F. Lee Bailey Biography

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World of Criminal Justice on F. Lee Bailey

A prominent trial lawyer in the twentieth century, F. Lee Bailey was credited with inventing the role of the modern celebrity lawyer. As early as 1967, he was the host on the television show Good Company, followed by prominent legal roles on Good Morning America and Lie Detector. An author, he penned the best seller The Defense Never Rests (1971), For the Defense (1975), and several other legal books plus Secret, a novel written in 1982. He was a distinguished speaker with over 2500 appearances at universities, conventions, and professional organizations.

F. Lee Bailey was born June 10, 1933, in Waltham, Massachusetts. He was married four times and had one child. Bailey graduated from Harvard in 1954. After graduation, he served as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. During his stint in the Corps, he worked as a legal officer. Using his Marine Corps flight knowledge, he quickly became an expert in aviation law.

After the Marine Corps, Bailey attended law school at Boston University. He graduated with the highest grade point average in the history of the school. In 1960, he was admitted to practice in the Massachusetts State Bar.

Bailey became famous during the mid sixties when he defended several controversial, high profile criminals. He defended George Elderly, who was accused of killing his wife. After winning an acquittal in that case, he defended Dr. Sam Sheppard in the case that inspired the TV show and movie, The Fugitive. Sheppard had been convicted in his first trial in 1954 for murdering his wife. Sheppard steadfastly maintained his innocence and claimed that he had been knocked unconscious in a struggle with the real killer after he returned home to discover his wife's body. The doctor's status in the community, plus his reputation for extra-marital relationships, contained all of the ingredients for a sensational story and generated great newspaper revenue. He won an appeal for a new trial after serving nearly twelve years of a life sentence. F. Lee Bailey was hired for the second trial in 1966.

In the second trial, Bailey cast new light on old evidence about the alleged unrecovered murder weapon and blood spatters. He discredited a key state witness and put on a new witness who testified that Sheppard's dead wife may have been engaged in an extra-marital relationship of her own. After a masterful closing, the jury found the defendant not guilty. (In the late 1990s, Sheppard's son filed a wrongful prison claim against the State of Ohio. Bailey testified as a witness in that trial, but Sheppard's son, hoping to clear his father's name completely, lost the civil case.)

During the mid 1960s, Bailey represented Albert De Salvo, the Boston Strangler. Between June 1962 and January 1964, thirteen single women in the Boston area were raped in their apartments then strangled with articles of clothing. There were no signs of forced entry and apparently these quiet, respectable women actually let their killer into their residences. Albert De Salvo confessed in detail to the crimes. Bailey's efforts undoubtedly saved De Salvo from the gas chamber. (De Salvo was later murdered in prison.)

In 1971, Bailey won an acquittal for Captain Ernest Medina, a soldier on trial for his role in the Vietnam My Lai massacre. At a military court martial, Bailey defended the unpopular Medina against charges that he was responsible for the deaths of over 100 civilian villagers, had himself murdered a female villager and had assaulted two Vietnamese prisoners. The Army's case took eleven days and the prosecution presented 31 witnesses. Bailey's presentation took nearly as long, but it shredded the prosecution's theories. The five-man military tribunal took only an hour to pronounce Captain Medina not guilty on all charges.

Bailey's most notable loss was the conviction of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst for armed robbery. The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Hearst in a violent raid in 1974. After months as a missing person, Hearst surfaced in the company of her kidnappers and was photographed by bank cameras holding an assault rifle during an armed robbery. Despite his best arguments that Hearst had been brainwashed, tortured, and forced to participate, the photographic evidence from the bank cameras was too damaging to overcome. Eventually Hearst was pardoned after serving jail time.

F. Lee Bailey was part of the O. J. Simpson "dream team" of attorneys. Responsible for the cross examination of racist policeman Mark Furhman, Bailey's efforts were instrumental in proving that Furhman had lied under oath, and in obtaining Simpson's acquittal on the murder charges in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

While a dedicated defender of criminals, Bailey himself is no stranger to the defendant's chair. In 1970, Bailey was censored by a Massachusetts judge for "his philosophy of extreme egocentricity " (for talking too much to the media). He was barred for one year from practice in the state of New Jersey in 1971 as a result of remarks he made concerning a case. In 1996, he spent 43 days locked up for failing to account for $3 million dollars of client assets. The IRS had a tax lien against him for $200,000 in unpaid taxes. Later, he faced contempt charges, and possibly serious jail time, for failing to turn over to the government nearly $16 million in stock shares forfeited by a former client who had purchased the shares with untaxed drug profits. He faced disbarment from the state of Florida. In addition, according to 1999 trial testimony, he was unable to pay rent due to a government seizure of his assets and garnishment actions against his earnings.