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| Jose Baes and his most famous client so far. |
He is the lead attorney in the murder trial of the decade; he pushes the envelope and seems to be the “bad boy” of the courtroom, writes The Imperfect Parent.
So just who is Jose Baez?
His website reads like a modern day Clarence Darrow, “Aggressive, experienced, trusted criminal defense.”
His introduction on the website says, “The Florida criminal defense attorneys at Baez Law Firm, with offices in Kissimmee, are committed to defending the rights of people accused of felonies and misdemeanors across Florida. Our attorneys are confident and dedicated trial lawyers who will work to protect your rights with aggressive defense.”
Yet the link that touts the attorney profiles that work for the Baez Law Firm goes nowhere.
Even the links to his success stories, “Mother accused of kidnapping,” “Taking on the Mayor,” ” State Trooper Cleared,” are dead links. In fact, all the links on the Website are dead, only the intro-page is accessible.
It would seem that Mr. Baez prefers to be an enigma, at least until all is said and done in this, the most famous trial in his career thus far.
His introduction on the website says, “The Florida criminal defense attorneys at Baez Law Firm, with offices in Kissimmee, are committed to defending the rights of people accused of felonies and misdemeanors across Florida. Our attorneys are confident and dedicated trial lawyers who will work to protect your rights with aggressive defense.”
Yet the link that touts the attorney profiles that work for the Baez Law Firm goes nowhere.
Even the links to his success stories, “Mother accused of kidnapping,” “Taking on the Mayor,” ” State Trooper Cleared,” are dead links. In fact, all the links on the Website are dead, only the intro-page is accessible.
It would seem that Mr. Baez prefers to be an enigma, at least until all is said and done in this, the most famous trial in his career thus far.
People are interested, however. Jose Baez, the once little known attorney is making a name for himself as Casey Anthony’s lead attorney for her defense. So how did he appear on the scene?
According to Anthony herself, as recorded in one of the infamous jailhouse tapes, it was pure coincidence that the two were thrown together. She told her brother, Lee Anthony, after she had been put in jail for lying to the police, she heard some of the other female inmates talking and they mentioned Baez as being a good lawyer. Anthony told one of the girls, if she talks to Baez anytime soon, tell him about her – she needed a good lawyer, she said.
The next day she had a visit from Baez – the rest, as they say, is history.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Baez is not without his own closet full of skeletons.
Jose Angel Baez was born in Puerto Rico in 1969. Baez told reporters he grew up in the Bronx and South Florida with his mother, a single parent. He dropped out of Homestead High School in ninth grade.
He married at 17, became a father, earned a GED diploma and joined the Navy in 1986.
According to his résumé, Baez spent three years assigned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Norfolk, Va., trained as an intelligence analyst with what he described as a “Cosmic Top Secret” security clearance.
Upon his discharge from the military, he attended Miami-Dade Community College and graduated from Florida State University. A black belt in tae kwon do, Baez competed with the karate, pistol and crime-scene team from FSU’s chapter of Lambda Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity of criminology majors.
After graduating in 1997 from St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, Baez applied to become a lawyer. In April 1998, he was called before the Florida Board of Bar Examiners, which screens prospective lawyers, and he was denied.
For eight years after he graduated from law school, the board that screens prospective attorneys in Florida would not let him practice law. The Florida Supreme Court agreed with the decision, issuing an order in 2000 that cited unpaid bills, extravagant spending and other “financial irresponsibility” up to that time. Justices reserved their strongest condemnation for his failure to stay current on support payments for his only child.
His overall behavior, they wrote, showed “a total lack of respect for the rights of others and a total lack of respect for the legal system, which is absolutely inconsistent with the character and fitness qualities required of those seeking to be afforded the highest position of trust and confidence recognized by our system of law.”
This rejection did not seem to deter him.
He began working as a paralegal for the Miami-Dade public defender and taught Internet research to lawyers. He started four business ventures, including two bikini companies, Bon Bon Bikinis and Brazilian-Bikinis.Com to sell bathing suits, corporate records show. He also applied for a real-estate license and created two companies selling computer know-how: Law Student Websites and Lawyer Concepts.
Baez declared bankruptcy in September 1990. The records on Baez are filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he lived during and after his service in the Navy.
The Virginia Education Loan Authority filed liens against Baez for $4,336 in unpaid loans in 1995.
Before Florida Bar officials admitted him in 2005, he had to demonstrate that he had rehabilitated himself.
Today he is a lawyer in good standing with the Bar Association, his office spokeswoman reminded the Orlando Sentinel in a prepared statement. She also questioned the motives behind the newspaper story.
“Based on your questions and actions,” she wrote, “this profile you are writing has nothing to do with Jose Baez’s representation of Casey Anthony and appears to be a sensationalist persecution of a Hispanic lawyer who has been targeted by a newspaper lucky to find itself at the center of a national story.”“lucky” seems to be an interesting choice of words.
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