I said it before, Baez reminds me a little bit of Peter Falk/Columbo (RIP)...maybe much of that bumbling is something of an act that he found works to his favor. In any case, all trial lawyers have something of the actor in them and use theatrics to their best advantage it, we saw it from the prosecution.
No way Jose...(knew what the verdict would be). He was as shocked as the rest of the world, he just recovered faster since he liked what he was hearing.
IMO Baez played the jury beautifully (don't throw tomatoes ... it's just the way our system works). He purposely and repeatedly "required" the prosecution to object, knowing the repeated, sustained objections; the many sidebars; and the judge's admonishments would make the Defense look like underdogs, continually under attack by the State (by both the Prosecution and the Judge). And all the while, poor little KC was seated in her lowered chair directly across from the jury.
Baez put Cindy on the stand, knowing her State's testimony would be impeached as a result of the lies she told on behalf of the Defense. He put River Whatever on the stand to impeach ALL of GA's testimony: denying sexual abuse of KC; confirming his absolute belief he (a former police officer) smelled decomp in KC's car. IMO, no family members should have called as witnesses for the State.
I haven't read the jury instructions, but -- IMO -- the State's strongest closing would have been explaining the difference between "reasonable doubt" and "a reason to doubt."
The family -- the entire family -- gave the jurors a REASON to doubt.
The famliy members lie. All of them. But the forensic evidence of human decomp in KC's car; the high concentrations of cholorform; the computer searches; the manner in which Caylee's body was "tossed away" like garbage; the placement of the duct tape ... Is it REASONABLE to believe KC planned, executed, and covered up her daughter's death?
Ah, what's done is done. The verdict is in. And JB did what he was hired to do: He convinced a jury of "reasonable doubt," by using a facade of an "underdog" Defense and by confusing the difference between "what a reasonable person might doubt," and "what a gives a person reason to doubt."
Hell, I doubt my own existence. But, reasonably, I exist.