Some thoughts about the Cruz contretemps in Broweird and the outburst by the judge assigned to her first first degree murder case.
Perhaps a more experienced judge should have been selected.
The defense is under no obligation to call any witness and can rest whenever they wish. Whilst former State Attorney Michael Satz reportedly "threw up his hands" in mock disgust when asked if he was ready to proceed with rebuttal after the defense surprised everyone by resting, we have yet to have a trial judge require the prosecution in any case tell us who they are calling, who they are not calling, or even who their next witness is. The prosecution doesn't want us to know who their next witness is, and the defense doesn't want to let anyone know when they are going to rest.
It is called trial tactics and those of us who try cases deal with it, and those who sit on benches and haven't ever tried a big case cannot deal with it.
For those of you who aren't Starbucks swilling 30 something judges, the title of this post is a reference to a magnificent book by one of America's greatest criminal trial lawyers- Lee Bailey. But since he's not on Tik Tok or IG, we don't expect you 30 and 40 somethings to know anything about him.
Some trial tactic no-nos. These are inviolable rules.
Never tell the jury in opening your client will testify. You might just as well say "Hey Ms. prosecutor, here's a legal pad and pen, please start preparing to cross my client." You gain nothing, and you box yourself in- what if the case goes so well you don't need to call your client?
Never not object because you're worried the jury will be upset with you or you do not want to call attention to the evidence. Read some case law on preserving the record for the legal reasons why you have to object (unless you sit on a bench at work. Y'all do not need to read case law as we all know. You know it all.). No jury during deliberates and says "she's not guilty but that attorney objected so much maybe we should find her guilty."
Try and avoid Friday verdicts.
Rarely if ever postpone opening until the prosecution rests. It never works out as you think it will.
Never plead your client into some of the minor crimes during trial while contesting the main charge. It does not buy you good will and it just makes the prosecution's job easier. If your client possessed an undersized Snook while being arrested for murder, the jury can figure it out for themselves.
In state court, speak to every jury in the venire unless you have a tactical reason not to. Do not let the judge hurry you into finishing voir dire.
Do not thank the jury. It's a waste of time. If you must thank them, squeeze it in during the middle of closing. Not when you first address them or last address them. That's for amateurs.
Do not be overly polite or helpful. The best criminal defense attorney you never heard of once told us "The only thing I waive in court is the American Flag." He did not stipulate to lab reports or business records. He worked out of a storefront in an industrial town in the northeast and went decades trying 6-8 cases a year and losing only one or two. RIP our friend Lenny F.
Do not be overly polite to the judge. They work for the state. Being nice to them does not get you good rulings. Once, after a win in Broweird a judge told us after the verdict- "I like you. You didn't try and kiss my ass." Keep your self respect. If you do not believe us, someday we will post the transcript of our contempt hearing for refusing to stand when the judge entered the courtroom during the trial. The state and the judge were so consumed with our rudeness, the defense slipped right by them. And we were acquitted on appeal.
Don't do the appeal if you lost the case. You need a fresh set of eyes.
Presumption of Innocence and Burden of Proof only work in the movies. Every juror presumes your client guilty and you need, repeat- you need to prove their innocence. Reasonable Doubt only sounds reasonable. The defense wins when they remove all doubt. This isn't the law- but it's life and it's true and if you're tired of losing, stop arguing reasonable doubt in closing. Jurors will always vote for the prosecution in close cases, despite the Florida jury instruction about a having a conviction of guilt that waivers and vacillates. it sounds nice. But it doesn't work one damn bit.
Trial tactics come in many forms and flavors. It can be a sharp elbow thrown in the heat of battle, or the unseen knife deftly slipped into the heart of the prosecution's case at an unexpected time through a seemingly unimportant witness. There are no small trials or witnesses. Only small lawyers.
Last rule: Don't get caught up in tactics. Big moments win cases. The witness not being sure of the identification. The inability to prove possession. Threading a needle is the type of thing you talk about late at night at a bar during a CLE conference in Vegas, trying to impress some hot lawyer. Winning lawyers don't thread needles. They bludgeon the other side into submission until there is no doubt left that you have won.
"Combat Tactics Mr. Ryan."
This is such a great scene, especially when the torpedo is about to hit and Sean Connery asks Alex Baldwin/Ryan what books he wrote and Ryan mentions a book on Admiral Halsey and naval tactics (which obviously refers to the mistakes Halsey made at the Battle of Leyte Gulf - although it's not mentioned in the movie dialogue) : "Oh I know this book. Your conclusions were all wrong Ryan. Halsey acted stupidly." Great stuff for a WWII history nerd.
29 comments:
Flea Bailey lol
In the end, F.Lee Bailey was married 4 times, bankrupt, and disbarred. F. Lee Bailey is not a role model. F. Lee Bailey is a cautionary tale of how NOT to practice law.
This is so well written and so true.
The Captain Reports:
As predicted, the Defense has filed their Motion to Recuse Judge Scherer
from the case. Long time coming.
Cap Out ……
Rumpole, you got to post that transcript of you refusing to stand up when judge entered the courtroom. I wish we all had similar sized balls to pull that off!
The longer I try cases the more Im astonished by how little we know about criminal juries, given the stakes. We have old attorney myths, which may well be true, about Friday verdicts being bad for the defense, get a female lawyer for a female victim, etc. We ought to have legitimate social science. Sometimes decades of our clients' lives are at stake, and sometimes their lives themselves.
If any blog readers have a spare million or two, I want a benefactor. I want about fifty ipads, running some software I could write myself. I want the chief judge's permission to survey jurors post-verdict, and some small financial incentive for them to participate. Lastly, I need a small team of grad students or law students to man the courthouse and be present at verdicts, to administrate the survey.
Sample variables: nature of charge; demographics (race, sex, age) of defendant, victim, judge, defense lawyer, prosecutor, jury, foreperson; juror rating on likability of the parties; duration of deliberation; weekday and time of verdict; juror rank of most important evidence / witness; defendant testimony or no; court division; juror report on when decision was made; etc.
Hispanic male defendant with white female victim in an Agg Bat DV case with a white male prosecutor (likability 7/10) and hispanic female defense (likability 8/10) in Div 21 (white male judge) --- conviction prediction 73%. Changes to 62% if victim is hispanic and prosecutor has 5/10 likability, etc. Or changes to 49% in Div 17.
Miami is the perfect place to conduct this kind of study: we get a lot of verdicts, we have a diverse population, and we see many different types of charges.
Any rich people reading, or anyone work for a foundation? Give me a million bucks and a year, I'll get it done. It would be foundational text for every law school and PDO and SAO in the country.
That’s good stuff, Rumpole. I think we’re going to need a book from you.
Whaddabout Melvin Belli???
Last night's 20/20 episode "The Last Hunt" included insightful interviews with jurors on the Rudolph/Milliron case, DOM, Margot Moss, and witnesses. Seems like the defense was well on its way to a win (or hung jury) until Rudolph took the stand in his own defense.
I agree with some, and disagree with other advice. Judge Jose Rodriguez in Orlando instructs lawyers NOT TO STAND when the jury enters or leaves. He was one of the best trial judges I have appeared before. Very Humble. When I complimented him post verdict,it brought tears to his eyes.
To 4:44. Maybe a poor husband but one of the greatest trial lawyers of all time. Frankly, there are very few people who are at his level and therefore qualified to opine negatively about F. Lee. I’m pretty sure you’re not one of them. When you obtain a new trial on appeal for a death row inmate and then get him acquitted at that trial all under the glare of the nation then maybe you can talk. I’m pretty sure you also opine that Picasso is an excellent example of how NOT to be an artist and Sinatra how NOT to be singer/movie star. Donkeys should not be bad mouthing lions.
Grant Dwyer:
They’re called jury consultants. They get paid a lot of money for doing all that heavy lifting for you.
Cap Out …..
I read the motion to recuse her. Thanks to that stupid judge, all this money and it may end up being done over again.
@ 4:10
4:44 pointed out that Bailey was also "disbarred." When you respond by just saying "Maybe a poor husband," you're omitting the fact that Bailey was disbarred, specifically because he misappropriated client assets and deposited them into his own accounts. This was not some personal foible or character flaw, but Bailey violating the foundational duties of a lawyer and being forbidden from practicing law ever again. Either Bailey was desperate or arrogant enough to think he could steal from clients and his prior glories and triumphs did not prevent him from making bad decisions with ignominious consequences.
"Frankly, there are very few people who are at his level and therefore qualified to opine negatively about F. Lee."
Really? Well, then, the Bar lawyers and Florida judges who "opined negatively" about Bailey during his disbarment proceedings never achieved the legal victories he did. So maybe they were not qualified to judge him as being unworthy to practice law? Guess Bailey should have demanded a tribunal of jurists more worthy to judge him?
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-supreme-court/1495405.html
The judges who presided over his bankruptcies were probably never legal eagles of Bailey caliber either.
https://www.pressherald.com/2017/06/27/famed-lawyer-f-lee-bailey-files-again-for-bankruptcy/
And the reporters who portrayed him as a pathetic broken figure were probably never stellar lawyers either.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/07/20/o-j-s-last-defender-f-lee-bailey-is-broke-disbarred-and-working-above-a-hair-salon/
In the end, superlative achievements do not protect somebody from public shame and disgrace. James Watson discovered DNA and won a Nobel Prize. That's an even smaller lot of people than the awesome lawyer club. But because of Watson's later comments about black people, he was disavowed and denounced by colleagues and society alike and reduced to having to sell his Nobel prize because he has no other income.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal
So if shame came surround somebody who discovered DNA, it can happen to some old-timey hotshot lawyer too.
Remember the old adage, “bad cases make bad law.” With our very conservative Supreme Court, it is highly unlikely that a death sentence would be overturned no matter the egregious errors committed.
Captain: yes but they rarely exist on the criminal side, and there is inarguably a massive gap where their work ought to be. The PD's office alone should use such science, not to mention the state and private practitioners -- and they dont.
If having a female lawyer on a DV case with a female victim increases the chances of acquittal by 5%, say, then the office should do it every time. If that increased chance of acquittal saves 30 clients a year in jail each -- the stakes are enormous.
Its like moneyball. If running software increases your chance to make the MLB playoffs, what team wouldnt? It has changed the game.
In a prior comment here, someone that Bailey saved a client who was on Death Row. Sheppard was never on Death Row. He was doing life at the Ohio State Penitentiary. Still, the victory he achieved in Sheppard vs.
The victory he achieved in Sheppard v s. Maxwell was extraordinary. But he squandered it all with his drinking and his arrogance.
1:12- if I remember the story correctly, the money Bailey was found to have wrongfully taken was money his client wanted to pay him, but it was found to be covered by some kind of government freeze order because of suspicious origins. If there was a lot of insight and wisdom in determining that he was fairly treated as a thief for acting as if the order did not cover those funds, it did not come out in any of the published accounts of the case.
@ Sunday the 18th, 1:12 AM
It is often said the one who really should have gotten way more credit for DNA than Watson was Rosalind Franklin, a woman. And that some underhandedness and sexism are why she never got the credit. To quote:
"Historians of science, and the scientists directly involved, have frequently reanalyzed the complex interactions between Franklin, Wilkins, Watson and Crick at the time of the determination of the DNA structure in the early 1950s. In each case, the reanalysis has centred to varying degrees on two principal questions: would Watson and Crick have been able to formulate their ingenious model without seeing Franklin's then unpublished data? Was Watson and Crick's unauthorized use of their competitor's data within the accepted rules of scientific practice? All who are concerned with these questions will find this new book very interesting. Brenda Maddox, an award-winning biographer, researched the story with tremendous accuracy. She interviewed all major participants in the DNA race, and collected information from friends and family members of Rosalind Franklin. The resulting book is first of all a moving biography of a girl, and then a young woman, who devoted her life to science. The science is very well presented and the two principal questions mentioned above are considered at length. It was not known to me, for example, that in 1954 Watson and Crick clearly stated, in a footnote to another paper, that without the crystallographic data obtained at King's College the formulation of their DNA model “would have been most unlikely, if not impossible”. This statement strongly contradicts the finishing statement in their most famous 1953 Nature paper, in which Watson and Crick, referring to the X-ray data in the two directly following papers from Wilkins's and Franklin's groups, wrote, “We were not aware of the details of the results presented there when we devised our structure...”. Whatever the motivation for this misleading statement — presumably to protect the person who provided Franklin's data to Watson and Crick — it has stolen a significant chunk of the scientific fame rightly owing to Rosalind Franklin."
See "The first lady of DNA" EMBO Rep. 2003 Jan; 4(1): 14.
doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.embor723
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1315822/
Thus, Watson had a lot more baggage than just some "later" comments. From how journalists describe him, he was guilty of bigotry on levels of race and sex for decades, but that it finally caught up to him. He was a scientific racist: he ascribed to the position that hard data and anecdotal interactions show that black people are not the intellectual equal of whites period and never have been. He apologized once out of convenience but retreated from that retraction at a later time. This wasn't a "he misspoke" moment. He was fully committed to, and doubled down on the idea that science can show black people are not truly equal.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/13/dna-pioneer-james-watson-honors-racist-comments/2565503002/
https://www.wired.com/story/james-watson-and-scientific-racism/
https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/11/lab-james-watson-racist-remarks/
That will define his legacy.
The curse of OJ Simpson: Cochran-dead; Kardashian-dead; F Lee-disbarred; Shapiro- huckster for home legal kits
@ 3:21
"if I remember the story correctly, the money Bailey was found to have wrongfully taken was money his client wanted to pay him, but it was found to be covered by some kind of government freeze order because of suspicious origins"
Uh, no. It looks like the plan was for Bailey to hold certain assets of the client as a "guardian" or "trustee" and also to evade forfeiture but then Bailey started commingling or converting these assets and then lied when questioned about it and then made ex parte communications that threw his client under the bus in order to protect himself.
I provided the link of the Florida Supreme Court decision disbarring Bailey which recites his misconduct.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-supreme-court/1495405.html
@ 3:31
Franklin definitely deserved more credit and had she not died of cancer, she probably would have received the Nobel along with Wilkins, but the Nobel Committee was not making posthumous nominations at the time. For multiple reasons, Franklin was not able to "cross the finish line" before Watson and Crick even with the superior data she had.
"By chance, Franklin’s data chimed completely with what Crick had been working on for months: the type of monoclinic unit cell found in DNA was also present in the horse haemoglobin he had been studying for his PhD. This meant that DNA was in two parts or chains, each matching the other. Crick’s expertise explains why he quickly realised the significance of these facts, whereas it took Franklin months to get to the same point."
"While Watson and Crick were working feverishly in Cambridge, fearful that Pauling might scoop them, Franklin was finishing up her work on DNA before leaving the lab. The progress she made on her own, increasingly isolated and without the benefit of anyone to exchange ideas with, was simply remarkable."
"Franklin’s laboratory notebooks reveal that she initially found it difficult to interpret the outcome of the complex mathematics – like Crick, she was working with nothing more than a slide rule and a pencil – but by 24 February, she had realised that DNA had a double helix structure and that the way the component nucleotides or bases on each strand were connected meant that the two strands were complementary, enabling the molecule to replicate."
"Above all, Franklin noted that ‘an infinite variety of nucleotide sequences would be possible to explain the biological specificity of DNA’, thereby showing that she had glimpsed the most decisive secret of DNA: the sequence of bases contains the genetic code."
"To prove her point, she would have to convert this insight into a precise, mathematically and chemically rigorous model. She did not get the chance to do this, because Watson and Crick had already crossed the finishing line – the Cambridge duo had rapidly interpreted the double helix structure in terms of precise spatial relationships and chemical bonds, through the construction of a physical model."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/23/sexism-in-science-did-watson-and-crick-really-steal-rosalind-franklins-data
So no, Watson's later disgrace was not some delayed retribution for plagiarizing from Rosalind Franklin.
And even assuming Watson was a no talent fraud, does that also apply to Tim Hunt, a Nobel laureate disgraced and driven to resignation by his later sexist comments?
https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/11/europe/hunt-women-scientists
Or did Hunt also have some decades long "baggage" that outweighs his chemistry work?
And on the subject of "baggage," Bailey may have been coasting on his sterling reputation and doing unsavory things to clients for years before he was finally caught and punished for it, which is often the cause for unscrupulous lawyers with a lot of juice. How long was Tom Girardi ripping off clients before he was finally stopped?
Based on the coverage about Bailey near the end of his life, hubris and decay will define his legacy.
@ 3:31
"This wasn't a "he misspoke" moment. He was fully committed to, and doubled down"
And Bailey's misconduct wasn't a sudden singular momentary gaffe. It was planned protracted calculated events in which he carried out multiple steps and when confronted about them, he "doubled down" and lied to conceal his wrongdoing and then tried to justify his actions.
It's hotly debated.
With some defending Watson and Crick and others not.
PBS article "Why discovery of DNA’s double helix was based on ‘rip-off’ of female scientist’s data" see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/watson-cricks-breakthrough-dna-discovery-was-based-on-rosalind-franklins-work
A debate about it between two panelists (Nicholas Wade and Lynn Osman Elkin), with Wade contending Watson stole nothing and Elkin taking the opposite position: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/rosalind-franklin-and-dna-how-wronged-was-she/
From Science History:
"At King’s College London, Rosalind Franklin obtained images of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an idea first broached by Maurice Wilkins. Franklin’s images allowed James Watson and Francis Crick to create their famous two-strand, or double-helix, model.
In 1962 Watson (b. 1928), Crick (1916–2004), and Wilkins (1916–2004) jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 1953 determination of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Wilkins’s colleague Franklin (1920–1958), who died from cancer at the age of 37, was not so honored. The reasons for her exclusion have been debated and are still unclear. There is a Nobel Prize stipulation that states “in no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons.” The fact she died before the prize was awarded may also have been a factor, although the stipulation against posthumous awards was not instated until 1974."
A lot of the flaws of Watson and how they wronged Franklin is documented in The Secret of Life, a book on the matter. From Nautilus we have these two quotes:
"In 2018, Markel interviewed Watson. The glow of Watson’s public reputation had been extinguished by the racism in his repeated comments that blacks possessed an inferior intelligence to whites because of genetics. In The Secret of Life, Markel shows Watson’s racism was always part of his character. When Watson was in Naples in 1951, he wrote to his parents, 'The entire city can be described as a slum and the people are wretchedly poor, living in slums which make the Negro section of Chicago look almost pleasant in comparison.'"
As to women? Well Watson definitely made every effort to snub Franklin. "Although Watson doesn’t beguile his boss into killing his wife, he does commit character-assassination of Rosalind Franklin. In particular, Markel told me, Watson’s 1968 book, The Double Helix, 'really did a number on her.' Watson’s portrayal of Franklin as a raging termagant who one day 'in her hot anger' was going to strike Watson for interrupting her constituted one scene that lived in infamy for years." And lastly:
"Markel acknowledges the Rashomon effect of the incident, and the many sources for it (his footnotes throughout the book are thorough), but he himself doesn’t see any moral ambiguity in it. 'Quite simply, it was not all right,' he writes. 'There exists no ethical standard whereby Franklin’s permission did not need to be expressly asked, and because permission was not requested, Wilkins’s showing Watson Photograph No. 51 remains one of the most egregious ripoffs in the history of science.'"
Despite efforts to persuade the Nobel Prize committee to include Franklin, she was left out, even though there was no restriction for considering her since the posthumous rule was not passed as of the time of the award.
@ 3:36
Despite the pronouncements of Markel, Franklin's x-ray photographs were not her personal property. They were property of the college and Franklin previously told her student Raymond Gosling to share the photo with Wilkins because Franklin was soon departing and Wilkins was taking over supervision of her graduate students.
"I took it down the corridor and gave it to him because it had reached the stage now when Rosalind was going to leave, so she suggested that I go down the corridor and give this beautiful structure B pattern, this photo 51, to Maurice. Maurice couldn’t believe it when I offered it to him. He couldn’t believe that I hadn’t stolen it from her desk. He didn’t think that she could ever offer him something as interesting as this."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01347-8/
"In January 1953, Franklin told her student Raymond Gosling to give what has now become known as photo 51 to Maurice Wilkins. The previous summer she had informed Randall that she would be leaving on January 1. Gosling would not be moving with her and would still need a thesis, likely returning to Wilkins as adviser."
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202000119
Franklin did not appreciate the significance of "Photo 51" because she had been focused on the "A-form" of DNA instead of "B-form."
"Franklin, with none these advantages, nevertheless got a long way on her own. But she didn't recognise (at least at first) that this was a race, and she focused for too long on the A form of DNA. Franklin laid Photograph 51 aside because it did not contain as much crystallographic information as the A form. Unfortunately, it is the B form that appears in nature."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00422-5/fulltext#%20
While Markel tries to portray the sharing of the MRC report (which was more significant than Photo 51) as a secondary “theft” from Franklin, Perutz claims he shared it with Crick because it was not confidential.
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202000119
Once research gets summarized and shared in written reports with scientists of other institutions, it seems strange to expect word not to spread about its findings. Once Crick saw the data, he and Watson were able to extrapolate something Franklin was not in a position to do.
“But right there in Franklin's report, were space group values that immediately told Crick that the structure was anti-parallel. This is because the data given describe a unit cell that has a geometry that possesses what is termed called face-centered monoclinic C2 symmetry. Crick's leap required the assumption that this symmetry came from the chains and not other parts of the molecule but given the high plausibility of this assumption, it was virtually certain that the chains ran in opposite directions. That, and that alone, was the breakthrough for it laid the stereochemical foundation for the base-pairing, which Watson would then promptly get (vide infra).”
“…he had the good fortune to be in a perfect position to understand what Franklin could not possibly have seen in the pattern.”
https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202000119
“even though there was no restriction for considering her since the posthumous rule was not passed as of the time of the award”
The rule against posthumous nominations was not formally imposed until 1974, but it was still a convention adhered to by the committee before then. Before 1974, two candidates won it posthumously only because they died in the time between their nomination and award. Franklin died in 1958, before the deliberations for the 1962 award. Even the Nautilus article you provided insists “In fact, she was not eligible for the prize, which is not awarded posthumously.”
https://nautil.us/one-of-the-most-egregious-ripoffs-in-the-history-of-science-238331/
@ 3:36
The criticism of Watson and the downplaying of his contribution to DNA science also reveal something else. Even granting that Watson totally plagiarized or stole from Franklin, he and Crick were still in a position to win a Nobel because of their prior work which put them in a position to do something with Franklin's data that others (including Franklin) could not do. Even assuming he did not deserve the prize at all, most of the people who criticize Watson are not and will never be in a position to win a Nobel or even be in the "running" or general vicinity of contribution. But other people don't have to be "at his level" in order to criticize him. Just like people don't ever have to be at the "level" of F. Lee Bailey to criticize him and his career.
The post from September 17, 2022 4:10:00 PM (which you may or may not have posted) declared "Frankly, there are very few people who are at his level and therefore qualified to opine negatively about F. Lee" and insisted that somebody needs to amass the same legal achievements he did in order to be allowed to "opine negatively" about him. Well, that's just nonsense. Just like regular people can impugn Watson even though they are not scientists or made any breakthroughs comparable to his, regular people can criticize and impugn F. Lee Bailey even though they are not even lawyers and never achieved comparable legal triumphs like his.
https://floridaphoenix.com/2021/06/06/the-life-and-death-of-famed-defense-attorney-f-lee-bailey-with-some-fl-anecdotes/
And even Nobel winning scientists like Tim Hunt who don't have some cloud of controversy about their achievements can still be disgraced and exiled because of subsequent things. Despite Hunt's sexist statements, nobody has yet suggested he stole his research. Yet, that did not exempt him from denunciation on social media by lots of people without Nobels.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/13/tim-hunt-hung-out-to-dry-interview-mary-collins
It is very telling when the best defense is, "what happened was perfectly legal, and ethics aren't really part of anything" to summarize.
A lot of things are perfectly legal, but that doesn't make them right. Harsh realities of our world.
"It is very telling when the best defense is, "what happened was perfectly legal, and ethics aren't really part of anything" to summarize."
A kind of defense which lots of defense attorneys like Bailey were sure to utilize for their clients and themselves during their own careers. Though, it was not so availing to Bailey when he himself was in the dock and his own career was at stake.
But to summarize, that really wasn't the defense for Watson, because the contention was that Watson's and Crick's awareness of the data was not unethical, much less illegal or even dishonest on their part, even if Wilkins was somehow to blame. Because of prior breakthroughs they made, Watson and Crick were in a position to do something with Franklin's data which she was not yet able to do. Even if he is ethically tainted, Watson remained a scientist who achieved things most other scientists or people will never achieve. However, that certainly does not immunize him from criticism, even from those who will never be on his professional level. Just like it doesn't immunize Bailey from criticism from people without his level of legal achievement. The original issue was somebody claiming that nobody is allowed to "opine negatively" about F. Lee Bailey unless they had the same level of achievement as him. Obviously, that's nonsense and people can criticize Watson and Bailey for their alleged ethical failings, even if we're never going to achieve things comparable to what they did.
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