F. Lee Bailey

Francis Lee Bailey Jr., commonly referred to as F. Lee Bailey, (born June 10, 1933) is an American former attorney. For most of his career, he was licensed in Massachusetts and Florida. He was a criminal defense attorney who served as the lawyer in the re-trial of osteopathic physician Sam Sheppard. He was also the supervisory attorney over attorney Mark J. Kadish in the court martial of Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre, among other high-profile trials, and was one of the lawyers for the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case. He has also had a number of visible defeats, legal controversies, and personal trouble with the law, and was disbarred in Massachusetts and Florida for misconduct while defending his client Claude DuBoc. In 2014 he was denied a law license by the Maine State Bar Association and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Education and military service

Bailey was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. He went to Cardigan Mountain School and then Kimball Union Academy, graduating in the class of 1950. Bailey studied at Harvard College, but dropped out in 1952 to join the United States Marine Corps. Bailey was commissioned as an officer and, following flight training, received his Naval Aviator wings in 1954. He served as a jet fighter pilot, and then began to serve as a squadron legal officer, the role he filled until he resigned his commission in 1956. He briefly returned to Harvard before he was admitted to Boston University School of Law in 1957, which accepted his military experience in lieu of the requirement for students to have completed at least three years of undergraduate college courses. He graduated with an LL.B. in 1960 and was ranked first in his class.