People. The reporter asked if I would introduce her to Casey’s parents, and I agreed.

  One of the reporters who showed up at my office was former Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mark Fuhrman, the star witness against O. J. Simpson in his murder trial. Fuhrman was the one who found the bloody glove and was accused of being a racist. When tapes appeared on which he uttered the N-word, he was indicted for perjury. He accepted a plea deal and was forced to leave the police force. Fuhrman was now a Fox News contributor—talk about landing on your feet. A Fox producer had called me and asked if I would go to lunch with him. When I was in law school, I had watched that trial every day, so yes, I wanted to meet Fuhrman.

  I still remember the moment Fuhrm
an walked through my door. He was tall and handsome, and I thought to myself, Last week I was arguing motions in a simple marijuana possession case, and today Mark Fuhrman is taking me to lunch.

  The Fox producer, Fuhrman, and I went to lunch in Kissimmee. During the meal, the producer got up and went to the bathroom. I’m sure this was planned, because as soon as he left, Fuhrman said to me, “Listen, I have a lot of connections with law enforcement and I can really help you with this case, especially in maybe negotiating with the cops. If you tell me where Caylee is, we can solve this case and you’ll look like a big hero.”

  He said this as though I knew where she was and that, of all people, I would tell him.

  When Fuhrman said that, I looked to my left and to my right to make sure no one was listening and leaned forward, saying to him, “I’ll tell you where Caylee is if you tell me if you planted that glove.” A bloody glove was one of the key pieces of evidence against Simpson.

  He stared at me for a moment and then exploded in laughter. I could appreciate him trying to get the information out of me, even though it would have cost me my license. But I didn’t appreciate the fact that he thought I was stupid enough to tell him.

  I asked him for a favor. I said, “Mark, I teach at a local law school. Would you consider coming by my class tonight to speak to the students?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  What I failed to tell Fuhrman was that semester I was teaching at Florida A&M University College of Law, a historically black university. The second he walked in and began to speak, the students gave him a good grilling. I could have saved him, but it was just too much fun to watch.

  All the national TV shows came calling, including Nancy Grace on HLN and Geraldo at Large and On the Record with Greta van Susteren on Fox News. They all wanted to talk to the Anthonys. Cindy agreed, but for some reason George refused to go on. I kept telling him he should do it, but he said he didn’t want to make statements on television.

  “That’s Cindy’s job,” he said. “I don’t feel right doing that.” I found that odd.

  They asked me if I would go on with Cindy. I figured I would be able to deflect any questions about Casey, so I agreed. When I asked Casey about it, she was all for it, because being on TV was part of our overall quest to find Caylee.

  And so a couple days after I entered the case, I appeared with Cindy on a string of national TV shows, trying to focus attention on the search for this missing child.

  The first time I did Nancy Grace, Grace wasn’t hosting that night. Jane Velez-Mitchell was sitting in for her. It was a weird, fast-paced show, and I didn’t think it was very productive.

  The next day, Cindy and I were on Today. Matt Lauer was the host, and we told the audience about our quest to find Caylee.

  The second time I appeared on Nancy Grace, Grace herself was there. I had never watched Nancy Grace before this case, so I didn’t know what it was about, and I didn’t know what I was walking into, though I learned quickly.

  Grace, a former prosecutor from Fulton County, Georgia, grilled me about my conversations with Casey, and I told her I couldn’t discuss any of that. Immediately she accused me of hiding behind the attorney-client privilege.

  “I’m not hiding behind anything,” I said. “I’m keeping my license, and I’m shocked you even asked a question like that.”

  She replied haughtily, “I don’t represent criminals. I represent the victims.”

  I was thinking, Who is this quack?

  I quickly discovered that Grace’s show was a lot like professional wrestling, where the action and drama are more important than truth or facts. She would attack me, and we’d go to a commercial, and she’d say, “Hey, you’re doing great. This is just the schtick of the show.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You’re doing wonderfully,” she said. “Keep up the good work.”

  AS I SAID, very early on I spent a lot of time with Cindy and George. No one got much sleep the first couple of days. I chalked up their manic behavior to the situation as I knew it. Their granddaughter had been kidnapped and was missing, and they were terrified that something had happened to her.

  I thought, These people are going through a horrible, horrible experience, and this would make anybody crazy. It would make anybody act differently. It took me a while before I realized that not only was there something off about Casey but something was off about her parents as well. At first glance the Anthonys seemed like the all-American family. They worked very hard to maintain an amazing façade of normalcy, one that I bought into hook, line, and sinker. It took a significant amount of time before I realized, There’s something off here. Exactly how “off” I would discover much later.

  Everything suggested that when it came to Caylee that this was a loving family. Cindy was the protector. She swore up and down that Casey would never harm Caylee, and everyone else said the same thing. Her brother Lee said it. Even George said it. They all talked about what an incredible mother Casey was. After discovery was made public, not one incident of child abuse or child neglect on Casey’s part ever came to light. There was nothing that would lead anyone to believe this child was anything less than doted on and loved and cared for by her mother and grandparents.

  And you could see it throughout the house. You could see it everywhere—this child was loved. From a defense attorney’s perspective, I was being more reactive than proactive, because I was trying to get a grasp of the situation. Early on, as I was starting to acknowledge to myself that there was a possibility that Caylee was dead and trying to determine whether Casey—or anyone else—was involved, I thought, This has got to be an accident. These people truly loved this child and took good care of her. That was something that you could see. A person just doesn’t all of a sudden wake up one day and think, I’m going to kill my child, whom I’ve loved and doted upon for the last three years. People just don’t do that. Where there’s abuse, there’s always a progression of violence. There’s a black eye or a broken arm, or an emergency trip to the hospital for a more serious injury. Other people notice these things. There was nothing like that in this case. Even up until today, not a single person has ever testified that this child was anything but loved.

  Casey officially hired me on July 17, 2008, and I filed a motion for a bond hearing, which was heard on July 22. Meanwhile, I went to see Casey and the Anthonys every day. I don’t know what it was—I was drawn into this case immediately. It was as if everything else had to be put on hold, because I was sure that at any minute this child would either be found, or something was going to break. That’s what this case did to me from the very beginning: it sucked me in, taking me away from everything else I was doing.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE BOND HEARING

  ON JULY 22, the morning of the bond hearing for Casey, the Anthonys—George, Cindy, and Lee—came to my office. They came late, and I had to rush through our meeting with them so we could get to the courthouse on time for the 1:00 P.M. hearing. We went over the questions I was going to ask them, and I told them what to expect.

  I explained to them what I was trying to accomplish at the hearing, that my goal was to establish Casey’s ties to the community, to show she had no prior record, to show she had a safe place to go—the Anthony home—and to tell the judge that the Anthonys would be responsible for her and would ensure that she would show up in court.

  The purpose of bail, you have to understand, is not to punish the defendant. Rather, it’s to ensure the safety of the community and to make certain that the defendant shows up in court for the trial.

  Those are the two goals of bail, and those were the two criteria I was trying to establish for Casey. Under Florida statutes, a defendant accused of a third-degree felony, as Casey was, normally would have bonded out for $1,000. She was also charged with two misdemeanors, for which the standard bond amount totaled $500. I figured that under the local guidelines, once she posted $150 dollars, she would be out of jail.

  Mont
hs later I would find out that Lee had called Detective Yuri Melich and not only told him that the Anthonys had met with me but also told him what we talked about, including my strategy. My guess is that Lee was trying to stay on the good side of law enforcement by letting them know that just because he was testifying on Casey’s behalf, it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t assist them. Never before or since have I ever experienced someone calling law enforcement before going to testify for a family member.

  Later on I would discover that George would say some pretty negative things about me to law enforcement, and it would take quite a while longer before I found out why. But to my face both he and Lee were perfect gentlemen, as kind as they could be. They always seemed to be very encouraging when trying to help out Casey.

  Because I was meeting with the Anthonys at the last minute, we were running behind. As we walked into the courtroom, Judge Stan Strickland was already seated on the bench. Not a good start for me.

  I got ready and made my presentation. I called George, Cindy, and Lee to the stand. George did a wonderful job. He testified that Casey had no criminal history, that Casey had lived at the same address for twenty years, that she had significant ties to the community, that even when the police started to question her, she never ran, even though she could have.

  I also went over the family’s finances so the judge would have an idea of how much bond money the family could afford to post. I explained that George was a security officer making ten to fourteen dollars an hour and that Cindy was a nurse. She wasn’t a practicing nurse but worked as a clinical supervisor making between $50,000 and $60,000 a year. I talked about the family assets and said they owned a home worth $250,000.

  They were middle class, I said, maybe even lower than that, and they all said they would assist with the posting of bond.

  After we were done, I felt I had established Casey’s significant ties to the community and showed that she had no prior record, was no danger to the community, and was no flight risk.