F Lee Bailey obituary
High-profile defence lawyers have often become celebrities in the US, starting with Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln and boasting ever more flamboyance since the days of Clarence Darrow.
F Lee Bailey, who has died aged 87, was one of the most aggressively self-promoting modern celebrity lawyers, achieving fame then maintaining it through the defence of notable clients. In the mid-1960s Bailey attracted headlines by winning a reversal for Sam Sheppard, a doctor convicted of the killing of his wife in one of US's most important murder trials; one that provided the inspiration for the hit television show and film The Fugitive. He went on to represent, not always successfully, clients as notorious as the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, or as controversial as the heiress Patty Hearst.
Continue reading...