Casey Anthony's team hires 'best' death-penalty lawyer out there Mike Thomas | COMMENTARY

Mike Thomas |
COMMENTARY June 2, 2009

I considered it a smart pressure tactic when prosecutors announced they were seeking the death penalty for Casey Anthony.

I change my mind.

Defense attorney José Baez has responded by bringing in DePaul law professor Andrea Lyon.

Advantage: José Baez.
"What they needed was a death-qualified attorney," says Glen
Weissenberger, dean of the DePaul law school. "They found the best one.
[Lyon] is a brilliant clinical professor who has risen to the highest
academic rank she can achieve. She is nationally known as one of the
best courtroom lawyers in the United States."

And Lyon will not come alone.

She will have several law students to help her. Casey's case has
become something of a class project for The Center for Justice in
Capital Cases, which Lyon formed at DePaul to train students and
attorneys in death-penalty cases. Part of the center's mission
statement includes "hands-on experience" for students.

They will provide endless hours of eager, free labor, performing
tasks such as going over transcripts and motions, and contributing to
closing arguments.

"I feel there are a lot of teaching opportunities about
representing unpopular people, which is what we have an obligation to
do," says Weissenberger. "This is not like time off time from [Lyon's]
routine work. This is her routine work."

Lyon also made use of students in her best-known case —
representing Madison Hobley. He had been convicted and sentenced to
death for starting a Chicago apartment fire in 1987. Seven people died,
including his wife and son.

Lyon worked on his appeal for more than 10 years, chipping away at
weaknesses that included numerous holes in the evidence, alleged police
beatings of Hobley and an undocumented confession.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned Hobley in 2003.

Hobley has since settled a lawsuit against the city for $7.5 million.

Lyon has tried 132 murder cases. She has taken 19 capital-murder
cases through the sentencing phase and hasn't lost one yet. Her
reputation is as an ethical, methodical, hard-nosed, passionate
defender who excels in winning her clients' trust. She let Hobley stay
with her family for a week after his release.

He told the Chicago Lawyer magazine: "One
minute I was in death row in a cell, the next minute I'm at my
attorney's house looking out the window; it was like a winter
wonderland."

She is driven by her opposition to the death penalty, having
devoted much of her career to ensuring defendants in death cases get
competent attorneys.

Ten years ago, while a law professor at the University of Michigan, she told the Chicago Tribune: "Who your lawyer is the single most important fact concerning whether you get the death penalty or not."

Her legal career began at the Cook County Public Defender's
Office, where she became chief of the Homicide Task Force, a group of
22 lawyers who represented defendants accused of homicides. Her Web
site states she was the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a
capital case.

She has won several national awards for her death-penalty work and for her representation of poor clients.

In the case of Casey Anthony, accused of killing her young
daughter, Caylee, Lyon plans to get the death penalty taken off the
table before the trial begins. She will file motions that argue the
evidence does not rise to a death-penalty case and that prosecutors are
seeking it for strategic reasons. These probably will include a common
complaint by defense attorneys — that prosecutors seek the death
penalty even when it is not warranted because it predisposes the jury
to a guilty verdict.

If Lyon is successful, the question then becomes whether she stays on to assist with the trial.

Although I couldn't contact her, Weissenberger says, "It's my understanding she'll be involved in the entire trial."

That would negate one of State Attorney Lawson Lamar's advantages in this case: the inexperience of her lawyer José Baez.

But in bringing Lyon on board, Baez has demonstrated enough experience to find a lawyer who best serves his client's interests.

That certainly is not in Lamar's best interest.

I asked Weissenberger whether he would hire Lyon to defend him against a capital-murder charge.

"Let me tell you," he said, "If I were charged with anything, she would be my lawyer. She is phenomenal."
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