F. Lee Bailey, Simpson and Hearst Attorney, Dies At 87

LOS ANGELES, CA — F. Lee Bailey, the eccentric, bold, meticulous and abrasive attorney who represented some of the most notorious defendants of the last century before being disbarred in two states, died Thursday at the age of 87.

Bailey was a member of O.J. Simpson's so-called "dream team" in the "trial of the century." Going into the trial, he was the most famous of the Simpson attorneys, having represented the likes of Patty Hearst and the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. Working with Johnnie Cochran Jr., Robert Kardashian, Robert Shapiro and others, he helped win a 1995 not-guilty verdict for Simpson, who was charged with killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

“In many respects, he was the model of what a criminal defense attorney should be in terms of preparation and investigation," said Kenneth Fishman, Bailey's former law partner.

In a career that lasted more than four decades, Bailey was seen as arrogant, egocentric and contemptuous of authority. But he was also acknowledged as bold, brilliant, meticulous and tireless in the defense of his clients.

Some of Bailey’s other high-profile clients included Dr. Samuel Sheppard — accused of killing his wife — and Capt. Ernest Medina, charged in connection with the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

Such high-profile cases made Bailey one of the first "celebrity attorneys. " He basked in the limelight with his famous clients and became a household name when he was tapped to defend Simpson.

"The legal profession is a business with a tremendous collection of egos,” Bailey said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report in September 1981. “Few people who are not strong egotistically gravitate to it.”

Simpson, who outlived his dream team, took to Twitter Thursday with an emotional video.

"I lost a great friend," he said, recalling how Bailey would come into his cell every morning "to tell me what to expect that day. He was smart, he was sharp."

Bailey was the most valuable member of the team, Simpson said in a 1996 story in The Boston Globe Magazine.

“He was able to simplify everything and identify what the most vital parts of the case were,” Simpson said. “Lee laid down what the case’s strategy was, what was going to be important and what was not. I thought he had an amazing grasp of what was going to be the most important parts of the case, and that turned out to be true.”

It was Bailey who grilled Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman on the witness stand at the downtown L.A. courthouse, catching him in a lie about using a racial slur. It was a key moment that turned the focus from the evidence against Simpson to the racial bias of the LAPD detectives who investigated the case. Bailey set a strategic trap for Fuhrman in an effort to discredit him and have him possibly perjure himself in a moment of supreme courtroom drama.

After having witnesses testify against Fuhrman and the subsequent release of tapes of the officer using racial slurs, Fuhrman ended up the only person associated with Simpson's murder trial to be convicted of a crime after pleading no contest to perjury.

Even though Fuhrman remained cool under pressure, and some legal experts called the confrontation a draw, Bailey, recalling the exchange months later, said, “That was the day Fuhrman dug his own grave.”

Bailey’s latest book, “The Truth About the O.J. Simpson Trial: By The Architect of the Defense,” was being released this month.

Bailey had legal troubles of his own. In 1996, he served over a month in a federal detention center on a contempt-of-court charge. For most of his career, he was licensed in Florida and in Massachusetts, where he was disbarred in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

He also had his share of critics, including Hearst. The publishing heiress who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist group on Feb. 4, 1974, and participated in armed robberies with the group, lost at trial. At trial, Bailey claimed she was coerced into participating because she feared for her life. She still was convicted.

Hearst called Bailey an “ineffective counsel” who reduced the trial to “a mockery, a farce, and a sham,” in a declaration she signed with a motion to reduce her sentence. Hearst accused him of sacrificing her defense in an effort to get a book deal about the case.

But his penchant for publicity was part of his genius, said his former law partner.

Throughout his career, Bailey antagonized authorities with his sometimes abrasive style and his quest for publicity. He was censured by a Massachusetts judge in 1970 for “his philosophy of extreme egocentricity,” and was disbarred for a year in New Jersey in 1971 for talking publicly about a case.

But publicity was part of his strategy, Fishman said.

“Enjoying the public eye became a tool for him," Fishman said. “He was one of the first lawyers to go outside the courtroom and talk in front of a bunch of microphones. All the news about a case was from the prosecution's side. So his strategy was to get out there and throw doubt on all the criminal charges."

Bailey made his name in the 19060s as the attorney for Sheppard, an Ohio osteopath convicted in 1954 of murdering his wife.

Sheppard spent more than a decade behind bars before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 1966 decision that “massive, pervasive, prejudicial publicity” had violated his rights. Bailey helped win an acquittal at a second trial.

Bailey also defended Albert DeSalvo, the man who claimed responsibility for the Boston Strangler murders between 1962 and 1964. DeSalvo confessed to the slayings, but was never tried or convicted, and later recanted. Despite doubts thrown on DeSalvo’s claim, Bailey always maintained that DeSalvo was the strangler.

Bailey was disbarred in Florida in 2001 and the next year in Massachusetts for the way he handled millions of dollars in stock owned by a convicted drug smuggler in 1994. He spent almost six weeks in federal prison charged with contempt of court in 1996 after refusing to turn over the stock. The experience left him “embittered.”

Francis Lee Bailey was born in the Boston suburb of Waltham, the son of a newspaper advertising man and a schoolteacher.

He enrolled at Harvard University in 1950 but left at the end of his sophomore year to train to become a Marine pilot. He retained a lifelong love of flying and even owned his own aviation company.

While in the military, Bailey volunteered for the legal staff at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina, and soon found himself the legal officer for more than 2,000 men.

Bailey earned a law degree from Boston University in 1960, where he had a 90.5 average, but he graduated without honors because he refused to join the Law Review. He said the university waived the requirement for an undergraduate degree because of his military legal experience.

Bailey was married four times and divorced three. His fourth wife, Patricia, died in 1999. He had three children.

City News Service, the Associated Press and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.