F. Lee Bailey, the outspoken and pugilistic defense attorney widely credited as the man who secured a „not guilty“ verdict for NFL star O.J. Simpson, died in Georgia on Thursday at the age of 87.
F. Lee Bailey, the outspoken and pugilistic defense attorney widely credited as the man who secured a “not guilty” verdict for NFL star O.J. Simpson, died in Georgia on Thursday at the age of 87. According to the Boston Globe, Bailey’s passing was confirmed by onetime law partner, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Kenneth J. Fishman. Dynamic but gravity-bound, Bailey’s illustrious, high-profile and self-boastingly high-priced legal career was cut short in 2001 after he was disbarred in Florida for allegedly mishandling a client’s assets and upsetting the federal government in the process. To hear Bailey tell it, the feds allowed Bailey to hold $6 million worth of stock options previously owned by his former client, admitted drug smuggler Claude Deboc, in order to pay off his legal debts. Then the stock’s value more than quadrupled, and the government asked for the stock back — but Bailey had already spent $4.6 million worth and the government denied they ever had an agreement. He was jailed for a month and a half and then fined $3.5 million. Bailey’s law license in Massachusetts was eventually revoked in 2003. A Bay State native, Bailey never practiced law again. Before that embittering episode, however, his life, and a legal career that only made up part of it, was nothing less than singular. A college dropout who joined the Marines, Bailey graduated first in his class from Boston University School of Law in 1957 with an L.L.B. One of his first clients was neurosurgeon Sam Sheppard, the man whose wrongful conviction inspired a 1960s television series and the 1993 Harrison Ford movie The Fugitive. Bailey began working on the case after being hired by Sheppard’s brother in the 1960s to work on the appeal. The lawyer did right by his adamantly innocent — and later legally vindicated — client; Bailey successfully convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that Sheppard had been denied his right to Due Process of law. A retrial was ordered and Sheppard was found not guilty. The first test of his mettle on the national stage met, Bailey would go on to represent and successfully defend U.S. Army Captain Ernest Medina over his alleged responsibility for the My Lai Massacre in which upwards of 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed, many of them women and children under the age of 12.
