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Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Vicksburg Post
in the spotlight
Anthony’s lawyer rises from obscurity to legal fame By The Associated Press ORLANDO, Fla. — Three years ago, Jose Baez’s name was barely a blip in the legal community. This was a lawyer who made his way to the profession after dropping out of high school, getting a GED and going into the Navy. He tried several failed businesses — including two bikini companies — before he eventually enrolled at Florida State University and St. Thomas University School of Law. It took another eight years for him to be admitted to the bar. Now he’s arguably one of the most recognizable attorneys in the country after his client Casey Anthony was acquitted in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, in a case marked by a captivated national audience and searing scrutiny of every legal twist. For the last three years since, Baez faced questions from other attorneys and TV commentators about his lack of criminal law experience and tactics. Now he’s a legal celebrity almost certain to be offered interviews, book offers and possibly movie deals that could bring hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I think this is obviously lifealtering for Jose Baez,” said Terry Lenamon, a former member of Anthony’s defense team, who left the case in 2008 after a disagreement over strategy. “It’s not as big as (the) OJ (Simpson verdict), but close to OJ and look at all what happened to those lawyers ... I’m sure he’s going to capitalize on it. The issue is: Was that always the plan?” Baez, 42, took Anthony’s case pro bono in 2008, after get-
The associated press
Casey Anthony and her attorney, Jose Baez, listen as the verdicts are read July 5 at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla. ting a referral from a former client who shared a cell with Anthony following her initial arrest. He has handled the case since then, operating on state funds available to Anthony because of her indigent status, and from an early $200,000 she received from licensing photos and videos to ABC News. The Associated Press attempted to contact Baez for this story, but those inquiries were not returned. In an interview with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera the night of the verdict, Baez shrugged
off a question about whether his success in this case will silence his detractors. “I think their competence argument has fallen,” he said. “What they want to say about me, well, you know, they can say what they want.” Baez, who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York and Florida, had to take a winding path to becoming a criminal lawyer, even after he graduated law school. He passed the written test for the Florida Bar, but he was denied admission by the Florida Board of Bar Exam-
iners because of a list of complaints about his personal and financial conduct. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the bar’s decision in 2000 for not paying child support for a daughter he had with his first wife and for what it called “very serious doubts as to his respect for the rights of others and for the law,” like writing worthless checks. He eventually was able to prove to the bar he was rehabilitated and he was admitted to practice law in 2005. He has had no disciplinary action
taken against him by the bar since then. Alfredo Garcia, the former dean at St. Thomas, didn’t know Baez when he was a student at St. Thomas and prior to his graduation in 1997. But he said he got to know him shortly after he took on Anthony’s case. Garcia said the school gave Baez, who also ran a pair of nonprofit organizations before he began his law practice, an alumni award in 2008 for providing disabled children in foreign countries with prostheses. He said at the award dinner Baez showed him a yellowed copy of his acceptance letter to the law school. The letter had been signed by Garcia, ironically a law school classmate of Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton at the University of Florida. “(Baez) said, ‘I’ve held on to this since I received this. This is the letter you wrote when you were associate dean and chair of the committee that admitted me into law school.’ He still had that with him,” Garcia said. “... Obviously, that meant a lot to him because he took time to show it to me and had it with him.” Garcia said he also had lunch with Baez in Orlando last August as Baez was preparing for the trial. They talked about the “emotional, personal and professional toll that the case had taken on him.” “I think it was a rough emotional toll, to the extent that you get identified with your client typically by the members of the public,” Garcia said. “I gathered he wasn’t the most popular person in Orlando at the time. I think that was pretty tough.” During his closing argu-
ment, Ashton likened the theories presented by Baez and the defense of how Caylee Anthony died in part as a fantasy “trip down the rabbit hole into a bizarre world.” Ashton and Baez constantly sparred throughout the three-year case. Each accused the other of questionable legal maneuvering, and once during a pretrial hearing, Ashton even asked Judge Belvin Perry to hold Baez in contempt of court for what Ashton claimed was a blatant disregard of a court-ordered deadline. Then there was the incident during Baez’s closing arguments, in which he angrily referred to Ashton as “this laughing guy” when he observed him chuckling behind his hand in full view of the jury. But in his first comments after Anthony’s acquittal, Baez seemed to have put that bad blood behind him. He referred to the prosecution team as a whole as “a fine group,” called Ashton “a fierce opponent” and lead prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick “an incredible adversary” and “one of the best lawyers I’ve ever seen.” With constant objections that were overruled and motions denied, Baez’s legal skills were often maligned on cable television programs that sometimes depicted him as a sort of Barney Fife, the bumbling deputy on the 1960s TV sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” who was only allowed to carry one bullet. Lenamon said any of those sentiments that the jury saw in court via the judge or prosecution — however small — could have played a role in the case’s outcome.
Night tour of Alcatraz, once home to ‘Whitey’ Bulger, is eerie experience By Jason Dearen The Associated Press ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. — When night fell on The Rock in San Francisco Bay, visitors moved shadowlike through the former prison’s lantern-lit hospital rooms, a gloaming against dingy walls with peeling blue paint. A hard wind whooshed and rattled a window in the hospital cell where Robert Stroud, “The Birdman of Alcatraz,” spent 11 of his 17 years when this was the dankest, hardest federal prison in the U.S. Yet, most of the more than 1 million tourists who visit the famous former prison annually never get to experience Alcatraz Island at night or see its spooky, decrepit hospital — experiences unique to the night tour. At dusk the island prison that housed some of the nation’s most notorious criminals — including Al Capone and the recently rearrested James “Whitey” Bulger, who was on The Rock for bank robbery from 1959 until 1963 — is often enshrouded by fog, and the lamps on the grounds emit a ghostly glow. The difference from the daytime tour is apparent from the start. The ferry from San Francisco motors slowly around the west side of the isle, passing decrepit buildings surrounded by Alcatraz’s new residents: black Brandt’s cormorants, Western gulls and the other birds that have made their home there since U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy shuttered the prison in 1963. “This is a little eerie,” said Gerard Lang, 28, who was visiting from Covington, Ky. “You kind of feel like you’re heading to prison yourself.” After leaving the boat visitors begin a winding ascent past the prison’s official sign, where a faded “Indians Welcome” written in red paint is still visible, remnants of the Native American occupation of the island from 1969 to 1971. The island became a national park in 1972. “You’re following in the foot-
If You Go
vations recommended as some tours do sell out, with the night tours among the most popular. Tours take 2 1/2 hours round-trip. Daytime tours are $26 ($16 for kids 5-11, free for children under 4, $24.50 for seniors 62 and over), with departures 9:10 a.m.-3:55 p.m. daily. Nighttime tours are $33 ($19.50 for kids 5-11, $30.50 for seniors), with departures Thursday-Monday at 6:10 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.
Alcatraz: www.nps.gov/alcatraz. Alcatraz can only be reached by ferry and there is a charge for ferry service to and from the island, which includes the cellhouse audio tour and departs from Pier 33 at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Tickets and schedule at www.alcatrazcruises.com. Tickets are made available about 60 days in advance; reser-
The associated press
A military chapel is illuminated during a night tour on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.
travel
Visitors make their way through a tunnel dating to 1886. steps of every federal prisoner who ever came here,” said Eric Knackmuhs, a Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy guide. Passing the guano- and rustcovered buildings that once housed the families of prison guards, the park’s employees tell of a failed Friday the 13th, 1939, escape attempt — one of many escape attempts recited in gripping detail that are not included on the daytime tour. Once inside the prison, the audio tour features stories from ex-inmates and former prison guards in their own voices. The tour leads visitors through D Block, or solitary
confinement, where you can stand inside a dark cell and
listen to the voices of inmates who spent time there. Close your eyes and you can sense the isolation, the desperation. If you’re lucky and find a guide who isn’t too busy, you can also ask to take a quick detour into “The Dungeon,” another of the usually off-limits areas of the prison that can be accessed at night. The dungeon is left over from when Alcatraz was a military prison, and has a series of small alcoves where Civil War and World War I-era prisoners were held, said Jim
traz’s story. “You ever see ghosts here?” a tourist asked an employee in the hospital’s hallway, shadows dancing on the walls as tourists passed before lanterns. After a brief pause, she said no.
Bradon, a guide. Shining a flashlight on the wall of one dark alcove, the prison inmate numbers of former dungeon denizens can be seen carved into the bricks. The hospital visit is unique to the night tour, and it is a significant addition to Alca-
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