LEE BAILEY 2.0

 If you haven't done so already, click on over to DOM's blog and read Roy Black's guest post on F. Lee Bailey who passed away last week. 

Mr. Black's post and remembrances are valuable reading.  Lee Bailey along with Edward Bennet Williams (read the biography "The Man to See"), was the first generation of criminal defense attorney superstars (OK Abraham Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall, and others have a place in the early 18th and 19th centuries but Lee Bailey is the first famous criminal defense attorney in the last half of the 20th century). Roy Black came along in the 1970s. As Mr. Black writes, Lee Bailey burst on to the scene in the 1960s with his successful defense of Dr. Sam Sheppard - in his first year out of law school no less. The defense spawned a successful TV series (The Fugitive) and set Bailey on a course of high profiled defense cases, many successful, but none undertaken with anything less than a full fledged fight for his client. None of this "sign and flip" nonsense that so dominates our honourable profession these days, especially in Federal Court. As Mr. Markus is wont to say "You can't win a plea" which surely was in the DNA of Lee Bailey. 

Do not skip lightly over Mr. Black's recommendation to read the book about Lee Bailey's defense of Dr. Carl Coppolino "No Deadly Drug" which he rightly calls the best book on a criminal defense trial he has ever read - and we second that endorsement. We seem to recall a lecture on cross examination or experts  by Judge Milt Hirsch where he recounts Bailey's destruction of a defense expert in the Coppolino case in  two or three questions. Perhaps he will weigh in on that episode. 

And finally there is the insight, said before by Mr. Black- but worth repeating- on his education as one of the finest criminal defense attorneys of his generation. It was Mr. Black's reading and re-reading of the books on Lee Bailey's trials and Bailey's practice treatises that formed and honed his skills- at a time when reading books was the principal way we all educated ourselves. 

Like too  many in our profession, Mr. Bailey came to a sad ending with legal issues, incarceration and disbarment. But those are small postscripts to a career that inspired a generation of criminal defense attorneys to believe that ours is an honourable profession and one worth dedicating a life to. Lee Bailey taught us that there is no case that is not worth defending; no case that is unwinnable; and no client that does not deserve our best efforts. Bailey taught us to not just be in court- but to APPEAR in court. That standing up and saying "Rumpole on behalf of the defense and we are ready for trial" was a moment worth savoring with meaning. That as lawyers we didn't just say something at the beginning of the trial- we DELIVERED an opening statement, carefully planned. That there is nothing better than seeing in the eyes of a witness fear as we rise to cross examine them; that when they shake or hang their head and admit their testimony on direct was not correct and the defense version of the events is what really occurred,  or that the witness's version on direct is not believable, are moments that can be achieved by a well prepared criminal defense attorney. And that "NOT GUILTY" verdicts are not strikes of lightening, but are to be expected and achieved through fearless and dedicated work. 

Go read Mr. Markus's blog and Mr. Black's post and it will start you week off right- even if you wear black robes to work or are a prosecutor.