Remembering a larger-than-life defense lawyer

F. Lee Bailey, who invited juries into the twilight zone of reasonable doubt in defense of Patricia Hearst and O.J. Simpson, died Thursday at age 87.

F. Lee Bailey, the theatrical criminal lawyer who invited juries into the twilight zone of reasonable doubt in defense of Patty Hearst, O.J. Simpson, the Boston Strangler, the army commander at the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and other notorious cases, died Thursday in Atlanta. He was 87.

His son Bendrix confirmed the death, in hospice care, but did not specify the cause. He said his father had been in poor health in recent years and living in Georgia to be near another son, Scott.

Bailey flew warplanes, sailed yachts, dropped out of Harvard, wrote books, touted himself on television, was profiled in countless newspapers, ran a detective agency, married four times, carried a gun, took on seemingly hopeless cases and courted trouble, once going to jail for six weeks and finally being disbarred.

But to a generation of Americans who grew up with courtroom dramas on television, he was the stuff of celebrity legends: an audacious, larger-than-life defender in the traditions of Clarence Darrow and Edward Bennett Williams, producing lawyerly entertainment long before Court TV or reality television shows.

He did not always win, however. He failed to keep Patty Hearst, the kidnapped publishing heiress, out of prison for her role in a bank robbery. He lost his insanity defense of the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, and could not save himself from contempt of court citations, humiliating handcuffs and disbarment in 2001 for misappropriating millions.

By then, however, his reputation had long been secured with triumphs that began soon after his law school graduation in 1960 with the Torso Murder Case. George Edgerly, a Lowell, Mass., auto mechanic, was accused of dismembering his wife and dumping her parts in a river. He had failed a lie-detector test, complicating the defense. But when the lead lawyer had a heart attack, Bailey took over and, raising the specter of reasonable doubt, won an acquittal. (Edgerly was later convicted in another murder.)

Bailey gained national attention in 1966, when he succeeded in reversing the murder conviction of Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Ohio osteopath whose case inspired the television series and movie “The Fugitive.” Sheppard had been convicted in 1954 of bludgeoning his wife but steadfastly claimed that he had been knocked out in a struggle with the killer after he returned home to discover the body.

In 1995, Bailey was part of the “dream team” of lawyers — Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, Barry Scheck and Robert Shapiro — who defended former football star O.J. Simpson against charges that he killed his former wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman in a ferocious knife attack. The prosecution’s case seemed overwhelming, but Bailey’s cross-examination of Detective Mark Fuhrman was widely considered a key to acquittal.