DAYTON, Ohio — Attorney Beth Lewis must tell a grand jury what a now-deceased client may have confided about the fate of Erica Baker, a 9-year-old girl who vanished from her Kettering neighborhood in 1999.

Erica Baker

        In what is believed to be the first such case in Ohio, a three-judge panel of the Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Ms. Lewis must testify.

        Three weeks after hearing arguments before a standing-room-only crowd, the court concluded Ms. Lewis is required to testify because the client's widower signed a confidentiality waiver.

        Ms. Lewis' attorney, David Greer, said he planned an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court. “It's a novel legal question and it needs to be resolved,” he said, “And it looks like we're going to need to have this resolved by the highest court that we can get to hear it.”

        Meanwhile, the appeals court agreed to keep Ms. Lewis out of jail for a week, again delaying a Montgomery County judge's June 25 contempt order after she refused to answer questions of a grand jury probing Erica's disappearance. Ms. Lewis must obtain any further delay of the jail order from the Ohio Supreme Court.

        But Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. said he hopes Ms. Lewis will agree that step is unnecessary. “We are still hopeful that the attorney-witness will do the right thing,” he said, and answer the grand jury questions, as four judges have now ordered.

        Pam Schmidt, Erica's grandmother, said the family was optimistic about the court's decision, but she lamented: “This shouldn't be a legal issue; it breaks my heart that it's a legal issue. It's a universal obligation to help a missing child.”

        The appeals court noted that police in Kettering “received information that Jan Marie Franks may have been inside a van that struck and killed Erica and that the people in the van then took the body and disposed of it.” Ms. Franks refused to cooperate with investigators. But before she died of a Dec. 30 drug overdose, she may have spoken about Erica to Ms. Lewis, a public defender who represented Ms. Franks on unrelated charges.

        Erica's father, Greg Baker, said, “I'm just about as sure as I can be that she (Ms. Lewis) knows something.”

        Mr. Heck dismissed the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' concerns about the case eroding attorney-client confidentiality. “This is about the attorney's refusal to accept the fact that the attorney-client privilege was, in fact, waived,” he said.

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