Presumed Guilty

by Jose Baez

  The day arrived when I learned what the accusations against me were. When I found out, I was so furious I could barely stand it. It turned out that when Strickland heard Dominic say, “Jose Baez told me if I found Caylee, call me first, not 9-1-1,” it was proof I was obstructing justice.

  How could he have believed the guy? This was the guy who believed the psychic who told him Caylee’s body was in the gas tank of Casey’s car. This is the guy who believed the postal service was involved in her disappearance. This was the guy who believed that “Zanny the nanny” was a code name for Xanax.

  I thought to myself, This clown has zero credibility, and I’m going to have to prove that.

  I knew it wouldn’t be difficult because, luckily, I remembered an email exchange between Dominic, Cindy, and me, in which Dominic said that he had information that Caylee was flown to Puerto Rico on a private jet, then held there until she was flown to Colombia and taken across the border in Venezuela. He said his associates were closely watching the kidnappers and to not release the information to law enforcement until extraction was in play.

  Once the bar saw this email, the Dominic Casey debacle was over.

  It was still not a happy time. Until I could clear my name, I felt very low.

  Lorena became pregnant that same month. She was elated, but I was so depressed, I couldn’t express any joy about anything, and she felt I wasn’t displaying the proper amount of joy over her pregnancy. What she didn’t realize was how much this case was affecting me. I told her initially, but after that I clammed up. She really didn’t know how much this case was bothering me.

  Meanwhile, Casey was taking a pounding from the prosecution and its attack dogs in the media. Casey had photos posted on Facebook, pictures of her when she was eighteen years old. Among those pictures were ones of her drinking, partying at clubs, peeing in public, and mooning one of her friends, her ass bare to the wind. She was a kid, but in the prosecution’s attempt to enrage the jury pool, it sought to portray Casey in the worst possible light by leaking the photos to the media. Those photos were spread around the country through the tabloids and the newspapers that chose to act like the tabloids.

  I tried to block them, but Strickland overruled me once again. The photos were released, and everyone following the trial began referring to Casey as “the party girl.”

  When the prosecutors talked about Casey to the cops, they would say, “Her daughter was missing, and she partied for thirty-one days.” They knew it was improper. Worse, they knew it was bullshit. They didn’t care.

  They also questioned Casey’s boyfriends about her sex life and made the testimony public.

  The cops actually asked, “What was she like in bed?” “What was she like afterwards?” “Was she cold, a wham-bam, thank-you-ma’am type, or was she warm and cuddly?”

  The boyfriends were asked, “Did you wear a condom?” “Did she tell you she had any diseases?”

  There wasn’t much we could do about that. It had absolutely nothing to do with how Caylee died, but the cops were trying their best to paint Casey as a slut, to show she was sleeping with different men. I wanted to scream from the rooftop, I hate to break it to you, but Casey’s sex life has nothing to do with her guilt or innocence. But suddenly her sex life became a focus of discovery.

  This served one purpose: they believed if a juror thought she was a slut, that juror would look at the evidence with a different perspective and vote against her.

  The next up to take a shot at me was the Orlando Sentinel, which ran a two-part hit piece on my background. The paper brought up my issues with the bar, my prior bankruptcy, and basically dug up every negative thing it could find about me. On a positive note, as a result of the Sentinel’s story, I met Cheney Mason in April 2009.

  Apparently, Cheney read the story and wrote a letter to the Sentinel, suggesting that the paper try balanced reporting and look into Jeff Ashton’s history of being named in appellate cases for improper conduct. He even cited the capital cases that had to be retried. The Sentinel thanked Cheney for the letter and promised to be fair and do a piece on Ashton. It’s been three years, and the paper still hasn’t written so much as a blurb, while I got blasted on the front page of the paper two days in a row.

  I drove to his office in downtown Orlando and thanked him. Cheney was old school. He was a country boy with a Southern drawl. Prior to meeting him, the only person I knew who spoke that way was Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden. Cheney, the former president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, practiced law the way I was taught.

  Whenever I had problems or issues, I would hop in the car and go see him. Anytime I needed help, Cheney was there.

  Finally, he said to me one day, “Jose, do you want me to try this damn case with you?”

  “I have no problem with that,” I said. I talked with Andrea Lyon and Linda Baden, and both agreed.

  By the fall of 2009 I had become the Snidely Whiplash of jurisprudence. I couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing that I was covering up for a killer and that I, the inexperienced, bumbling defense attorney, was subverting justice by muzzling Casey and preventing her from admitting her evil deeds.

  Knowing how cruel and mean the media could be to me, I took every measure to protect my family from suffering the same fate. When Lorena was pregnant, I did all I could to keep it under wraps from everyone. I knew that one slip by the wrong person would unleash the media upon us, so during her pregnancy, we didn’t invite family or friends over to the house. The only people who visited us at home came from my office. We had a very sympathetic doctor, and anytime we went to see him, he let us in the back door so none of his other patients would see us.

  The day came for Lorena to give birth. Our doctor called the hospital to let them know I was coming. Lorena was admitted under the name of Sabrina Philips. I entered through the front door and was recognized by a few people, but fortunately no one said anything. Our son, Jose Sebastian Baez, was born on September 1, 2009, at 11:45 P.M.

  I was grateful to everyone at the hospital who respected our privacy and didn’t say anything to anyone. One time I was standing in the common area, and a woman gave me the dirtiest of looks, as if I was there to kill some babies. A part of me wanted to be angry, but another realized that people were going to be ignorant, and I chalked it up to complete and utter ignorance on her part. I moved on.

  A couple of months after Jose was born, I finally told Cindy. That same day I received a call from an NBC news reporter sending his congratulations; I can only assume it was Cindy who told him. I asked him not to say anything, and he swore to me he wouldn’t, but I had to hold my breath until the next day, when no reports surfaced on TV. Later, one of the cops congratulated me. Turns out he was told by one of the jailhouse snitches. When you achieve celebrity, you become instantly recognizable; unfortunately, you give up your personal privacy as well.

  It was disappointing we couldn’t celebrate Jose’s birth the way we would have liked to.

  BY 2010 CASEY’S FUNDS had run extremely low, even though she had received donations from people who were outraged over how unfairly she was being treated. The cost of fighting the case was exorbitant, and coupled with the weakness of the economy, which affected my law practice significantly, we were hurting financially. I was also spending so much time on the case that I didn’t have time to network and bring in new business.

  I had to cut corners, and the first move I made was to hire interns from Florida A&M University College of Law instead of secretaries. I had run through five secretaries because they weren’t used to the high stress of the job. I had taught a course at the law school in 2008, and the school invited me back each year to talk to the students. Many wanted to come work with me, and it was great to be around the law students because of the energy and enthusiasm they brought to our office.

  Then there were a couple months when things were so tight that I couldn’t make the payroll. Some of my staff came to me and sa
id, “I can get paid next week.” Everyone at the office made sacrifices, and I am indebted to them all. Luckily, the doors stayed open, and my staff was able to work on Casey’s case as well as other cases.

  During the three years I represented Casey, I conducted three jury trials. Two were homicide cases, and one was a rape case. All three defendants were found not guilty, though you didn’t read about any of those cases in the newspapers. I did get one local news story on News 13, but no one else picked it up. I was angry that the media didn’t cover those cases. Of course, my winning didn’t fit into the media’s story line of the “incompetent lawyer.”

  When I was in court, everyone knew who I was, and when the jury came back in the rape case, I saw two reporters waiting to learn the verdict. When it was “not guilty,” they turned on their heels and left. Had I lost the case, I guarantee you they’d have jumped on the story and reported it. I apologize if I sound a little bitter, but really, how could I not be?

  By 2009 I had also lost faith in both George and Cindy Anthony. I was aware that George was leaving clues for the cops as to Casey’s guilt, but I always thought Cindy would be loyal. Then there came the day when Casey hadn’t seen Cindy in four months, and we had a court appointment to air a motion. It would have been Cindy’s first chance to go see Casey in a long, long time.

  Casey was looking forward to seeing her, but Cindy instead traveled to Tampa to see Meredith Viera.

  “Is my mother here?” Casey wanted to know.

  I told her the truth. Clients want you to tell them straight.

  “She didn’t come,” I said. “Your mother is having lunch with Meredith Viera instead.”

  Just about every month, it seemed, the media would spread rumors about my demise. It started when the Anthonys hired a lawyer, and after that the rumors never ceased: Casey was going to fire me, or the judge was going to hold me in contempt, or the bar was going to take away my license, or another big-shot lawyer was going to take the case away from me. Those rumors, coupled with the digs about my competency, made me realize that the prosecution had poisoned the atmosphere of this trial by doing all it could to convince the public of Casey’s guilt. As a result, the media wanted Casey jailed and wanted me to fail. It always bothered me, but I got more and more used to it.

  Sometimes a rumor started because another lawyer joined my team, like Andrea or Cheney, but as often as not, it started with no basis—they were all baseless, actually—simply because they felt like starting a rumor.

  There were times when the media would ask the Anthonys, “Are you satisfied with Jose representing Casey?”

  In what other case does a question like that ever get asked?

  As soon as the prosecution announced that it was going to seek the death penalty, all the amateur legal experts knew that I would need a death penalty expert to defend Casey because I wasn’t qualified to do so. You have to have tried two death penalty cases and you also have to have a certain amount of credits to be qualified. Most people who are charged with the death penalty are poor people, so unless you’re a veteran public defender, and really, almost a lifer in the public defenders’ office, chances are you’re not death penalty–qualified.

  I’d say 95 percent of lawyers are not qualified to try death penalty cases, but in my case, whenever the press wrote about me, they said it was because of my inexperience.

  The other thing they ruminated about was that Andrea was going to replace me as Casey’s lawyer. I don’t know why, except that it fit the media’s image of me as an inexperienced, rookie Latino lawyer.

  Later in the case I was unable to pay my mortgage, and my house went into foreclosure. I was about to leave the house when I saw the helicopters flying over. I looked up, and I knew what this was about. I couldn’t leave my house. I didn’t want them to film me leaving. It was humiliating, never mind putting my family at risk, something for which I will never forgive them. The media took that to mean I was going to quit the case.

  “He can’t afford to stay on the case,” was what they wrote.

  But I never considered quitting, not for a second. I told myself, I will try this case out of a cardboard box before I quit.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE SHRINKS

  INCEST HAS BEEN CITED as the most common form of child abuse, with estimates that between ten and twenty million American children have been victimized by parental incest.

  Incest is considered by experts to be a particularly damaging form of sexual abuse because it is perpetrated by an individual the victim trusts and depends on. The victim feels great pressure to keep quiet because of her fear of the family breaking up over her revelations.

  Father-daughter incest is most common, though mother-son incest does happen. It’s difficult to assess just how prevalent parental child abuse is because of the secrecy that surrounds it. Experts say that many young incest victims accept and believe the perpetrator’s explanation that this is a “learning experience that happens in every family.”

  As a result, it remains one of the most underreported and least-discussed crimes in our nation because its victims can’t bring themselves to come forward because of guilt, shame, fear, and social and familial pressure. There’s another more practical reason: incest victims feel that either no one will believe them, or they will be blamed or punished if they report the abuse. As in Casey’s case, more often than not, they’re ridiculed for coming forward.

  Casey had been courageous enough to tell me about the incest she had endured. But because of the compartmentalization, and all the discredited lies she told to the police at the beginning of this case, we knew no one would believe her. She was the girl who cried wolf.

  One of the problems I knew we would have with Casey’s account of what occurred on June 16, 2008, was how to present what really happened to the jury.

  We knew putting her on the stand would be risky, so instead we decided the best way to get her testimony admitted was to have psychiatrists interview her and put them on the stand.

  We debated this for six months. Casey’s death penalty lawyer, Ann Finnell, kept saying, “How are we going to get this in without her testifying?” Cheney Mason talked about a case he had in which he was able to get it in. In fact, Cheney said he submitted a video of his client making the statement without subjecting him to cross-examination.

  This was not a case where we were pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. We did the research. We knew we were on very thin ground, but we still wanted to hire psychiatrists to talk to Casey.

  One of the first names to come up was Dr. Jeffrey Danziger. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, he was an associate professor at the University of Florida and had a thriving practice in psychiatry in Winter Park, Florida.

  At the behest of the court, Danziger had interviewed Casey and had made a competency evaluation. In his report, Danziger wrote, “Casey Anthony does not fit, in my opinion, into any of the categories of maternal filicide. The history is not consistent with an altruistic or mercy killing, a mentally ill or psychotic mother, the accidental death of a battered child, spousal revenge, or an unwanted child.”

  He noted what a “doting, loving, devoted” mother Casey was.

  He quoted Cindy saying, “Casey bought safety door handles and outlet covers. She carried an extra key for the car, for what if she locked the child in the car by accident. She was very safety conscious. She called me if the child had a sniffle, the child never had a diaper rash. She cooked her food, healthy food, vegetables.”

  He explained her behavior during the thirty days she was away from home by citing a “pathological level of denial.”

  Danziger wrote, “Denial is a psychological mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed, and one keeps out of conscious awareness any aspects of reality that if acknowledged would produce extreme anxiety.” He said she was acting the way she was because of a “refusal or inability to recognize reality.”

&n
bsp; In his initial competency hearing report, he wrote about how normal she seemed in the face of such stress, calling it a clear indication of her compartmentalization.

  Danziger seemed a perfect person to examine her for the defense. I thought he would carry a lot of weight not only with the judge but also with the jury, in part because he had been called by the court to evaluate her the first time.

  When we talked to him, Danziger seemed excited at the opportunity.

  “I’m glad to not have to sit on the sidelines for this one,” he said.

  We were ecstatic to have him. We thought we had ourselves a great psychiatrist.

  Danziger went to see Casey several times, and each time we talked to him, he indicated to us that he was certain she had been a victim of sexual abuse. He said that while she didn’t have any symptoms of mental illness and didn’t have any diagnosable issues, she did show classic signs of sexual abuse, such as lying, compartmentalizing, and pretending nothing was wrong.

  We’re going to be super strong with him, I thought.

  We only had one reservation about Danziger: normally when he testified in court, he was a witness for the prosecution.

  We also hired a psychologist, Dr. William Weitz. He was referred to us by a friend of Andrea Lyon, who had a colleague that used him in another case. The background of Weitz, a graduate of the University of Miami with a PhD in clinical psychology, had to do with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had once trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (now called the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) in Washington, DC.

  What I wanted to talk to Weitz about was the sexual abuse, of course, but equally important, I wanted to be able to explain Casey’s behaviors during the thirty days after Caylee was found in the pool by her father, behaviors that the prosecution and the media had trumpeted as shocking proof that Casey killed Caylee: partying at the nightclub Fusion, getting a tattoo, and ostensibly staying away from home all that time, as the prosecution described it, to party.