F. Lee Bailey has passed away

Because he used press conferences and public appearances as part of his strategy, because he took on infamous and high profile clients in newsworthy trials, and because he developed some ethical issues of his own, Bailey was perhaps the most famous defense attorney since Clarence Darrow.

He was known as a master of cross-examination, and many think that his skillful cross-ex of Mark Fuhrman was the trigger for the jury to declare “not guilty” in the OJ trial. Bailey lured the officer into committing perjury very blatantly, thus placing the entire prosecution under a cloud.

21 thoughts on “F. Lee Bailey has passed away

  1. Somebody actually defending Johnny Cochran, lol. Never thought I’d see the day. Son, let me school you a bit. This was a case about an ex-football pro who got into a murderous rage and offed two people. This being his first time murdering, he was extremely sloppy & left a mountain of evidence behind. It had nothing to do with Fuhrman saying the N-word in years prior. Nothing to do with Scheck’s trying to confuse jurors about DNA, or Cochran making racial issues where none existed. He was so blatant, he actually brought a bible & book of MLK quotes with him on final arguments, lol. In a murder case that had nothing to do with race. I was stunned he didn’t wear a dashiki. None of those lawyers did *anything* even remotely brilliant. They knew they had a guilty client and desperately threw everything they could at the jury, hoping some of the shit would stick to the wall. They got a killer off the hook to go back to the golf course, via extreme deception and wildly inane conspiracy theories, while the two young people Simpson took the lives of lay in their graves. And you call that “fantastically brilliant.” Here’s hoping you join Cochran soon, exactly where he is right now.

    1. Your reading comprehension is exceedingly poor. I wasn’t ascribing any moral judgement to Cochran’s defense, nor to Simpson, who was clearly guilty. I was simply explaining *why* the jury arrived at their verdict. If you prefer to moralize — while wishing people dead, hypocritically enough — be my guest, but that wasn’t my point.

      The fact of the matter is that no matter how you feel about Jonny Cochran, he ran circles around Clark and Darden, doing exactly what he was paid to do. People often seem to be under the mistaken impression that the job of defense lawyers is to find truth; it’s not. The job of a defense lawyer is to defend their client. Period.

      The difference between you and Cochrane was that he understood that the case WAS about race — not because of the facts of the case, but because of the history of the LAPD’s relations with LA’s African-American community. You can decry the tactic, you can declare it morally bankrupt, but he won the case. You know, the thing he was paid to do.

      But thanks for the feeble attempt to “school me,” son.

      1. It is hard to feel that keeping the guilty out of prison by using any means, no matter underhanded, is a fine thing to do. There are various ways to justify it, mainly by pointing to the various flaw, inadequacies, and injustices of our system of criminal law and imprisonment.

        The following point is completely irrelevant to that: What is much more common is prosecutors who convict people by any means that come to hand, without even worrying about guilt or innocence much. Unscrupulous prosecutors do not excuse underhanded defense attorneys, but I think the former outnumbers the latter in terms of success by ten to one or more.

        We live in a world much in need of progress.

        1. As a famous criminal law professor once said…”if I’m guilty I want to be tried in the US…if I’m innocent I want to be tried in Europe.”

  2. My first memory of Flea was the release of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers first album in 1984. My first memory of F. Lee was as host of the syndicated show Lie Detector in 1983. My Dad really liked the show. The only thing I specifically remember from it was when Ronald Reagan’s barber took a polygraph test during which he was asked if Reagan dyed his hair. For what it’s worth (not much in my opinion) the examiner said he was being truthful when he said Reagan did not. With riveting television like that it is hard to believe the show was cancelled after one season.

  3. I think that was just Bailey following his own principles about never admitting his client’s guilt. If I remember right, Ron Goldman’s blood was found in OJ’s Bronco. Given that they had never met, it’s difficult to believe that Bailey truly bought in to OJ’s innocence. Bailey had his faults, but he was not unintelligent.

    I can’t say the same for OJ’s jurors.

    1. I think you have to understand the juror’s frame of mind. I don’t believe that they actually thought OJ was guilty — as you say, anyone with any modicum of reasoning skills could clearly see that he was.

      I think his innocent verdict was due to three factors, one much larger than the other:

      1) The LAPD was guilty of decades of abuse and unfairness in their dealings with the black community, with the Rodney King verdict being the poster child. Whether right or wrong, I think that jury saw this as their chance to “get back” at this systematic oppression — this time a black person would be the benefactor of an unfair system. While letting a guilty murderer go free is obviously horrible and morally hard to defend, I can’t say that I altogether blame them. It’s hard to care about justice when you’ve been a victim of injustice for your entire life. Humans aren’t always rational.

      2) The prosecution was, frankly, not very good. Darden and Clark were very much in over their heads, and their opponents were *very* good attorneys. Some of the mistakes they made were incomprehensible — why would you *ever* agree to let OJ try on the gloves? “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” is the lasting, most famous quote from the trial, and they let it happen.

      3) The bar of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” is a high one to clear, and with good reason. Clark & Darden having the misfortune to have an absolutely vile racist like Mark Fuhrman as the lead investigator on the case really, really hurt and went a long way towards introducing reasonable doubt. It was also the LAPD’s systemic racism coming back to bite them in the ass — Fuhrman should’ve never been a cop, and it’s disgraceful that he was.

      So I definitely wouldn’t ascribe the verdict as a result of stupidity. Doing do allows one to ignore the greater, still unsolved problems that led to it. When we dismiss someone as “stupid” or “evil” (though some people clearly are one, the other, or both), it gives us cover to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the real issues.

      1. Don’t forget Judge Ito….zero control over his courtroom…a competent judge was needed.

      2. It’s also good for us to remember the blood evidence in context. These days the accuracy and importance of DNA evidence is a part of our common knowledge that extends even to people with zero grasp of the science involved, but that was not true at the time. The general public was then unfamiliar with the precision and importance of DNA matching, and the prosecutors were ineffective in communicating its significance to the jury.

        Scientifically, the prosecution had a slam dunk case, but they still had to prove that the DNA science, which was then far less widely known, wasn’t a bunch of hifalutin’ mumbo-jumbo, and they had to persuade everyday people who might not accept evolution or the effectiveness of vaccinations. One does not gain a conviction in a jury trial merely by presenting or reciting facts. Persuading a jury is ultimately a matter of effective communication, and when dealing with people, “effective” is not a synonym for “accurate.”

    2. And give likewise props to whoever it was who came up with the glove fiasco. Quality gloves fit smugly, dried blood stiffens, he’s already wearing a glove underneath, and OJ was an “actor”.

  4. Despite Simpson’s fresh blood being found directly next to the victims, with no explanation, Bailey continued to babble about OJ’s innocence all the way up to his death, even writing a book about it. I believe alcohol abuse turned him insane long ago. He never was much good though, despite his reputation. Vince Bugliosi said, “The press called them the Dream Team, which made no sense; Bailey was the most well known, for LOSING famous cases!”

    1. Except that Jonny Cochrane, the lead attorney, was a fantastically talented attorney.

      I also wouldn’t put too much stock in Bugliosi — though a good prosecutor, he became something of a publicity hound who launched a career of punditry off of one slam-dunk case that garnered OJ-like attention in its day.

      Though he was a good prosecutor, if he were half as brilliant as he thought he was he’d have been sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court.

      1. I’m all not all that sure what’s so “fantastically talented” about a guy whose style was to falsely turn everything into a racial issue. The Simpson case had nothing whatsoever to do with race. Cochran knew his guilty client had no chance, so he played the race card against the LAPD and the most mindless jury in history gave Simpson 2 free murders because he’s black. Not brilliance; it was as heinously low as it gets. Bugliosi was right; it was no dream team, it was a bunch of hacks known for deceptive tactics. Bailey’s main role was to assassinate Fuhrman, a guy who was on the case for only a few hours, found a glove in the yard that had OJ’s, Nicole’s, & Ron’s blood commingled on it, and that was it, entirely. Bailey destroyed him on the stand and won back his reputation, but Fuhrman had very little to do with the case at all. It was all a show for the racist jury that had nothing to do with 2 people being killed. Cochran brought in world famous Dr. Henry Lee to testify he found a ‘foreign footprint’ at the crime scene – which turned out to be a permanent impression in the cement made by the workers who built the house decades earlier! That’s the kind of ‘evidence’ they had for OJ’s innocence. They also had Dr. Michael Baden on the stand to say “the evidence shows” there were two killers, only to be forced to admit under cross that there was no evidence of that. They all made complete fools of themselves, but in the end they got Simpson off the hook. I guess one person would call that a “fantastically brilliant” strategy, while another would say the ‘Dream Team’ was a group of absolute scum who would gladly sell their mothers up the river if it meant fame & money. I think Trump learned a lot from those guys: just lie, lie, lie about nonsensical conspiracy theories and eventually you’ll get to the top, because there’s a hell of a lot of stupid idiots out there.

        1. Well, those conspiracy theories are being proven true everyday. Have you even seen the Fauci emails? Also, check out the results of the Arizona audit around the end of the month.

          1. Please do not speak of the devil, Dev J. You have made the Bonker appear. Is that a nice thing to do?

        2. A lawyer’s job is to defend his client using the best possible strategy. That’s what Cochrane did, and it worked.

          Simpson’s defense attorneys didn’t make Mark Fuhrman be a racist — he did that all on his own. Nor did they make the LAPD have a history of systemic racism and poor dealings with the African-American community.

          1. I agree with that. In our system, a man is entitled to the best defense possible (or at least the best he can afford). When the facts of the case are stacked against him, a defense attorney has to come up with the best strategy he can devise. Cochrane and Bailey and the others did their best to set OJ free with the tools they had available, and they were successful. You can’t fault them for doing their job successfully, even though by doing that job they set an obviously guilty man free. Being a defense attorney can be an ugly responsibility when you know you can put a criminal back on the streets, but that is part of our legal process. As Mark Twain might have said, it’s the worst form of legal system – except for the others.

          2. Agreed that it is our system. That doesn’t make it right.

            Law joke: When you’ve got the law on your side, pound on the law. When you’ve got the facts on your side, pound on the facts. When you’ve got neither, pound on the table. –Unknown

            I think I remember Pat Buchanan saying it on TV, but I’d heard it before.

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