Opening statement still haunts Baez, Casey Anthony OS

Very good long article..imo

snipped:

By Anthony Colarossi, Orlando Sentinel

9:49 p.m. EST, November 13, 2011
The opening statement defense attorney José Baez delivered during Casey Anthony's criminal trial continues to shadow the lawyer and haunt his client.

Lawyers attending a recent Orange County Bar Association forum titled "Lessons in Ethics & Professionalism From the Casey Anthony Trial" asked pointed questions about the controversial opening.

Two civil lawsuits filed against 25-year-old Anthony, meanwhile, ask whether she allowed untruths to be presented on her behalf and whether Baez gave false statements in his opening to the jury, court filings show. One expert who has followed the case said the issue might ultimately lead Anthony's camp to consider settlements in both ongoing civil suits.

Jurors ultimately acquitted Anthony of her most serious charges, including first-degree murder. She was convicted of lying to law enforcement. It's not clear whether the opening influenced the verdicts.

Anthony's initial claims that a nanny abducted her daughter, Caylee, have long since been exposed as lies, but many also doubt the truth of her lawyer's courtroom account of the child's death.

On May 24, Baez told jurors Anthony knew Caylee never went missing but had drowned in the family pool June 16, 2008. He also said Casey's father, George, knew of the drowning and had sexually abused Casey.

Legal experts agree such a defense could create reasonable doubt in jurors' minds. But the claims, for the most part, were not supported by evidence. The unkept promises apparently didn't matter to Anthony's jury.

Yet questions in the legal community linger: Was that opening ethical? And will the genesis of its unsupported claims ever be exposed in the lawsuits against Anthony?

'Within ethical boundaries'

Professor Amy Mashburn, who teaches professional responsibility and legal ethics at the University of Florida College of Law, fielded some of the sticky ethical questions offered up during last month's Orange County Bar session.

In a later interview, Mashburn said, "It's unlikely that we're ever going to know" whether an ethical violation occurred. What we do know, she said, is: Lawyers cannot make things up. They cannot allude to any matter at trial for which they don't have admissible supporting evidence. And they cannot offer false evidence.

But if at the time of his opening Baez believed his client would testify about the abuse and the drowning — even if he advised against her testifying — and if he believed he could effectively cross-examine her family members, then he could give that opening on firm ethical footing, Mashburn said.

If he knew Anthony would not testify and that he would have to support his claims largely through cross-examination of her family, which is what eventually happened, "that's more ethically problematic," Mashburn said.

Baez said he did not attend the ethics discussion here because he was invited to speak to a class at Harvard Law School that week. He said he could not address specific questions about his opening without Anthony's consent, but criticized those who question his words without knowing the facts he had at the time.

"Every single word we gave at openings and closings was completely aboveboard and within the ethical boundaries of an attorney," Baez said. "Everything that was said during the opening, we had a good-faith basis for."

Asked whether he expected Anthony to testify when he gave the opening, Baez offered a general statement he said holds true for all of his clients.

"It's a game-time decision [whether a client testifies]," Baez said. "That decision is not made until the end of the case, and the client makes it."

Because only Baez knows the information he had going into that opening, Mashburn said, "there's still some very basic things about this we don't know and won't ever know."

She also maintains it would have been a "really risky strategy" for Baez to make promises he knew he could never deliver, noting that juries usually hold that against an attorney...

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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-jose-baez-opening-statement-questions-20111108,0,6395111.story?page=1