Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story (56 page)

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HE NEXT WITNESS
after Tony was the second appearance of George Anthony. I could see that the more time I spent cross-examining George, the more frustrated he was getting. This was why Jeff Ashton’s decision to limit my cross the first time was an incredibly bad move. I had more time to develop my crosses, and I also was afforded more opportunities to see what angered George on the witness stand.

George kept wanting to fight me toe-to-toe, and I noticed that when I’d order him to come down from the witness stand and write things on my exhibits, he would become infuriated.

We were engaged in a psychological battle in which a man who couldn’t have hated me any more was having to follow my instructions, even one as simple as writing something down on a calendar. I knew right then I getting under his skin, and because of that I also knew I was going to keep asking him to write things down on the board.

The purpose of his taking the stand this time was to talk about the fight he had with Casey over the gas cans. The idea was for the jury to believe that she had taken them and therefore she was responsible for putting the duct tape on them, and therefore she was the one who killed Caylee by putting duct tape across Caylee’s mouth, supposedly because Caylee was keeping her from partying.

The key piece of the state’s “evidence” was the duct tape on the gas cans, but I always felt the gas cans benefited the defense much more than the state. On cross-examination I wanted to introduce photos of the gas cans. They were entered as exhibits, but the prosecution was being slick by deliberately not introducing those photos.

My entire cross revolved around those gas cans, but the prosecution refused to stipulate I could show the pictures of them, and so I had to wait my turn—a month later as it was—and when I did, I would shove those photos down George Anthony’s throat.

I really wanted to show the jury those photos. Ordinarily the defense is allowed to refer to an exhibit during cross—that doesn’t mean it’s admitted into evidence—however Judge Perry didn’t even allow me to do that. In the end, because Ashton tried to get the tactical advantage at every twist and turn, he forgot about the jurors. They, too, wanted to see this photograph and in denying them that, they saw he was hiding the truth. A prosecutor should never look like he’s hiding something from the jury, especially if you’re the one arguing that it’s the defense that’s doing all of the hiding. This prosecution was hiding the ball on almost every play, and I do think the jury saw through that. In some instances it insulted the jurors’ intelligence. When the state failed to call crucial witnesses and show them certain things, like the gas can photograph, it lost all credibility.

Judge Perry was shutting me down like crazy. He was on top of me to the extreme.

Some judges let you try your case; the theory behind that is if the defense does its best and the state does its best, true justice will come out in the end. It also lowers the risk of the case coming back on appeal because the judge hadn’t restricted the defense in any way.

Every time a judge denies something from the defense, it increases the possibility of it coming back on reversal.

Judge Perry was no such judge. In his courtroom, I wasn’t on a short leash; I was wearing a choke collar.

Not being able to show the photos of the gas cans was only one example. Later there came a point when Judge Perry was so angry with me that he stopped the trial, excused the jurors so they knew he was mad at me—because of something I had allegedly done wrong—and he kept them out for a long time, meaning the end result was the jurors would get pissed off at me for slowing down the trial because of my incompetence, thereby making me less persuasive.

Another time I asked George Anthony to step down and write something on an exhibit. Proper court decorum dictates that you ask permission from the judge. But sometimes you’re on a roll when cross-examining someone, and he had just been down a second earlier when I did ask permission, and this time I told George to come down, and Judge Perry immediately said, “Stop.” And he said, “Mr. Baez,” and he began yelling at me for not asking permission. It was like, “You didn’t say Simon Says, or pretty please.”

This was in front of the jury.

What’s important, the jury usually sees the judge as the wisest person in the room. It relies on the judge who’s in charge of taking them out for nice dinners, for arranging their accommodations, their comfort, so anything nice they received came from Judge Perry. It’s always important that the judge appears to like or respect you as a lawyer before the jury. I was getting neither.

But what people don’t realize is that a judge is a lawyer, and most people don’t trust lawyers, but when a lawyer puts on a black robe, all of a sudden he is noble and all-knowing.

Another thing: a judge is an elected official, which means by definition he is a politician. So a judge is not only a lawyer but he’s a lawyer who’s a politician. Nevertheless, once he puts on that robe, he’s cloaked with a certain amount of brilliance as it relates to a lay person, and I just find that fascinating.

The judge also gets to sit above everyone else. If you look at the rituals when it comes to the judiciary, it’s interesting, to say the least.

A
T THE END OF THAT DAY
, because of the way Judge Perry was treating me, I really started to feel down. I was an emotional wreck. The adrenaline rush had subsided, and the fatigue started to build again. It was from a combination of the pressure, of getting my objections overruled time and time again by Judge Perry, who was shutting us down at every turn, of the pressure of being involved in a high-profile case, and the responsibility of it all. I was starting to come apart. Everything started to take its toll.

The toughest, most stressful times for me were the hours between leaving court in the evening and returning in the morning. It was bad leaving court, and the evenings were the worst. In fact, at times they were intolerable. But I was determined to never let it show. It’s like they say, sharks smell fear. So do lawyers, and I never gave the first clue that something inside of me was wrong or hurting.

I called one of my very best friends, Michael Walsh, and I asked him to send me a Catholic prayer to help me get through this in my time of need.

He sent me a prayer and in addition he sent me a text that read:

“When the Philistines sent their most ferocious warrior out front to destroy the Israelites, God sent a small boy named David armed with a rock and a rag. David destroyed Goliath with a single shot. When God is with you it matters not who is against you, stand firm in the face of adversity and remain still knowing He is the lord.”

It truly inspired me. It was as if it spoke to me. I was the underdog, feeling insulted and ridiculed every step of the way, and I was facing not only my very own Goliath, but several of them. I immediately changed the screen saver on my iPhone to a photo of Michelangelo’s David.

The other thing I did was go to church every morning before court. I was born a Catholic, but I wasn’t raised in a religious household. There’s a Catholic church about a block from the courthouse, and most days before going to court, I would kneel and pray for fifteen minutes.

Some days I would just sit in church and stare at Jesus on the cross. I’d stare out and just think for a few minutes, and each day I would feel a message being given to me. It was more about my life than it was about the case.

Some days a voice would tell me,
You need to call your mother and tell her how much you love her.
Or,
You need to call your wife and daughter.
Or,
You need to be more grateful.

And when I would sit and pray, I’d pray for wisdom. I’d pray for strength to handle those things I had no control over.

A calmness would usually come over me. I’d be in the zone, doing my thing, and I’d be fine.

One morning I was running late to court, so I skipped church that morning. We had a horrible day. I remember thinking,
Never again
.
Judge Perry is going to have to put me in jail for being late before I miss church again.

I then made a decision as it related to Judge Perry: that was no matter how much he attacked me or berated me, I would be incredibly respectful. If he indeed had a bias against me, he would show that to the jury on his own. It would not be because any of my actions.

I knew this was going to be a long trial, and thanks to Cheney’s constantly reminding me about just how long a marathon it would be, I was prepared to go the distance. People change opinions over time. I did not want the jury’s opinion of me to change. I felt they liked and respected me, and I was going to be humble and straight while fighting for my client. After all this trial was about Casey, not Ashton, not Judge Perry, and certainly not about me.

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was Ricardo Morales, another former boyfriend of Casey’s. I never liked Ricardo. I thought he was a creep. This was a guy who sold photos of Caylee to
Globe
magazine for $4,000. However, Ricardo’s testimony was critical, because I was able to show the jury the “Win her over with Chloroform” photo he had posted on Myspace during the time they were dating. I was then able to explain to the jury that Casey had no idea what Ricardo was talking about, and that she looked up “chloroform” to understand the reference.

This contradicted the prosecution’s ridiculous theory that Casey had used chloroform to sedate Caylee and then kill her.

After more Fockers, I cross-examined Mallory Parker, who was Lee Anthony’s fiancée, and she concluded the good mother evidence for us. Mallory was a phenomenal witness because she came across as so sincere. She talked about what a great mother Casey was.

“Their relationship was amazing,” she said.

She broke down in tears, and you could hear a pin drop in the courtroom. It was a powerful, powerful moment.

Yeah, the prosecution was able to spread the word that Casey partied, that she shopped, but I had set the framework for the jury to know
why
she was behaving this way. We constructed a backdoor mental health defense, and because of it, the jury understood that there was something off with this girl. So all the prosecution was doing was reinforcing our position.

Our strategy was always to take the negative things that the prosecutors threw at us and to adopt them as our own, rather than fight them, and I do think that helped us a great deal.

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HE NEXT IMPORTANT WITNESS
was Simon Birch, the manager of the tow yard company. We did very well with him. He helped the defense for several reasons. He had had the unique experience of having once worked for a sanitation company, and he said his first inclination on smelling the bad odor in Casey’s car was that it was trash. Though he claimed to have smelled dead bodies before, and claimed he smelled a dead body in Casey’s car, he testified he never called the police but rather allowed George to leave in the car. Furthermore, when he finally did speak to the police, he testified that he was influenced by what he had read in the media.