Criminal defense lawyer Jose Baez, who represented accused child-killer Casey Anthony, has no link to the ongoing trial of Letecia Stauch, the Colorado stepmother accused of murdering her 11-year-old stepson in 2020 — and he has “no idea” why Stauch dropped his name in a phone call with her then-husband as the search for the boy was underway.
Baez told Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy that he doesn’t know why his name was even discussed.
“Maybe it’s part of her defense that she’s insane, that she’s imagining that she called our office,” he said, when asked about Stauch’s insanity defense. “I have no idea.”
Stauch, 39, is on trial in El Paso County, Colorado, for allegedly murdering her stepson Gannon Stauch, 11, in his bedroom on Jan. 27, 2020. Prosecutors said she stabbed him 18 times, shot him once in the head (but missed twice), cleaned up the scene, and hid his body. She then claimed in a 911 call that he had gone missing.
As law enforcement and family worked to find the child, Stauch allegedly moved the boy’s remains in a suitcase across the country to Pensacola, Florida, where she dumped it over a bridge railing. Bridge workers found the suitcase — and the remains inside — on March 17, 2020, by which time authorities had arrested Letecia Stauch.
The defense argues that she was insane and living with dissociative identity disorder. The prosecutor maintains that she knew what she was doing when she hid evidence and told shifting tales about Gannon’s possible fate and her own behavior.
One of those tales might have been her claim that a “big time attorney” reached out to her.
“You know who the Baez Law Firm is?” she asked her then-husband Al Stauch, who had been pressing her on what really happened to his son.
“You know I don’t pay attention to that s—,” Al Stauch said.
“You know who they represented?” she said.
“No, tell me,” he said.
“A lot of big-time names,” she said.
Letecia Stauch didn’t specify any “big-time names” in particular, but Baez had famously won an acquittal for Anthony, who was accused of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Anthony.
In a recorded phone call, Stauch told her husband she agreed to take a lie detector test so that he would believe she was not responsible for his child’s disappearance. Jurors have heard testimony that she sought fake polygraph test results.
The couple has since divorced.
Baez previously denied that his office was representing Stauch.
I have to again go on the record and say that my firm is not involved in the Gannon Stauch case in anyway shape or form. Please do not contact my firm with further inquiries as I do not comment on pending cases of this nature. #gannonstauch
— Jose Baez (@BaezLaw) February 24, 2020
Speaking to Levy, Baez said he usually does not comment as to whether someone reached out to his office, as attorney-client privilege covers much of it. This time, however, he was unambiguous, telling Levy that he never talked with Stauch and that his office never entertained representing her.
“We would never call someone to offer out our representation,” he said. “That’s highly unethical, and it’s not something that my firm participates in.”
Baez told Levy that his firm has a full caseload and the Stauch case was not on his radar. He said he was not familiar with it, only saying he recalled “an issue” with Stauch traveling to Florida.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that it’s being brought up in a courtroom,” he said of the name-dropping. “I don’t think it has any place in a courtroom as to what an accused person is seeking counsel.”
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