INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Jeff Ashton known to the world as prosecutor in the trial of Casey Anthony had the drive to get his law degree in less than three years, claims to love the intensity and gamesmanship of trial law, and admits that he is a “bulldog” who doesn’t like to lose.
The Jeff Ashton who spoke at the Vero Beach Book Center last week is affable, relaxed, and gracious – making sure attendees in the back of the room got a chance to ask their questions and standing to greet fans so it would feel “less imperious, more equal.”
The two Jeff Ashtons meet in the former prosecutor’s new book, “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony,” published in November by HarperCollins and currently high on the New York Times print/e-book nonfiction list.
After fielding questions, signing copies, and taking photos with fans at the Book Center, the Orlando-based attorney chatted about his journey from prosecutor to public personality and now to published author.
Asked about the popularity that led to his numerous media appearances, 11,000 Facebook fans, and a mock “Ashton for President” campaign, Ashton laughed off the attention.
“It’s like being a character actor for 30 years, someone who’s been in 100 films. Then all of sudden they’re in one movie everybody notices and they’re ‘discovered.’ It’s all really nice, but it’s also embarrassing.”
Ashton’s 30 years with the State Attorney’s Office included a near-perfect record of successful cases.
The Anthony prosecution was followed by millions, dubbed the “social media trial of the century” by Time magazine.
It ended July 5 with a not-guilty verdict on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Anthony’s toddler daughter, Caylee. That acquittal is still the subject of heated debate.
After a brief vacation with his wife and two young children, Ashton embraced another high-tension challenge: crafting a book rife with technical detail and hot button issues nearly overnight.
“When we started, I had no frame of reference,” Ashton said. “I figured the timeframe was short, but I didn’t really understand how short until the lawyer who vetted the book for HarperCollins told me that we’d done in three months what usually takes eighteen.”
“I couldn’t have taken on the book project if I was still working,” he added. “Even if the State Attorney would have authorized me to do it, there wouldn’t have been time.”
Instead, Ashton seized the moment to retire as a prosecutor.
“I qualified for my pension during the trial, and retiring had always been my plan. That gave me complete freedom, and a cushion that allowed me to take the risk of not having a job for a while. When you have kids at home, you have to think about that.”
“Imperfect Justice” deals extensively about the teamwork involved in modern trials and trial preparation, and Ashton approached the creation of the book as a team project as well.
Harper- Collins suggested he work with veteran co-author Lisa Pulitzer, who specializes in topical crime nonfiction.
Editor Matt Harper (no relation to the HarperCollins founder) also contributed substantially to the structure of the finished book.
“My attitude was, ‘I assume you guys know what you’re doing. Lead me through this.’ It was great to have people patient enough to tell me what I was doing and why I was doing it, yet who also respected the vision of what I wanted to do in the book,” Ashton said.
Work began when Pulitzer visited Florida for five intensive days during which the co-authors talked nonstop and visited key locations in the case.
Afterward, Pulitzer worked on the sections regarding the investigation, while Ashton drafted the material related to his own reactions, decisions, and role in the trial.
Much of the collaboration was done on short notice.
“I remember one night when I couldn’t fall asleep,” Ashton says. “At 2 a.m. I thought that I might as well review some chapters. I made some changes to one, e-mailed it off to Matt Harper – and got a response from him two minutes later.”
Admitting that he never much liked writing, even legal writing, Ashton credits his team for the book’s human interest and readability.
“They would bring out aspects of the case that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of. I recall saying that we really couldn’t prove a certain point, only to have Matt remind me that didn’t matter. They got me out of the lawyer mode.”
In addition to making public appearances related to the book and the trial, Ashton is now affiliated with a Maitland, Florida law firm. Asked if he’d consider another book project, the attorney is open.
“I might. It’s occurred to me that there are a number of other cases I’ve had – cases that people don’t know about but are equally fascinating in their own right. And even though the hours of work and stress and intensity weren’t easy, doing a book wasn’t as foreign to me as I thought it would be.”
Cogently constructed and level in tone, “Imperfect Justice” covers the Anthony prosecution from its earliest days as a missing-child case to the verdict in July.
In its pages, Ashton reveals hitherto unknown details (for example, the defense’s consideration of an eleventh-hour plea deal) and shares honest reactions to Judge Belvin Perry (“extremely fair and knowledgeable about the law”) defense attorney Jose Baez (“a consummate salesman”), and the jury, which “needed someone to tell them exactly how Caylee died. Piecing it together from circumstantial evidence was not good enough for them.”
But as the emotionally charged comments from those at the Vero Beach book signing made clear, many who followed the lengthy trial have not yet made peace with Casey Anthony’s acquittal.
Ashton himself was more philosophical.
“I’ve had verdicts or outcomes before that made me angry. I know what the system is like,” he said. “My hope is that other people who aren’t accustomed to that can read the book and get the trial out of their system. A lot of people were just so angry about it, and that’s not a good state to be in.”
With that, the author looked beyond his own fame now.
“What we did on this trial – we hope that we were at the top of our game doing it, but the prosecutors in every town do it every day. I sometimes want to say to people, ‘Hug your prosecutor.’ “
“The truth is that I’m getting the leftover love that Caylee earned,” he continued. “My choice of title for this book would have been Little Girl Lost, because to me that’s the other part of the story – how she just got lost, even in the hearts and minds of the jury.”
Though he agreed to the change of title, Ashton dedicated the book to the little girl’s memory “so that no one forgets.”
Asked about the key message he hopes “Imperfect Justice” will share, he was equally clear.
“It’s all about Caylee,” he said.