Presumed Guilty

by Jose Baez

  I NEEDED TO SPEND TIME alone with my client, but after the judge hit us with a $500,000 punishment, I was at a loss for what to do. And then out of the blue I got a call from Polakoff Bail Bonds, the largest of Orlando’s bail bondsmen. A man named Kalik came to my office to meet with me.

  “I can post the $500,000 bond,” he said. “In fact, here’s the paperwork. I’m one of the few bondsmen in town who has this type of authority.”

  Most bondsmen require a 10 percent payment in cash and then collateral that equals the rest. In the case of the Anthonys, they would have to pay him $50,000 and own a house worth $450,000. Their house wasn’t worth close to that, but Polakoff was willing to give them a break. He said that if the Anthonys made payments on the $50,000 and put their home up for collateral, he would post Casey’s bail. It was exactly what the Anthonys were looking for.

  I suspect the reason he was willing to do that was that it would bring a significant amount of publicity to his bail-bonds firm. I didn’t care. I was thrilled to have an opportunity to get Casey out of jail.

  Cindy and Lee had been going through the motions of trying to find a bondsman to bail her out, so I called Cindy to tell her the good news.

  After meeting with the bondsman and spending a lot of time arranging to get Casey out, I was shocked when, at the last minute, Cindy said “no.”

  “George doesn’t want to post the bond,” she said. My jaw hit the ground, because they were sure Casey knew where Caylee was, and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t doing everything they could to find Caylee.

  I told her that I had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this and that I was furious she was saying no.

  “He’s my husband,” said Cindy. “He’s half owner of the house. I have to respect his wishes.”

  Angry as I could be, I went to see Casey. I told her that George was preventing her from getting out of jail.

  “I really want to talk to him,” she said.

  From the start, I had instructed Casey not to accept visits from her parents or from Lee. I requested this for two reasons. First, because law enforcement was telling the Anthonys, We can’t talk to her, but you can, wink, wink, in essence making them agents of the state in their attempt to get her to talk to them. Second and most importantly, these meetings were recorded by the police, which was bad enough, but they were also broadcast across the country through the media every time they met. Despite my counsel, she continued to accept the visits—a major source of frustration for me. I kept telling her that every word she was saying to them would be recorded and used against her in court, where it could be microanalyzed and misinterpreted by those judging her fate. But her family ties were strong, and she kept agreeing to see them. Though George refused to bond her out, Casey said she was sure that if she could just talk to him, he would relent and put up the money.

  Unfortunately, I was right about the state using her conversations with her family members against her. The state would later make a majority of its case around the conversations during those visitations. The evidence would turn out to be devastating, painting her in a negative light. On certain occasions, what she said to them undermined our defense.

  One of the worst examples occurred during a phone call she made to her parents on the night she was arrested. She called home, and the conversation was taped and later played in court for all to hear. During the call she started to fight with her mom, who wanted to know what she knew about Caylee’s disappearance. Curtly, Casey asked for her boyfriend’s phone number. Her mother said she didn’t have it. Casey asked her to put Lee on the phone. Then she spoke to a girlfriend, who wailed, “If anything happens to Caylee, I’ll die.”

  Casey can be heard saying on the tape, “Oh, my God. Calling you guys was a huge waste of time. All I wanted was my boyfriend’s number.”

  From a defendant’s standpoint, it was terrible. She sounded so cold. She came across very badly, like she was completely heartless. All these people were trying to do was find out what happened to Caylee, and she was being bitchy with them. The prosecution used the tape to bash her at trial.

  Though her motivation to see her parents was to try to get them to bond her out, I repeatedly told her she was jeopardizing her case every time she talked with them. Finally I tried a different approach. I bought a book about the landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court case that gives each person the right to remain silent. I wanted her to read it so she could educate herself as to her constitutional rights, where they come from, and why they’re important.

  Basically, I gave her a homework assignment. I gave her the book and asked her to write an outline of it. When I came to visit her two days later, not only had she read the book but her report was so intelligently written, I doubt a seasoned lawyer could have written it better.

  I remember thinking to myself, Wow, this girl could have been anything she wanted to be in life. Instead, she’s here in jail and in the running for Most Hated Person in America.

  But I had finally gotten through to her. She then agreed to start rejecting the entreaties of her family members to come see her.

  Coincidentally, a day after she began rejecting her parents’ visits, I had a meeting in my office with prosecutor Burdick, Sergeant John Allen, and Commander Matt Irwin, supervisors from the missing persons unit. They said they wanted to set up a “private” meeting with Casey and her family in hopes Casey would tell them where Caylee was.

  When Burdick suggested Casey meet with one of her relatives, I thought to myself, Maybe this would be beneficial. Maybe she can talk them into posting bond.

  “We can set it up at your office,” Burdick said. “We can bring Casey here. She can meet with whatever family members she wants.”

  I agreed and then went to the jail and talked to Casey about it.

  “This might be something you might want to do,” I said to her. “Maybe you can talk your family into bonding you out. Who would you like to meet with?”

  “I only want to meet with my father,” she said. “Only my father.”

  At that time it really didn’t mean that much to me. The realization of its importance only came much later. I told the cops, “She wants to meet with her father.”

  The next day I received a call from Allen, who informed me that, “Unfortunately my boss won’t okay bringing Casey over to your office because she’s a security risk.”

  “A security risk?” I said with disdain. “You guys are cops.”

  “The media is there across the street,” Allen said. “Anyone could go there. It’s too high profile a place.” He recommended we do it at the courthouse. I was thinking, They didn’t want to do it in my office because they couldn’t get in to bug my office last night. But I played along and said, “Okay, but this has to happen tomorrow because the next day I’m flying to New York and won’t be there, and we’ll have to put it off until next week.” My intention to leave Florida was a piece of information I never should have given them.

  They came back with the same excuse the next day.

  “For security reasons we can’t do it,” said Allen.

  “In that case,” I said, “we’ll see if we can do it next week.”

  I was flying to New York to meet with forensic experts on August 14, 2008. One of the networks wanted to fly me up to do an interview and meet its executives. I was using the trip to build a defense team on the media’s dime. While the entire world thought I was doing these interviews just to get on TV, I realized that this case was going to be expensive to defend and I had to be creative and use the media to my advantage. And that’s exactly what I did. Each and every time I did an interview in New York or someplace else, I used the trip to see and work with my experts and build a defense.

  Before I left my office to go to the airport, I saw on television the headline, “Casey Anthony Accepts Visit from Parents.” I couldn’t believe it. This was despite my numerous pleadings to her not to do so.

  I was very upset with her and called my ass
ociate Gabe Adam immediately. I told him, “Go over there and read Casey the riot act. Explain to her that she can’t be doing this. Tell her I’m working on getting her the private visit.”

  In fairness to Casey, she wanted badly to talk to her parents about bonding her out. They had the ability to spring her and they weren’t doing it. She was antsy and wanted them to act. I got on the plane and flew to New York.

  At the jail George reportedly told Casey, “All you need to do to make the private meeting happen is to write a letter to the sheriff saying you want a private meeting with me, and it will happen immediately.”

  Casey later said she was sure I would be notified of the meeting, but George later said that the police told him, “If she writes the letter to the sheriff, we don’t need the lawyer.” So Casey wrote the letter, gave it to a guard, and the cops sprang into action, knowing full well I would be in New York.

  The police picked up George, took him in a squad car to the jail, and unbeknownst to George, taped him during the entire trip. Halfway to the jail, the police were shocked when they got a phone call from the jail saying Casey’s lawyer was at the jail with her.

  “I don’t understand,” said one of the policemen on the recording, “I thought he was supposed to be in New York.”

  But it wasn’t me; it was Gabe who was reading Casey the riot act. Later Gabe told me that when he arrived, he saw a lot of strange movement. The police made him wait a long time in the waiting room. Finally, having run out of patience, Gabe said to the police, “Hey, what’s going on with my client. Why can’t I see my client?”

  “Don’t worry,” said the cops. “We’re making the visit happen.”

  Suspicious, Gabe asked them, “What visit?”

  “The one with her father.”

  Gabe said, “No. I want to see my client this second.” And they delivered Casey to him before her father arrived at the jail.

  “Jose has no knowledge of this,” Gabe told Casey. “You can’t do this.” And at that point she rejected the visit, spoiling the police and prosecution’s best-laid plans. Had Gabe not been there, they would have brought George in to see her and would have taped the two of them talking. Who knows what would have been said that they would have tried to use against her?

  When I learned of the tricky business the cops were up to, I was livid. Again. This was a clear violation of Casey’s right to counsel. It was an end-run by the police who were trying to get to her without having to deal with me. It was unprofessional, dirty police work. I do understand why they do it—the police sometimes think the ends justify the means—but we have a Constitution, and there’s never an excuse for police officers to violate someone’s constitutional rights. We have brave men and women dying every day to preserve those rights. I am a firm believer that these rights mean something and no one, especially a police officer who is sworn to uphold the law, has the right to violate them.

  A huge debate arose as to whether I was cooperating with law enforcement. I had written a letter to the police saying I would be more than happy to assist them in the search efforts to find Caylee, but that under no circumstances would I allow them to interrogate Casey. I said if they wanted to run leads by Casey, I’d talk to her about it, but that Casey had no idea where Caylee was.

  The police never once called me to get Casey’s help, despite my offer. They had no intention of doing so. All they wanted was to go in and take a few more shots at her.

  My insistence that Casey remain silent became a huge public debate.

  “Is Jose Baez cooperating with law enforcement?” ran the headlines. The cops kept saying, “He hasn’t contacted us once, and Casey isn’t cooperating,” trying to put pressure on us.

  My answer: “I’m sorry. You can complain to every newspaper and TV station in the world, but I’m not letting you get close to my client. End of story.”

  And because I did what any competent lawyer in my position would do, I quickly gained very powerful, vindictive enemies.

  Here’s another underhanded thing the police did: before I stopped them, whenever George, Cindy, or Lee visited Casey, they always released the videotapes of their visits to the media. Wouldn’t you know it: the only tape they never made public was their dirty business of August 14, 2008, when George told her to write a letter to the sheriff in an attempt to get around the attorney-client privilege.

  When I filed a motion forcing them to turn it over, I’ll never forget prosecutor Frank George saying in court, “It must have been misplaced.”

  I couldn’t hold back the laughter on that one. Here’s the biggest case in the state of Florida, maybe the country, when every statement made by Casey was being broadcast everywhere by the media through the police, and they’re going to tell me they lost one of the tapes? In my mind it was no coincidence the conversation that was “missing” was the one in which George told her, “Write a letter to the sheriff, and we can make the meeting happen.”

  Every day, it seemed, there was a leak coming from law enforcement. They had a well-orchestrated plan to convict Casey in the court of public opinion and to taint the jury pool, as the police began to serve the media a steady diet of leaks and false information. They leaked that there was the “smell of death” coming from the trunk of Casey’s car. They leaked that cadaver dogs had sniffed the trunk of Casey’s car and alerted to decomposition. They leaked that a single strand of Caylee’s hair found in the trunk had the “death-banding” associated with finding a dead body. They leaked that they had found a stain in the trunk and, after testing it, had found DNA. And finally, they leaked that chloroform had been found after testing the air in the trunk and that experts had discovered that Casey had looked up chloroform on her computer.

  As you will see, none of this “evidence” turned out to be based on fact. But that didn’t matter at all. Like in politics, this was about winning. How they won didn’t matter. The prosecution and the police from the start were convinced that Casey had killed Caylee, put her body in her trunk, and disposed of her somewhere, and they were going to make sure she was convicted, no matter what facts or evidence got in the way of their version of reality.

  As a public relations and prosecution strategy, it was brilliant. They may not have had the evidence but they figured if they could inflame the public and the possible jury pool, it would give them a clear advantage when selecting a jury. And if they could intimidate Casey or her so-called “rookie lawyer,” maybe she would fold, accept a plea, and tell the police where Caylee’s body was so everyone could go home.

  I knew this was their game, but I also knew that it was all a fishing expedition. I thought to myself, If they really had all of this evidence of her guilt, why do they need to talk to Casey so badly? Why are they resorting to cheap tricks to get her to talk?

  Her “rookie” lawyer decided we weren’t going to fold just yet.

  For the entire first year, whenever there was new discovery, the first place I heard it from was the television set. It was never given to me in advance.

  The public records law in Florida is counterintuitive to a defendant’s right to a fair trial, and early on, I filed a motion with the court asking it to delay disseminating the information about the case to the media and the public so I could have an opportunity to review it first to see if there were any objectionable reasons to making it public.

  Strickland denied my motion without even a hearing.

  ONE DAY I GOT A CALL from one of my paralegals.

  “There’s a guy who says he wants to bond Casey out,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “He says he’s a bounty hunter. He says he has a show on the National Geographic Channel, and he’s willing to post Casey’s bond.”

  The man’s name was Leonard Padilla, and when I checked him out, I found out he did have a reality show on the National Geographic Channel. When he arrived in Orlando, he was met at the airport by dozens of cameras. He stood and talked with a toothpick in his mouth, telling the reporters how he was
going to get Casey out, and how he believed that Caylee was still alive, and that as soon as Casey got out, he was going to give her a beer and get her to relax and tell him where Caylee was.

  I didn’t get to meet Padilla until the next day, when he came into my office. He had his entourage with him, including a guy who followed him around with a camcorder. As soon as he walked in the door, I told him, “He’s going to have to turn the camera off, because I’m not getting involved in what you’re doing.” He obliged.

  Leonard came into my office, and I found him to be a funny, entertaining guy. He was like a character in professional wrestling. He was a cowboy—wore a cowboy hat—and with a Mexican accent, he would say, “I’m in ‘Or-lon-do,’” yet would pronounce his name “Pa-dill-ah” without the Mexican accent, where it should have been “Pa-dee-yah.”

  So here was this Mexican guy from Sacramento, California, with a Southern accent and a cowboy hat, but he had $50,000 in hand—apparently his nephew was a bail bondsman—and he’s a bounty hunter with a reality show. He told me he wanted to be the next Duane “Dog” Chapman, the bounty hunter who had a popular show on A&E, and that he was trying to renew his show.

  I could see that the reason he was agreeing to post the bond was mostly for the publicity. My first impulse was to tell him to get lost, but I had a client in jail who needed $50,000 to bond out, as well as $450,000 in collateral, and she had no way to post it. I would have been shirking my duty if I had sent him on his way. Even though I felt this wasn’t the ideal situation, I took advantage of it.

  I realized I would have to deal with this guy. I said to myself, So long as he gets her out of jail and I can protect her from him, this shouldn’t be a problem. He’ll get his publicity, and Casey’ll get out.

  We both discussed that. I told him, “I’m not going to put my client’s safety or her future in your hands.”