Lawyer F. Lee Bailey dies at age 87

F. Lee Bailey, who brought drama, swagger and cunning to the courtroom in representing football star O.J. Simpson, heiress Patty Hearst and the “Boston Strangler” suspect before his career ended in disbarment, died on Thursday. He was 87.

Bailey died in Georgia, said Peter Horstmann, an attorney and former associate. Bailey was in a hospice there, TMZ quoted his son as saying

Simpson, who was acquitted of murder charges in 1995 following the “Trial of the Century” in Los Angeles, posted a videotaped tribute to Bailey on Twitter, calling him “one of the great lawyers of our time.”

Bailey became one of the most famous attorneys in the country with courtroom victories that included an acquittal for a figure in the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War and a successful appeal for Sam Sheppard, a Cleveland doctor convicted of murdering his wife.

In his later years, however, he was living above a hair salon in Yarmouth, Maine, banned from practicing law and his fortune gone.

A former Marine Corps pilot, Bailey built a reputation for being an incisive, fast-thinking cross-examiner with a sharp memory, a flair for showmanship, deep knowledge of polygraph examinations and a hate-to-lose mentality.

“I can’t say no to a case if it has one of three qualities - professional challenge, notoriety or a big fee,” Bailey told the New York Times during his heyday.

His imperious nature, cutthroat style and love of publicity made Bailey enemies among judges and fellow lawyers. He had a major public blowup with co-counsel Robert Shapiro, a longtime friend, just before they opened what proved to be a successful defense in Simpson’s sensational double-murder trial in 1994.

“Guys like Bailey - and there aren’t many of them - are great characters and don’t generate great love,” Roy Black, a high-profile Miami defense attorney and friend of Bailey’s, told the Jacksonville Times-union in 2000. “He’s a guy who goes for the jugular. That’s all he knows to do and he’s not going to win any popularity contests for doing that.”

Bailey once summed up his approach by telling the Times: “Prosecuting or defending a case is nothing more than getting to those people who will talk for your side, who will say what you want said. ... I use the law to frustrate the law. But I didn’t set up the ground rules. I’m only a player in the game.”

Bailey could not acquit himself of contempt of court in 1996 and spent 44 days for failing to turn over stock and $700,000 that a Florida marijuana dealer had given him. Prosecutors said the stock and money should have been forfeited. Bailey said they were his payment from the drug dealer.

An agreement was reached in the case but Florida disbarred Bailey in 2001, saying he had engaged in “multiple counts of egregious misconduct, including offering false testimony.” Massachusetts also disbarred him.