$583.73 – in the legal profession it is not a whole lot of money to be charged for “legal work.” In relationship to the Casey Anthony case, it is less than 1\/4 of 1 percent of the $250,000 Jose Baez received from ABC and other sources.<\/p>\n
But it is the requirement to pay the attorney’s fees (really a fine) of the State Attorney’s Office that highlights my biggest “beef” with the Casey Anthony defense team – both the “inexperienced” members and the “over the hill” members.<\/p>\n
Specifically, they have repeatedly elected to create judicial theater to the detriment of their client; and while such antics may make for great news at 6 – they also make for very bad legal precedent for the rest of us practicing attorneys.<\/p>\n
If you think the fine is improper or not warranted – stop whining, stop writing letters throwing your co-counsel under the bus, and stop making bad legal arguments. Instead either suck it up or appeal. In this case, the order to pay attorney’s fees, while warranted, appears to be illegally assessed – so appeal. If you don’t, it creates bad\u00a0precedent\u00a0for the rest of us.<\/p>\n
Philosophical versus Professional Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n This brings me to the reasoning of fining Jose Baez $583.73 versus the legality of fining Jose Baez $583.73. While it might have been right, it was wrong.<\/p>\n From a philosophical stand point, I understand where Judge Perry is coming from. He is dealing with a defense team that has had one constant – Jose Baez.<\/p>\n And with Jose Baez at the helm for the past two years, the defense team has spent over a quarter of a million dollars – with absolutely nothing to show. It has inundated the Court with a multitude of motions – the majority of which have little to do with the actual substantive issues in their client’s case. It has now spent nearly $50,000 of the State of Florida’s money with little actual progress to show. And probably most important to Judge Perry, it has wasted, in the middle of a State budget crisis, the time of a large number of public employees.<\/p>\n And so, if this was the reason that Judge Perry finally dropped the hammer and fined Jose Baez – I completely understand.<\/p>\n Unfortunately though, Jose Baez is not the first attorney to cause needless delays, file meaningless motions, and in general show himself to be ineffective. This is a trait that has been shared by numerous prosecutors and defense attorneys over the years – and the issue of fining such ineffective attorneys has been litigated before.<\/p>\n This brings me to my professional opinion – from a professional standpoint Judge Perry’s order to pay the State’s attorney fees is clearly prohibited by existing case law. Specifically, absent statutory authority, a trial court has no legal authority to require either a prosecutor or a defense attorney to pay “attorney fees” or “court costs” to the other side or to the court. See State v. Nelson, 27 So. 3d 758 (Fla. 3d DCA 2010)<\/a> (“The trial court does not have inherent authority to assess costs against the State Attorney’s Office in criminal cases.”); Williams v. State, 596 So. 2d 758 (Fla. 5th DCA 1992)<\/a> (“It is well established that a court lacks the power to impose costs in a criminal case unless specifically authorized by statute;” dealing with circuit wide practice of fining defendants for wasting judicial resources by waiting until day of trial to plea.).<\/p>\n