Corie Walsh, the Lindsay Clancy-obsessed mother who allegedly hung her two-year-old son before trying to kill herself, has retained Casey Anthony’s former lawyer Andrea Lyon, known as the “Angel of Death Row.” Corie, 40, is charged with murdering her son Barrett Walsh at their home in Frankfort, Illinois, on September 1.
Andrea previously made headlines when she worked on the defense of Florida mom Anthony when she was accused of murdering Caylee Anthony, her two-year-old daughter, in 2008.
Casey was initially charged with murder, but was later acquitted by a jury after a 2011 trial.
Who is Andrea Lyon?
Andrea is dubbed the “Angel of Death Row” because of her record of wins in death penalty cases. The former law school dean was a member of Anthony’s legal team in the lead-up to her trial in 2011.
“This is a tragedy for the Walsh family all of whom are mourning the loss of this child,” Lyon said in a statement she provided to the New York Post regarding her new client’s case.
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{{/usCountry}}“It is also a tragedy in that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened,” she added. “It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
Chicago-based Andrea, of the Lyon & Kerr firm, joined Casey’s defense team as a death penalty expert in May 2009, according to the Orlando Sentinel. She quit in July 2010, with Casey’s lead attorney Jose Baez citing “financial issues.”
The Lyon & Kerr website says, “Her legal work began in the Cook County Public Defender’s Office where she rose to become Chief of the Homicide Task Force. Managing a 22-lawyer unit, she tried over 130 homicide cases and defended more than 30 potential capital cases at the trial level, including taking 19 capital cases through penalty phase. In 1990, Andrea founded and directed the Illinois Capital Resource Center representing all of the death row inmates in Illinois.”
It adds, “In January of 2015, Andrea was awarded Operation Push’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson Dream-Makers Award. A winner of the prestigious National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Reginald Heber Smith Award for best advocate for the poor in the country, she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of death penalty defense and a frequent Continuing Legal Education (CLE) teacher throughout the country. She has been designated as learned counsel in the federal defense system.”
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Andrea got her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and her law degree from Antioch School of Law.
The Corie Walsh case
A neighbor found Corie’s son hanging by his neck from the rafters. Corie later described Barrett to police as the “anti-Christ” and the “devil,” per the New York Post.
The neighbor who found Barrett’s body later found Corie upstairs in a bathtub “actively harming herself” with a knife. There were cuts to her thighs and wrists.
Prosecutors said that Corie was texting friends about the Clancy case just hours before allegedly killing her son, per NBC 5 Chicago. Witnesses said that Corie had “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial,” the outlet said, citing court documents.
The judge in Lindsay’s trial declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict and remained deadlocked after a week of deliberations. The Massachusetts mother faces three counts of murder in the killings of her children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months.