Anthony Defense Team Explains Actions

Anthony Defense Team Explains Actions
Casey Anthony, 23, Charged With Murder In Death Of Daughter

POSTED: Monday, November 23, 2009
UPDATED: 5:50 pm EST November 24, 2009

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Two of Casey Anthony's nationally recognized defense attorneys said they were just doing their jobs -– and the state's -- as they made national television appearances naming the man who found Caylee Anthony's body as a suspect in the girl's death.

VIDEO: Part I | II | Full Interview

"It's an attempt to do the state's job for them. We brought them evidence," said Linda Kenney Baden during an interview Friday with Local 6.

Others, though, wonder if it's not a calculated ploy to contaminate potential jurors with information that may never make it into their client’s murder trial.

Neither Kenney Baden nor co-counsel Andrea Lyon could cite any evidence that former meter reader Roy Kronk had any contact with Caylee while she was alive -– unlike their client, who was the last person seen with Caylee.

"The evidence we have is circumstantial in nature," said Lyon. "The evidence the prosecution has against this young woman who they are asking the state of Florida to kill is entirely circumstantial."

They also conceded they have no evidence of human decomposition in any of Kronk's vehicles, unlike what the state claims its experts will say was found in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car.

Last week, the defense team filed a motion asking the judge in Anthony's murder trial to let them introduce "prior bad acts" of Kronk, based on unsworn, videotaped interviews with former wives and estranged family members.

The women claim he has a history of using duct tape to perpetrate violence, and his son said he told him he had found Caylee's body about a month before he actually led police to the remains on Dec. 11.

Kronk tried three times in August 2008 to draw law enforcement's attention to what he thought may have the body in the woods, but a deputy who finally appeared failed to thoroughly check and was fired because of it, according to the sheriff's office.

From the beginning, defense attorneys have decried what they call law enforcement leaks about evidence purportedly against their client, and have moved for a change of venue from Central Florida because of the publicity those leaks have created in the local media. Yet they have repeatedly taken to a national audience -– including viewers in Miami, where they want the trial moved -– to comment on inflammatory, unchallenged assertions included in defense motions filed the day before they take to the national airwaves.

Asked if they're not doing the same thing they accused the state and detectives of doing, Kenney Baden said, "The local media, with the exception of some of the reporting that we have seen, ... has taken everything they've seen at face value or the leaks they saw early on and publicized them improperly against our client. Here we're at the national media because at least they will give Casey a fair shake."

The two attorneys are part of an impressive legal and forensic team assembled by Casey Anthony's original attorney, Jose Baez, prompting many to wonder if they're being paid and, if so, how. Asked if they're being paid by anything other than the publicity attached to the case, Kenney Baden said, "We don't think publicity is payment, but we don't discuss payment at all, but publicity isn't payment for any lawyers, all of us are not in this case for publicity."

When prosecutors questioned whether entertainment deals were funding the defense, Baez denied it or any other conflict of interest. After a closed-door meeting with the attorneys, Judge Stan Strickland said he was satisfied there was no conflict.

"We're doing our best to see to it that she gets a fair trial with real investigation and real hard work and real motions practice and challenging the evidence the way it ought to be done," said Lyon. "The idea that there's something shady or weird about actually interviewing witnesses and talking to people and digging deep and trying to find out what really happened as though that's somehow cheating – that’s what a good lawyer does."

Casey Anthony has admitted in a court paper that she has refused a plea agreement, but when asked if a plea were still possible, the attorneys balked.

"She did write that affidavit, she did make that statement," said Lyon, adding, "but as I said, that's something we cannot discuss. That would be inappropriate."

Asked how their client was holding up in the Orange County Jail, where she's been held without bond since her indictment on Oct. 14, 2008, Lyon said, "She's scared. I mean, wouldn't you be scared? She's scared. She's sad. She's grief-stricken and she's terrified."

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

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Remember the shit eating grin the first time she was arrested? She sure wasn't scared, sad, grief-stricken or terrified. Guess the reality of what she has done is finally hitting home. I doubt she will find any pity out there.