Crime & Safety

Ashton says Jose Baez is 'Johnny Cockroach' (Videos)

Casey Anthony trial prosecutor Jeff Ashton got plenty of jabs, zings and one-liners in during his promotional appearance for his book.

Retired state prosecutor for his book, “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony” while at the Selby Library on Wednesday night.

Here are some of the highlights of the St. Petersburg native's lighter and critical sides. Remember to check out our videos of Ashton's comments, too.

On defense attorney Jose Baez:

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“He can pretend to be Johnny Cochran if he wants. We call him Johnny Cockroach.”

If Ashton thinks Baez did a good job:

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“I do, too. Except for the lying and ethics stuff.”

On the jury:

“The jury is the only ones who didn’t think that Casey did it.” 

“CSI has made us all believe that every crime will be solved by one definitive piece of evidence. It’s made jurors take less responsibility for making tough calls.”

“I think the ‘CSI’ effect has made people to expect that case is going to be easy to solve because I didn’t really decide. It was overwhelming.” 

“What this jury wanted, we simply couldn’t give them. We couldn’t give them this medical proof of what exactly killed Caylee. That’s all they wanted, but we couldn’t do it.”

On the O.J. Simpson Trial Comparisons: 

“We kept saying to ourselves, 'we don’t want to be O.J.'”

On the Anthony family:

“Casey Anthony is the single greatest liar to have ever lived.”

“George [Antony] stinks as a liar. He’s one of the worst liars ever. Cross-examining him is like taking candy from a baby.”

“Sometimes adults become so good at lying to other people, they become good at lying to themselves. And I would imagine at some place, in Casey, there is a potential for filling bad about it.

“But I think she’s probably convince herself in some way — I really believe when she decided to kill Caylee that she convinced herself that it was the best thing for Caylee.

I know that’s how these things happen. It’s not the first time that’s happened and it’s always accompanied by that. You become so good to lying to everyone else, you become good at lying to yourself and you convince yourself of that. 

I don’t know. I hope it haunts her dreams.”

“The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that she will continue to lie. Someday she may lie to someone who doesn’t resort to the law for their justice, but who knows what will happen with that.”


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