Background
Bailey was born on June 10, 1933, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Bailey grew up with two siblings. His parents divorced when he was ten years old.
(The controversial defense lawyer reviews his career, focu...)
The controversial defense lawyer reviews his career, focusing on the Boston Strangler case, the Sam Sheppard vindication, and the Great Plymouth Mail Robbery. The Sam Sheppard Murder Case, The Carl Coppolino Murder Case, The Torso Murder Case. These are some of the sensational "wife-murder" cases F. Lee Bailey re-creates in this riveting collection. Reconstructing each case moment by moment, he brings a behind-the-scenes understanding to unforgettable courtroom drama. These and his other fascinating accounts give us insight into why he is now one of the lead defense attorneys in "The Trial of the Century" - the O.J. Simpson trial.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081281441X/?tag=2022091-20
(In For the Defense, F Lee Bailey picks up where he never ...)
In For the Defense, F Lee Bailey picks up where he never really left off. Some of the cases in this book were "headline" cases, some were not; all fit the Bailey theme that although man should not live by his defense lawyer alone, too often that is precisely what happens.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/068910667X/?tag=2022091-20
( From the bestselling author of The Defense Never Rests,...)
From the bestselling author of The Defense Never Rests, a look at the modern spate of spousal homicides. This book provides an overview of several of the most famous homicidal husband cases of recent years, including: - Sam Sheppard, who inspired the TV series and movie The Fugitive - Jeffrey McDonald, who became the subject of the bestseller Fatal Vision - Mister Perfect, Brad Cunningham, who was convicted of bludgeoning his wife to death - Michael Peterson, who was the subject of the IFC documentary series The Staircase and a Lifetime movie original starring Treat Williams - OJ Simpson, whose dream team of lawyers defended the former pro-football player and movie star of the brutal murder of his ex-wife as the entire nation watched - Claus von Bulow, immortalized in the book and movie Reversal of Fortune - Robert Blake, former TV star, who was suspected of engineering the death of his conwoman wife - Scott Peterson, a philandering sociopathic husband who almost escaped arrest for the murder of his wife and unborn child. - Lambert "Bart" Knol, who claimed he suffered from "substance-induced persistent amnesia" when he was accused of killing his wife of 38 years These cases and others are presented in an objective manner by a knowledgeable voice that recognizes that suspicion, and sometimes even conviction, are not always synonymous with guilt.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765316137/?tag=2022091-20
(Excellence in Cross-Examination provides a novel approach...)
Excellence in Cross-Examination provides a novel approach to teaching the necessary tools of effective cross-examination. Written by two masters of the courtroom, F. Lee Bailey and his former partner, Massachusetts Superior Court Justice Kenneth J. Fishman, Excellence in Cross-Examination is an invaluable book for law students and seasoned trial lawyers alike. This book provides detailed insight into learning the tools necessary to become an effective cross-examiner, including: obtaining a command of the English language; developing a superior memory; and understanding and manipulating the rules of evidence. The authors then teach the essentials of preparation for trial investigation and discovery. The principles and tools of cross-examination are thoroughly explained, and the art is brought to life with numerous examples of masterful cross-examinations, such as Bailey s cross of the coroner in the Sam Sheppard case and Roy Black s examination of the key witness in the William Kennedy Smith trial. Each example is accompanied by the authors expert insights into the reasons for their effectiveness, as well as helpful descriptions about the trials themselves. It is these real-life cross examinations that differentiate this book from others on the subject, and make it of interest to readers far beyond the community of trial lawyers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0314621261/?tag=2022091-20
Bailey was born on June 10, 1933, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Bailey grew up with two siblings. His parents divorced when he was ten years old.
After attending Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, he entered Harvard University. An outstanding student, he nonetheless dropped out of Harvard to serve as a fighter pilot in the U. S. Marine Corps; flying would become one of his few passions rivaling litigation. Bailey then moved on to law school at Boston University—achieving the highest grade point average in the school's history—and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar shortly after graduating in 1960. Bailey attended Keeler Polygraph Institute in Chicago, where he became an expert in lie detector tests.
Bailey was first noticed when he defended, George Elderly, a physician charged with murdering his wife. When Elderly's attorney was incapacitated by a heart attack, Bailey took over the defense. The doctor—whose story served as the basis for the television series and film The Fugitive—was acquitted. Soon thereafter, Bailey won a reversal of the conviction of another doctor, Samuel H. Sheppard, who was also accused of murdering his wife. Bailey was on his way to stardom.
This new standout did not shy away from the spotlight. Indeed, Bailey drew criticism for appearing on television talk shows and discussing various cases and was censured by the Massachusetts bar in 1970. While the idea of the "celebrity lawyer" sounding off to the press about the cases he pursues may sound ordinary, it was highly unconventional at the time. Bailey's contemptuous words regarding a New Jersey ruling so outraged the Supreme Court of that state that he was forbidden to practice there for a year. Meanwhile, he was profiled in magazines much the way a film star might be.
In 1971 Bailey defended Ernest L. Medina in a court-martial over the Vietnam War's notorious My Lai massacre, an incident of extreme violence against Vietnamese civilians that gave impetus to the anti-war movement in the United States. Bailey won Medina's acquittal after calling a vast number of witnesses—including Medina himself. This victory was one of his greatest courtroom triumphs.
Again, Bailey used this renown to further his career, writing The Defense Never Rests and For the Defense, books on the lawyer's craft for a popular audience, in addition to writing legal textbooks. He also became publisher of Gallery magazine in 1972. Though Bailey lost his defense of Albert DeSalvo, a mental patient who admitted to being the Boston Strangler—a serial killer who had murdered 13 women—the case did not damage his reputation. The same could not be said, however, for his defense of Patty Hearst. The daughter of a publishing tycoon, Hearst was allegedly kidnapped by a terrorist organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and forced to participate in a series of bank robberies. Despite her claim that she was coerced, the heiress was tried for the holdups.
Bailey conducted a spirited defense, placing Hearst on the stand along with 71 witnesses. It was his intention to show that his client went along with the SLA to save her life. The jury felt otherwise, apparently, and convicted her; she served twenty-two months in prison and eventually hired another lawyer, hoping for a second trial on the grounds that Bailey had not done his job well. President Jimmy Carter eventually commuted her sentence, and she abandoned her claim against the attorney. Even so, a San Francisco appeals court suggested that Hearst's argument had some merit. Bailey's loss marked a turning point in the public's perception of his courtroom prowess.
He continued to publish books, make speeches for $10, 000 each, and speak regularly for a cause he cared a lot about: the necessity of reducing lawsuits.
In 1982 Bailey was arrested for drunk driving in California; he was acquitted, thanks in large part to the defense conducted by Robert Shapiro, who would summon Bailey to the O. J. Simpson defense team some 12 years later. The drunk driving trial so enraged Bailey that he wrote a book, How to Protect Yourself against Cops in California and Other Strange Places, which alleged serious abuses by police and argued that driving under the influence of alcohol had become "a number, not a condition. " He furthermore asserted that political pressure had motivated police to go after celebrities in particular.
Another strike to Bailey's credibility came when he took on the case of aggrieved families of passengers on Korean Airlines flight 007, which was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1983. Though he made several public statements attesting to his commitment to the case, his firm put in a much smaller number of hours on the case than did the two other law firms working on it. Bailey aggravated other clients by traveling to Libya to discuss defending two men who were charged with blowing up Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, even after undertaking the cause of relatives of that bombing's victims. To the latter, the expedition to Tripoli was a clear conflict of interest; Bailey denied that he intended to defend the Libyans, though a letter he had written to the U. S. government suggested otherwise.
When Robert Shapiro enlisted Bailey to join the defense team of O. J. Simpson, opinion among the throngs of professional observers was divided. O. J. Simpson, the football star and actor, was accused (and later acquitted) of murdering his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. When O. J. Simpson’s trial finally began, America was glued to the TV, watching and absorbing every second of the saga. The trial lasted eight months, and included a damning amount of DNA evidence suggesting O. J. ’s guilt. This included the blood found on O. J. ’s car that matched the crime scene and Nicole’s blood on O. J. ’s socks. Bailey alleged that crime scene evidence had been contaminated by poor and biased detective work, and relied heavily on a video of one of the police, Mark Fuhrman, making racists remarks and slurs. Fuhrman was later indicted for perjury, having told the court under oath he hadn’t used those racist slurs in ten years.
After a grueling trial the jury on October 3, 1995, announced the verdict of "not guilty" on two counts of homicide, making it seem clear that Bailey and the rest of the team knew their jobs well.
Perhaps most off-putting to many observers was an apparent spat between Bailey and Shapiro. Though the two lawyers had been so close that Bailey had served as the godfather for Shapiro's child, Bailey was accused of getting involved in a whispering campaign to the media against his colleague. Central to this controversy was an article in the New York Daily News that was strongly critical of Shapiro while reporting his demotion from the position of lead counsel in the Simpson case; Bailey was alleged by some to have been the article's primary source. Bailey himself denied having said anything negative about Shapiro. After the trial was over, Shapiro stated he would never talk to Bailey again.
In March of 1996 Bailey himself became the subject of criminal prosecution after he and the United States government had a disagreement over who was entitled to millions of dollars of stock formerly held by Claude DuBoc, a drug dealer and client of Bailey. The government demanded Forfeiture of the stock, but Bailey said a plea bargain he had negotiated with the government on behalf of DuBoc allowed Bailey to keep it. When Bailey refused to surrender 2. 3 million dollars to the federal district court in Tallahassee, Florida, he was sentenced to six months in jail for Contempt. In August of 2000, a federal judge held Bailey in contempt of court for failing to turn over the Duboc moneys. However, the judge declined to jail or fine Bailey on the grounds that federal prosecutors failed to properly trace the money or to recover assets from Bailey. In November of 2001, the Florida Supreme Court issued a decision based on Bailey's mishandling of the DuBoc stock funds that ordered Bailey to be disbarred from practicing law in Florida. In April of 2003, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued a unanimous decision upholding the decision to disbar Bailey on the grounds that he deliberately broke ethics rules.
In mid-2003 Bailey was traveling the country giving lectures on his career and cases. He appeared as a legal commentator on television shows such as Larry King Live, Today, and Good Morning America.
In March 2005, Bailey filed to regain his law license in Massachusetts but failed.
In 2012, Bailey, having become a resident of Maine, passed the bar examination there and applied for a law license; in 2012 the Maine Board of Bar Examiners voted to deny his application. Bailey appealed, petitioning the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to review the denial. In March 2013, a two-day hearing was held by Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander in which Bailey's present suitability to practice law was examined. Justice Alexander filed a 57-page ruling on April 19, 2013, stating that Bailey "was almost fit to practice law, except for an outstanding tax debt of nearly $2 million". Bailey was allowed to move for reconsideration of the decision "if he offer a plan to repay the nearly $2 million he owes in back taxes to the federal government".
In June 2013, Bailey applied for a license to practice law in the state of Maine, but his application was rejected by the Maine Bar Association.
He's currently a partner in the business consulting firm Bailey & Elliott, based in Yarmouth Maine, and makes public appearances as a paid speaker. He's authored and co-authored several books, including non-fictional accounts of his cases, legal textbooks, and even one courtroom novel.
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(In For the Defense, F Lee Bailey picks up where he never ...)
(Great book.)
Quotations:
"The legal profession is a business with a tremendous collection of egos. "
"Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee. "
"I would strongly recommend any young man to stay away from criminal law. It's not a good place to be, unfortunately. "
"I use the rules to frustrate the law. But I didn't set up the ground rules. "
"If I'm offered a good case in Florida or a good case somewhere else, South Florida will win every time. "
In 1960 F. Lee Bailey married Florence Gott; but the two divorced in 1961. He then tied the knot to Froma Portney in 1972, and they were divorced that same year. On August 26, 1972, he married Lynda Hart. Bailey divorced Hart in 1980, then waited a full five years before getting married again, this time to Patricia Shiers. He lost his fourth wife in 1999, when she died of pancreatic cancer. Bailey now lives with Debbie Elliott, his girlfriend and business partner. He has three sons.