Comments on: Norm Pattis and “Strike Lawyer” on the Casey Anthony Verdict https://www.peoplevstate.com/?p=1133 fairly undermining public confidence in the administration of justice Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:04:25 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.15 By: Atticus https://www.peoplevstate.com/?p=1133&cpage=1#comment-1861 Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:00:28 +0000 http://www.peoplevstate.com/?p=1133#comment-1861 John: I think you get it. Ordinarily you don’t do so much in an opening statement, but here, if Baez hadn’t laid it out at the beginning, the jury looks at all that evidence and has no other context in which to view it other than the prosecution’s. So, you know, the rule still is that you open carefully and sparingly. But sometimes you take chances.

It helps that in Florida they require a lot of discovery in criminal cases apparently, so that you pretty much know what the prosecution is going to do. So Baez knew there was nothing they had that would completely refute what he said in his opening. That is not true in other places.

Also, while I have some quarrels with what the prosecution did, for the most part they put on an honest case. They didn’t appear to have over-coached the witnesses. They had some jail house snitch type testimony and they didn’t use it, which I give them tentative credit for: maybe they were so confident they felt they didn’t need it, but maybe they had an appropriate disdain for garbage evidence.

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