Candid Comments from Casey Anthony’s Lawyer: ‘Do That Barack Obama Thing’
A death-penalty lawyer on Casey Anthony’s defense team had some candid comments about death penalty closing arguments in an Orlando appearance last year.
Lawyer Andrea Lyon talked about pro death-penalty “killer” jurors, and how lawyers can appeal to those who are willing to spare their client by using emotional words and consistent theories of the case.
Lyon spoke at a meeting of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers last year before she joined the defense team for Anthony, accused in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. The Examiner has the audio.
“Here’s the problem,” Lyon told lawyers. “While you can’t win it in closing, you can lose it in closing. You really can. You can say exactly the wrong thing. You can give the killers on your jury the ammunition they need to go after people.”
WDBO and WFTV had reports, but WFTV took its story off its website after a complaint from Miami lawyer Barry Wax, who organized the seminar, according to the Orlando Sentinel blog Hal Bodeker: The TV Guy and More. Wax said the tape was surreptitiously made and was not intended for public consumption.
Lyon told lawyers that preparing for a death penalty hearing takes a lot of preparation and consistent theories of the case and litigation. Don’t use lawyer words like defendant, she said. And though lawyers will have to use the word “mitigation,” they should explain that it is evidence that helps jurors choose between punishments.
Lyon advised lawyers to use strong, emotionally evocative language that makes jurors think twice about the death penalty. She will write down “reasons to kill” rather than “reasons to impose death” because the “kill” word makes jurors think twice.
Jurors don’t vote with their heads and their intellect, she said. “They vote with their stomach or their heart or whatever part of their anatomy they identify with and then they justify it later. So you have to find a way for them to feel OK about this.”
Lyon joked to her audience that when she is asked how she humanizes her client, she likes to say, “My client is human, it’s the jury I’m worried about.” Jurors are dehumanized by the voir dire process, she said, and the jury is skewed because those who don’t agree with the death penalty aren’t allowed to serve.
Sometimes there is a feeling of ugly in the room, she said, and “sometimes ugly is presiding.”
The WDBO report highlighted Lyon’s admonition that lawyers should not come off as morally superior or more knowledgeable than jurors. “If they don’t like us, they’ll kill our client,” she said. “You have to be able to do that Barack Obama thing.”
