Playboy Interview: F. Lee Bailey

In a profession where the lives of men depend squarely, and often solely, on an attorney's knowledge, nerve and persuasiveness, Francis Lee Bailey is a giant at 34. This colorful and aggressive advocate, who has defended three of the most celebrated clients in the recent history of criminal law--Sam Sheppard, Carl Coppolino and Albert DeSalvo--has become, in only six years of practice, perhaps the most sought-after and controversial trial lawyer in the country.

On Sheppard's behalf, Bailey appeared before the Supreme Court in a successful attempt to overturn his client's earlier conviction for the murder of his first wife; the ruling established a new criterion for fair trial coverage by the press. At Sheppard's recent retrial in Cleveland, Bailey won a widely publicized acquittal for the onetime neurosurgeon, thereby providing a storybook ending to Sheppard's long and often lonely search for vindication. In an equally sensational subsequent case, Bailey also won acquittal in New Jersey for Dr. Carl Coppolino, accused of strangling a neighbor whose wife had been his mistress. Four months later, a Florida jury found Coppolino guilty on a charge of murdering his own first wife, Carmela; the verdict, however, is being appealed, and Bailey is confident of the outcome.

DeSalvo, who claims to be the mysterious "Boston Strangler" who terrified all of Boston's women and allegedly murdered 13 of them between 1962 and 1964, has yet to be tried for the killings; he was interrogated on that subject under conditions set by Bailey, who will not allow DeSalvo's statements to be held against him unless state psychiatrists support Bailey's contention that DeSalvo is insane. Last January, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did manage to get DeSalvo convicted for armed robbery, assault and sex crimes reputedly committed after "the Strangler's" murder rampage, but--as in the Coppolino case--the decision is under appeal. Bailey considers Massachusetts' insanity test out of date (a defendant is considered sane unless he is unable to tell "right" from "wrong" or is driven by "irresistible impulse") and hopes the DeSalvo case will provide cause for a legal redefinition.

Bailey's S.R.O. roster of upcoming cases includes the murder trial of Charles Schmid, Jr., the eccentric "Pied Piper of Tucson," who has already been convicted of murdering two teenaged girls and is accused of killing a third; the appeal of T. Eugene Thompson, a Minneapolis lawyer convicted of arranging his wife's murder after he had insured her life for a million dollars; and the case of Dykes Simmons, an American who, on a dubious murder conviction, has spent seven years in a Mexican jail. Bailey' has also been retained by four suspects in Massachusetts' record-breaking Plymouth mail robbery, which netted its perpetrators $1,551,277 in cash.

As he briefs himself for such complex and challenging cases, Bailey operates in epic style. At his disposal are three planes (one of them a Lear jet), a 35-foot ocean racing yacht, a high-powered investigating team and a private communications network. A two-way radio is always close at hand, whether Bailey is in his Boston office, in the air, on the sea, in one of his cars or at home with his wife and son in their 15-room hilltop home in Marshfield, Massachusetts. A native of nearby Waltham, Bailey spent two years at Harvard, left school to become a Marine jet fighter pilot and then legal officer for 2000 Marines at Cherry Point, North Carolina. Out of the Service, he entered Boston University Law School and simultaneously launched his own investigative agency for lawyers. His first case after graduation was a murder trial, which he won. Since then, as William F. Buckley, Jr., observed while introducing him on his TV show, "Firing Line," "Bailey has revealed himself to be a man of such ferocious talents that he may yet decide to empty the prisons in alphabetical order."

Those "ferocious talents" have so captivated the public that Bailey--in an unprecedented and characteristically unexpected move--has signed to play himself in a Paramount film, "The Sam Sheppard Story," to be shot this month. As moderator of an ABC television series, "Good Company," to begin this fall, he will interview various celebrities in their homes.

In the midst of this frenetic schedule, Bailey agreed to grant this exclusive interview to Playboy during one of his whirlwind visits to New York. At the door of his suite in the Warwick Hotel, he greeted interviewer Nat Hentoff in shirt sleeves. "Although we conversed for more than six hours," Hentoff reports, "Bailey was just as fresh at the close of the interview as at its beginning. At five feet, nine inches, he is a compact man, with square shoulders and barrel chest; his blue eyes generally focus coolly on the eyes of the person he is addressing. His voice is low, his manner often sardonic; but when he talks about his cases and his almost messianic urge to improve the practice of criminal law, he becomes dead serious.

"On the table beside him was a thick folder of research material he had been studying in preparation for future cases; there were also a bottle of vodka and several bottles of tonic. We were occasionally interrupted by the telephone; one call, from California, was a request for Bailey to accept another murder case. 'I've got eight murder cases in a row,' he told his caller--but he promised to consider taking on another one. After hanging up, he refreshed our drinks and commented, 'It's wonderful to get all these fees, but you've got to deliver.'"

Win or lose, Bailey always acts like a winner, and his cockiness has earned him enemies who claim that his quick success presages a quick downfall. We began by asking him about two recent cases in which, so far, he has failed to deliver.

[Q] Playboy: At this point in your career, after two major setbacks--the DeSalvo trial and the second Coppolino case--do you think your pyramid of successes may be cracking?

[A] Bailey: There are no setbacks until the record is closed. We had nothing to lose in the DeSalvo case. He was not on trial as the Boston Strangler. We were litigating the Massachusetts rule on insanity, which is likely to be revised and updated very soon. The verdict in that case is on appeal and I expect to win it. As for Coppolino, I'm convinced his verdict will be overturned. I may well run into a major setback tomorrow; that's the nature of this profession. But it hasn't happened yet. In any case, I consider the whole business of statistics irrelevant to the ability of a trial attorney, because there are too many cases no lawyer could win--and too many no lawyer should lose.

[Q] Playboy: You've often said that defending a murder suspect is the highest calling in your profession. Why?

[A] Bailey: According to the Constitution, due process is meant to protect--in order of importance--life and then liberty and then property. Only capital cases deal with life. First things first, the way I look at it.

[Q] Playboy: You've also compared the criminal lawyer with the professional fighter. What do you mean by that?

[A] Bailey: I mean that a criminal lawyer without an aggressive, forceful personality would be horribly handicapped. There is something of the paid professional fighter in what I do, and that's an offshoot of the system our present jury system supplanted. If you and I had a dispute two or three hundred years ago, we would each hire a knight and they'd go out and fight. The merits of either side would have nothing to do with who won. Victory would depend on which knight was the better fighter. If mine were, you'd pay me or give up your land. Now this has been refined, and the merits of each side do count. But the criminal lawyer is still a fighter. The defendant in a courtroom is little more than a patient on an operating table without the benefit of anesthesia. He has to watch what's happening, but he can't do anything about it. He hasn't the understanding of the law, the ability to try cases or any of the other skills required of his lawyer. So the lawyer is a projection of the defendant. He's doing everything the defendant would do if he were able--short of suborning perjury and other nonpermissible tactics. And to that extent, as a lawyer, you don't say, "This is a good guy and I'm going to fight hard for him." You're paid--hopefully, though not always--and you're a professional and your business is to fight.

[Q] Playboy: In addition to his fighting skills, you've said the criminal lawyer has to have a considerable ego. By that criterion, do you qualify?

[A] Bailey: Yes, but I'd like to emphasize the distinction between ego and egocentricity. Ego simply means your sense of self; that's essential. But if, in order to function well, you have to rely on the support and the continuing admiration of your brethren in the law, criminal law is no business to be in. Defending an unpopular criminal is a very lonely business. I once said that if I ran an academy for criminal lawyers, I'd teach them all to fly. Then I'd send them up in bad icing conditions and see whether or not they'd crash or in what condition they came down. Thereby, I could easily separate those who have that ability to operate entirely on their own against adverse conditions, which is essential in criminal law.

[Q] Playboy: Can a criminal lawyer function entirely by himself?

[A] Bailey: No, of course not. You must prepare a case as completely as you can, and that means you must have superior investigators working for you. There are times when a great investigator is more important than a great lawyer. For my own work, I use a firm [Investigative Associates] that I started while I was going to Boston University Law School to do work for other lawyers. Under the direction of an ex-police officer, this firm digs into a case and usually comes out with more facts than the Government knows, because we pull all the stops out. The state's investigators work only from nine to five. Sometimes, if they're personally enthusiastic, they'll work overtime, but they don't get paid any more for it. Our investigators, on the other hand, work as many hours as are necessary to do the job.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that your investigations are more thorough and efficient than those of the police?

[A] Bailey: Yes, not only in terms of the tremendous amount of time and effort that goes into our investigations, but also because there's more imagination in the way we handle the defense side of the case than is operative among the police. Whereas many lawyers approach the defense of a case as a defense, we approach it as an offense. We're always probing for something that will shed additional light.

[Q] Playboy: How helpful to you was your investigation team the second time Sam Sheppard went to trial?

[A] Bailey: In that case, a marvelous investigation had been conducted before I entered the proceedings. It was by Dr. Paul Leland Kirk, a California criminologist. He really reconstructed the crime--something the Cleveland police hadn't had the ability or the imagination to do. They hadn't ascertained the position of the killer, reconstructed the blood-spatter pattern or typed the blood on the walls. Kirk, on the other hand, picked every blood spot off the wall and traced its pattern of flight. In doing that, he established that the killer had stood at the foot of the bed throughout the crime and had used a left-handed swing. Sheppard is right-handed. The clincher, of course, was Kirk's discovery of a large spot of blood on the closet door. It was blood that, by type, could not have come from Sam Sheppard or from his wife. He also demonstrated that at some point Marilyn Sheppard had gripped the attacker with her teeth, that he had jerked away from her, breaking two or three of her teeth in the process. And it was the blood from the bitten killer that had been thrown onto the closet door in a left-handed arc during a backswing of his arm.

[Q] Playboy: What investigation did you conduct to supplement Dr. Kirk's?

[A] Bailey: What we did in that case is another aspect of preparation that can be very important. It's an investigation of the trial record. Sandra Irizarry, who is secretary to Investigative Associates, has a tremendous ability to distill transcripts of trials and preliminary hearings. When she's done that, we look through and see whether the most was made of the witnesses--our own or the other side's. And then we go around and see the witnesses. During the summer before Sheppard's second trial began, I spent a lot of time flying around the country in my airplane, digging up the old witnesses. I was told by newsmen who had attended both trials that, as a result, witnesses who had made a rather poor impression the first time came through stronger for Sheppard this time. From reading the record of the first trial--with which I had no connection, of course--you can see that some of those witnesses had been thrown on by the defense with very little preparation. And although they had useful information, it was not developed--or not developed in the right way.

[Q] Playboy: In that first trial, the defense contended that the murderer was an intruder, a large, bushy-haired stranger; and Sheppard testified he had seen the murderer, struggled with him and had been knocked unconscious by him, not once but twice, as the man fled the scene. In the second trial, however, under your direction, there was no mention whatever of the bushy-haired stranger, and you introduced a new theory--that Marilyn Sheppard had been carrying on adulterous affairs with various married men in the neighborhood and that the jealous wife of one of them, surprising her own husband and Mrs. Sheppard making love in the Sheppard home, had bludgeoned Marilyn to death. What happened to Sam Sheppard's original story? Why did he say at the first trial he had struggled with a bushy-haired man if the killer was really a woman?

[A] Bailey: There was a man there with whom he struggled--Marilyn Sheppard's lover. The only difference was that he was not a stranger. The theory that a stranger committed the crime, or probably did, was used in the first trial because Sam decided to withhold evidence that would impugn his wife's reputation. He felt he could do that because he knew he hadn't committed the crime and he couldn't imagine that any jury would convict him. That proved to be a fatal mistake, of course, because, as some of the jurors from that first trial told me, they had two choices. One was Sam's story about a bushy-haired intruder; the other was that someone familiar with the house had committed the crime--and that was the way the evidence pointed. But in view of the evidence Sam withheld, the only man involved who was familiar with the house, so far as the jury knew, was Sam. In the second trial, we were able to abandon the story of the intruder and develop a case that was backed by the evidence.

[Q] Playboy: What is the evidence, as you unearthed it?

[A] Bailey: First of all, as I said, the evidence excludes the likelihood of a stranger having committed the murder. The assailant appeared to know his way around the house. When he entered, he was able to avoid the place where Sam was sleeping--downstairs in the living room. When he left, he went out the lake door--a door a stranger would not have taken, because there was no way of his knowing where it led. A stranger would have gone back out the front door. Furthermore, the concept of a stranger engaged in burglary doesn't hold up, because the burglary was so obviously simulated. A watch was hastily ripped off Marilyn's wrist and damaged in the process. And Sam's watch was also ripped off. The other items taken, mostly of no value, were also gathered hastily and then immediately discarded outside. Now, as to who did it, I'm convinced from my investigations that Marilyn Sheppard had someone interested in her, that she was involved in an affair. I believe that someone was a resident of Bay Village, where the Sheppards lived.

[Q] Playboy: How do you reconstruct the crime?

[A] Bailey: Again, the physical evidence indicates that sex was involved. Marilyn's pajama tops were open and one of her pajama legs had been pulled off--but not ripped off. What I'm saying is that sexual intercourse--but not rape--was going on immediately before the killing. Sexual intercourse with the person most likely to have been there. The wife of the man engaging in sexual intercourse with Marilyn came looking for him with a flashlight. She saw what was happening, flew into a rage and began beating Marilyn. The screams awakened Sam, who came upstairs and was knocked out from behind by the man who was there. Or perhaps by the wife, but more likely the man. Sam was later knocked out again on the beach while pursuing the man and did not come to until around six the next morning.

[Q] Playboy: According to conflicting testimony, the murder was committed sometime between two and five A.M., and yet Sheppard did not report it until six. What was the reason for the delay?

[A] Bailey: Well, we don't know how long Sam was knocked out in the bedroom or on the beach. When he did awake on the beach, he was half in and half out of the water. His cuffs and pants were full of sand, indicating that the waves had been washing in and out for some time. And his skin was withered, as it would have been from prolonged contact with water.

[Q] Playboy: There still seems to be an inconsistency here. If the man with whom Sam was struggling was not a stranger, why didn't Sheppard recognize him--if not in the bedroom, at least outdoors?

[A] Bailey: As for the bedroom, Marilyn's room was entirely dark. The only light in the house was a small one coming from a dressing room at the top of the stairs across from the bedroom. It was shining into Sam's pupils as he came up the stairs, making his pupils contract, thereby putting him at a disadvantage and making it all the more easy to surprise him as he came in the bedroom door. On the beach, it was pitch-dark. Sam, moreover, was weak, dazed and quite possibly grabbed immediately in a strangle hold from behind.

[Q] Playboy: You've said the burglary was simulated, implying that the husband and wife involved--if they were involved--had the time to fake a robbery. But how much time could they have had while Sam was unconscious?

[A] Bailey: The point is that they didn't think they had much time, and that's why the fake burglary was so poorly executed. A lot of things were turned over helterskelter, the watches were ripped off and a green bag of jewelry was taken, only to be thrown away on the beach. I think all this was done while Sam was knocked out in the bedroom. I don't think they came back after Sam had been knocked out on the beach, because they had no way of knowing how long he'd be out. Again, I emphasize that this was not a careful plot. It was a sudden, panic reaction to what had taken place.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned earlier that Paul Kirk, the criminologist, demonstrated there was blood on the wall of Marilyn's bedroom that was not hers. Whose was it?

[A] Bailey: Some of the blood was Marilyn's and some was type O--but not Marilyn's. Sam's blood type is A, and there was none of that on the wall. I would certainly have liked to have tested the blood of the man I suspect and his wife.

[Q] Playboy: Sam Sheppard was a bloody mess after the murder and his alleged struggle with the "bushy-haired man" you claim was not a stranger. Yet the next day, according to police reports, no one connected with the Sheppards was shown to bear any marks of struggle. How do you account for that?

[A] Bailey: First of all, nobody examined either the man I suspect or his wife that closely the next day. One of them could have had a bitten finger from Marilyn; but if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have noticed it. Secondly, if Sam were hit from behind the first time and strangled from behind on the beach, there need not have been any other scratches or lacerations.

[Q] Playboy: After Sheppard was acquitted, you gave the Cleveland police a letter outlining your version of the murder and naming the couple you think committed it. But the grand jury that was convened to consider the possibility of reopening the case reported that there was no evidence that Marilyn Sheppard had a married lover, let alone that she had been killed by the jealous wife of a married lover.

[A] Bailey: What happened was this: I had said during the trial that I was going to try to show the jury who we thought had accomplished the murder. We had every right to do that. Proof that someone other than the defendant committed the crime is a legitimate defense. But although much of the evidence pointed, I thought, to certain people, there were limits on what we could develop in the course of the trial. We could not turn it into a cross-prosecution. When the case was over, partly because I would like to see it wrapped up and partly because I do not cast about this kind of aspersion lightly, I sent a 15-page letter to the chief of police of Bay Village, where the Sheppards had lived, in which I analyzed all the evidence and pointed out where some of the evidence led. After reading the letter, the chief of police told me he was pretty well persuaded it made a lot of sense. And a grand jury did then purport to conduct an inquiry, but it was a farce. They did not call the witnesses who could have helped them most, and they were more interested in what I was being paid than in the facts I had developed. I think the principal reason the grand jury was impaneled was to whitewash the police who investigated the murder. That grand jury came out with a report commending one of the worst investigations in the history of American justice. It had been completely bungled. In fact, after Sheppard's acquittal, the foreman of the trial jury said exactly that publicly.

[Q] Playboy: But why would the Cleveland grand jury have been so determined to discredit you and your story?

[A] Bailey: Because there's antipathy to me among people there who feel they have suffered the slings and arrows of my outrageous comments. Cleveland is not particularly wild about outsiders coming in and telling them their town is a mess insofar as its handling of this case was concerned.

[Q] Playboy: If the people of Cleveland were so hostile to you, how were you able to get 12 people on the jury to reverse the original conviction of Sam Sheppard?

[A] Bailey: The selection of a trial jury is quite a different matter from having to deal with a grand jury that I had no role in selecting. We culled very carefully to get a trial jury that would give Sam a fair trial. The grand-jury investigation, on the other hand, was a farce. But whatever its decision, I don't consider the Sheppard case closed. I don't have any power to do anything further about it, but that case will never be closed--in the mind of Sam Sheppard, anyway--until such time as the ones who killed his wife are brought to justice.

[Q] Playboy: Sheppard's behavior and some of his statements before and after his acquittal have cast doubt in some people's minds about his mental and emotional state. He revealed in an interview, for example, that he carried a gun into the courtroom on the day the jury seemed about to reach a verdict. The gun was hidden in his Jockey shorts, and he said that if he had been found guilty, he would have taken the gun out and brandished it so that he'd be shot and killed, in order to avoid returning to prison. Since then, there was a report that he had to cancel a lecture tour because his behavior was becoming increasingly bizarre--all of which has made many people begin to wonder what kind of man he really is and was.

[A] Bailey: Look, Sam Sheppard was a 30-year-old, successful neurosurgeon who was thrown into prison for something he didn't do. He acclimated himself fairly well to the difficult role he had to play. He couldn't be one of the hoods, because he wasn't a hood. And he couldn't be a fink. So he disciplined himself tremendously and shifted his entire life pattern, even to the point of doing 500 push-ups a day to exhaust himself so that he could sleep. Whereas a guilty man can live in prison without doing that sort of thing, an innocent man is driven every moment, and for him the clock ticks slowly. Now, after ten years in prison, we suddenly haul him out--after he had become an expert inmate. And for almost two years, we leave him hanging as to whether or not the next day he might have to go back if one of the constant appeals and motions on his behalf didn't work out. Then we hit him with a second trial, where he had to relive the whole business and sweat out a jury verdict again. After that, we turn him loose to greet the public and expect him to have the same sophistication and judgment he would have had if he hadn't been away from the scene for 12 years. Well, he doesn't have the sophistication or the judgment--or the maturity, having spent ten years in the dungeons Ohio uses for prisons. He has been a man under constant high pressure, because he has been a notorious defendant, a man people wanted to--and some still want to--get, despite his innocence. There is no way in the world, in my opinion, that he could have turned out to be an eminently acceptable human being after that experience. Yet, having robbed him of ten years of his life and having subjected him to these pressures, society now turns to him and says, "Your conduct is not satisfactory."

[Q] Playboy: Let's turn to another of your most celebrated cases--the trials of Dr. Carl Coppolino for the murders of Colonel William E. Farber and Coppolino's wife Carmela. Would you review the facts of this case for us, as you see them?

[A] Bailey: It was a unique situation. Coppolino had been indicted within 48 hours in two jurisdictions for two different murders. Two parallel investigations were running, but they were linked together, because this is all one chain of events with one precipitating cause--namely, the woman, Marjorie Farber, who accused Coppolino of having murdered her husband in New Jersey and then murdering his own wife in Florida. For Mrs. Farber's cross-examination in the first trial, I had so much material that it was coming out of my ears. We had discovered a tremendous amount about her background and her activities with Carl. And with so much preparation having been done, I knew how far I could afford to go with her without opening any doors that she could use as a point of ambush to turn around and slaughter us. It's important to be that thorough, because otherwise, as often happens in the course of a trial, a lawyer will be afraid to develop things all the way for fear of getting into a dark area in which he'll get belted. As it turned out, there were no areas into which we could go that would hurt us.

[Q] Playboy: Yet most people who read about the case before trial had little doubt that Coppolino was guilty.

[A] Bailey: Yes, I've never known a case in which more people had an opinion of guilt. The national press decimated Coppolino with a bunch of irresponsible and bad reporting. It published "evidence" that convinced even me before I met him that this guy was gone.

[Q] Playboy: What changed your mind?

[A] Bailey: The facts of the case, as I found them in the preliminary hearings and in autopsy reports I had analyzed by expert pathologists. It turned out that all the prosecution had in the New Jersey case was Mrs. Farber's story. Their physical evidence didn't hold up. When Colonel Farber's body was dug up, they found a fractured cartilage in his larynx. A lot of people, including the prosecution's chief expert, Dr. Milton Helpern, the Chief Medical Examiner for New York City, thereby concluded that Farber had been strangled. But we were able to show very positively that that injury to the cartilage had occurred after death. Moreover, Mrs. Farber's story had not involved strangulation. She said the murder had been committed by pressing a pillow over her husband's face, but no amount of pressure from a pillow could have fractured the larynx. We also came up with a number of letters she had written immediately after the death of Coppolino's first wife--letters in which she said she was aware he was directing his attention to another woman--whom he later married. We were able to go on to explain to the jury just how a man could be innocent and nonetheless get into all this trouble because of the frustration of one woman, a few unfortunate coincidences and some pretty stupid official action.

[Q] Playboy: How, then, did Colonel Farber die?

[A] Bailey: I think the evidence is very clear that he died of a heart attack. He had bad arteriosclerosis, and we had pathologists to testify to that fact. Furthermore, what the prosecution didn't know was that Carl Coppolino had made some pretty detailed notes on the symptoms he found when he was called over to see Colonel Farber the night before and the day of his death. All those symptoms were beautifully in line with a heart attack going on. And Carl had also gotten a release from Mrs. Farber when he decided to step out of the case because she would not send her husband to a hospital, as Carl had recommended. The prosecution didn't know that, because she didn't tell them about it. She didn't even remember it, but the release had been signed; and when she was hit with it in the courtroom, she was torn apart. As I said, the whole weight of the prosecution's case depended on the truthfulness of her story. And yet, notwithstanding the clarity of the evidence exonerating Carl, many people still think he got off not because he was proved innocent but because I wizarded him out of the courtroom. That's very good for me, but it's very tough on Coppolino.

[Q] Playboy: It was even tougher on Coppolino to be convicted subsequently for the murder of his wife Carmela. How did you lose that one?

[A] Bailey: We haven't lost it yet, and I do not expect to lose it ultimately. The Florida case focused on a drug called succinylcholine chloride. It's used by anesthesiologists; by paralyzing the muscles, it brings on an effect called apnea--the diaphragm stops moving and the lungs don't breathe. It can, therefore, cause death by internal suffocation. This drug, when injected, breaks down in a few seconds into succinylmonocholine and then into succinic acid and choline. These chemicals, however, are also natural body products, and so it's very difficult to prove by post-mortem that the drug was ever injected. In fact, its presence has never been proved in any case in which the drug allegedly has been involved; and despite the verdict, I contend that its presence has not been proved in this case. On the insistence of the Farber woman, Carmela Coppolino's body was exhumed about five months after it had been buried. Mrs. Farber had no direct evidence but said Carl might have killed her, and if he had, he would have used that drug, which he had in his possession, along with many others. Mind you, Carl's subsequent indictment came without this drug having been proved a cause of death. There was no cause of death proved before the grand jury in Florida. The real reason Carl got indicted so fast on such shaky evidence was that New Jersey and Florida were running neck and neck in their investigations at the time. And the minute New Jersey indicted, the Florida prosecutor felt he was under such terrible pressure from the press to do something that he went ahead to get an indictment.

[Q] Playboy: If the evidence was that shaky, why was Coppolino convicted?

[A] Bailey: The case boiled down to a battle of experts over complicated technical testimony, and the jury lacked the sophistication to see through the weaknesses of the state's case. We weren't helped at all when the prosecutor, during the selection of the jury, used a peremptory challenge to dismiss a retired chemist as a prospective juror. He could have been the one man to absorb the expert testimony and explain it to the other jurors. The state's case was based on the claim by Dr. Helpern--he was involved in Florida, too--that there was evidence of succinylcholine in Carmela Coppolino's body. He said a needle puncture had been found in a buttock when the body was dug up. It was never determined how old that puncture was; and it was quite possible that she, being a doctor, had administered it to herself, to inject vitamins or something else. Doctors often inject themselves in the buttocks. Anyway, having found what they claimed was a needle puncture, they began to grind up pieces of liver and brain and all kinds of other things, looking for some evidence of succinylcholine. The chief toxicologist in Dr. Helpern's office, Dr. C. Joseph Umberger, did some examinations and tests on the basis of which Helpern declared that succinylcholine chloride was the cause of death.

[Q] Playboy: With all your preparations for the case, what went wrong?

[A] Bailey: As I said, succinylcholine chloride breaks down into two natural body products--succinic acid and choline. Only if you can find an excess amount of them in a dead body can you begin to infer that succinylcholine chloride has been injected. Umberger said he had found succinic acid in Carmela Coppolino's brain. He also found some choline, but in such insignificant amounts that he couldn't say where it came from. So the core of his testimony was his finding of about four and a half milligrams of succinic acid; the average brain normally contains 40 milligrams. He said this finding represented an excess, because he had looked into two other unembalmed brains of dead people and had found no succinic acid. Carmela Coppolino, however, had been embalmed, and Umberger had never run a control test on an embalmed brain, and so his "finding" was pure speculation. Embalming fluids affect body substances. In fact, I got him to concede on the stand that the experimental methods by which he found "possible" traces of succinylcholine chloride through the "possible" presence of an excess of succinic acid in the brain were not complete enough for him to publish his study in a scientific journal. Our preparations for the case, on the other hand, had not taken into account the possibility that the other side would try to quantitate the succinic acid in her body, in an effort to demonstrate an excess.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you take that into account?

[A] Bailey: Because that's not the scientific way to try to make that proof. The usual way is to look for choline, because that's the stable chemical. Succinic acid is unstable and volatile; and if succinic acid gets into the brain, it immediately burns down to the normal level of it the brain would have. You see, Umberger never proved there was an excess. As I said, he found about ten percent of the normal level of succinic acid in the brain. But by then the jury was thoroughly confused. Even so, if we'd known they'd been working with succinic acid, we would have duplicated the experiments--but that would have taken months before the trial started. I tried to make clear to the jury that Umberger's tests had had no controls and that his finding was guesswork, but they weren't scientists and evidently didn't understand.

[Q] Playboy: According to The New York Times, Dr. Bert La Du, Jr., chairman of the department of pharmacology at the New York University Medical College, testified that he had found traces of the alleged murder drug in the flesh alongside the needle track in the buttock.

[A] Bailey: La Du, first of all, was looking for succinylmonocholine--which is what the drug breaks down to immediately, before breaking down into succinic acid and choline. He was not checking for choline, because that's present all over the body and is released by the embalming fluid. What La Du did find was about 20 millionth parts of something that might have been succinylmonocholine, but the traces were too slight to positively identify. His testimony, therefore, also was a matter of the "possible," not the proved. And his tests, too, had no controls. On the other hand, our experts--Drs. Francis Foldes and John C. Smith of Montefiore Hospital--had engaged in intensive research, with the aid of a radioactive tracer, to show the ways in which traces of the drug could be found if the drug had been injected. And by those criteria, the drug was not found in Carmela Coppolino's body. And I would add that the Foldes-Smith findings were complete to the point that they were published as a scientific paper. Furthermore, both in Florida and later in New York, Dr. Umberger--the chief witness for the state--told me he was very upset at how the trial had come out. He said he never thought there'd be a conviction and he hadn't expected that his testimony would be taken so positively by the jury.

[Q] Playboy: But Umberger denies he said that to you.

[A] Bailey: He made that denial at a press conference, in the presence of his superior, Dr. Helpern; but I have witnesses to what he actually said to me. Umberger told me that a conviction was not warranted on the basis of the work he had done. In addition, three chemists in Helpern's office came forward to say that they doubted the scientific validity of Umberger's tests. Because they came forward, these three chemists have been suspended by Helpern.

[Q] Playboy: When Coppolino was convicted of murder in the second degree, you said the verdict was "a joke." Why?

[A] Bailey: Second-degree murder, under Florida statutes, means there was no premeditation. But in a poisoning, there has to have been premeditation, because there has to have been preparation. The needle has to be filled, the injection to be made. In addition, for death to take place from this drug requires eight to twenty minutes. This is at total variance with a sudden, unpremeditated wish to kill and a sudden act of killing. He would have had to wait for her to go to sleep, then inject the drug and wait another ten minutes or so to let her die.

[Q] Playboy: What do you intend to do next in this case?

[A] Bailey: We are appealing, and I'm confident the appellate court will reverse the verdict. Then it's all over, because Carl has already been cleared of murder in the first degree. And before the appeal is heard, it's possible--and even likely--that we will duplicate the experiments run by the state and show their errors. In the latter event, a new plea will be made to the trial judge to throw out the verdict on the basis of new evidence.

[Q] Playboy: You admit you were surprised by the state's concentration on succinic acid in the second Coppolino trial. In any of your other cases, have you been caught unprepared--either by the state or by your own client?

[A] Bailey: Occasionally a client will say he has an alibi and name the people he was with and it'll sound perfectly plausible. But as we begin to assimilate the evidence against the defendant and figure the probabilities of his story, we go back and talk to one of his witnesses, who then comes completely apart. That you can call a surprise, and it usually terminates the attorney-client relationship for that case. I'll put up with clients doing almost anything but lying.

[Q] Playboy: What is your attitude when a defendant has not lied to you, but so far as you can determine on the basis of your investigation, is guilty?

[A] Bailey: Well, it's much more heartwarming to take a guilty man in and plead him guilty and let him take his punishment. And, believe me, most criminal lawyers would rather do that. But ethically, you're bound to advise him that though you're satisfied he's guilty, he has a right to a trial and to an acquittal, if that's the result--I mean within the limits of not manufacturing any evidence or distorting it or suppressing it or threatening any witnesses to make up stories. There are times when, if I think the evidence is very strong against him, I'll tell a client that he's better off to plead guilty and get the best sentence he can--unless it's a first-degree murder case and the prosecution is looking for the electric chair and won't offer a lesser charge. Then you just have to try the case, even though there's no possibility of winning it.

[Q] Playboy: But if you knew a client was guilty, would you remain on the case if he insisted on pleading innocent?

[A] Bailey: He can plead innocent as a matter of right. A man is not proved guilty until he's had a defense. If he hadn't lied to me, I'd stay with him. But in the course of the trial, I wouldn't allow him to make the statement, "I didn't do it," because that would be perjury. Being a defendant doesn't change that law and being a defense counsel does not entitle you to suborn perjury.

[Q] Playboy: Knowing your client is guilty, how would you conduct his defense?

[A] Bailey: I would not conduct the defense as an offense, which is what I prefer to do. I would not indulge in as vigorous and searching cross-examination of witnesses on the other side as I would if I believed the client not to be guilty, because, obviously, the chances are far less that the opposition witnesses are lying or mistaken. The main thrust of my strategy would be to create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury and that's dangerous--leaving the jury with just a doubt. If you can leave them with a countertheory to explain the proven facts, you're much more likely to get an acquittal.

[Q] Playboy: Having said that you would defend and plead innocent a man you thought was guilty, how do we then know whether Sam Sheppard is innocent, even though he was acquitted the second time? How do we know Dr. Coppolino is innocent of murdering Colonel Farber, even though he was acquitted in the New Jersey trial?

[A] Bailey: You don't know. What you're asking is whether it is possible to equate my appearance for a client with that client's innocence. Obviously, that's not possible. There is no way of determining under law whether a man is innocent or guilty except through the machinery of the law. Under our system, a man is guilty only if proof beyond a reasonable doubt can be marshaled against him.

[Q] Playboy: Then a direct question to you, personally: Do you believe Sheppard and Coppolino are innocent?

[A] Bailey: Yes. I not only believe Sam Sheppard innocent but I also believe there was never any basis for finding him guilty. And I believe Carl Coppolino is innocent in both the New Jersey and the Florida cases. I believe, moreover, that in neither case was a murder committed. Both Colonel Farber and Carmela Coppolino died of natural causes.

[Q] Playboy: Granted that everyone--even a client you believe is guilty--has a constitutional right to an attorney, are there any kinds of clients you would never take, any kinds of crime whose perpetrators you would not defend?

[A] Bailey: I can think of only one crime that offends me so deeply in a personal sense that I'd doubt my ability to give a vigorous defense, and that's the so-called gang bang--the too-familiar situation in which a bunch of kids are out in the woods and they catch a young couple necking, tie the boy to a tree and work the girl over for a couple of hours. A judge once tried to appoint me to defend the accused in that sort of case and I told him I didn't think I could do a decent job. That is, assuming I believe the particular fellows accused of that kind of crime are guilty--which I did in this case.

[Q] Playboy: Would it trouble your conscience to defend a known gangster--say, for tax evasion--if you believed he was guilty?

[A] Bailey: No. I'm a functionary in the system and you can't say an adequate judgment of guilt has been made until you pump the case through the system. Theoretically, if he's guilty, I will defend him with everything available; the Government will furnish a good lawyer to prosecute him; the evidence will be in favor of the Government; and he'll be hooked. And if he is hooked, it won't bother me one bit. But if I think he's innocent, it would probably bother me a great deal and I'd probably keep appealing the case until we'd exhausted every avenue.

[Q] Playboy: To get down to the basics, do you think it's the purpose of the defense attorney to get justice done or to get his client off?

[A] Bailey: Justice is always the aim of the law--but only, I think, on a theoretical level. We don't promise justice and we don't do justice. We don't separate the guilty from the innocent. We separate those against whom a crime is proved in the eyes of the jury from those against whom no crime is proved. As for my objective within the over-all pattern, I suppose it is justice. But the minute I step outside my own role and either decide to judge my client or decide what "pure justice" should be in a given case, I'm doing a disservice not only to the system but also to myself. I am a functionary with a slant, and that's what I'm required to be. Although it is certainly satisfying to have a man acquitted whom you believe to be innocent, the fundamental satisfaction when a case is over--whatever the outcome--comes when I can say, "We conducted a good trial for him."

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever had the opportunity to affect the course of justice before a trial? Have you ever been in a position to prevent a crime?

[A] Bailey: I was on my way to Connecticut one Saturday afternoon a year or so ago when the phone rang and a woman from North Dakota informed me she intended to kill her husband that night and wanted to know whether or not I would represent her. I talked to her for a while and suggested that she not carry out her plan. But she started to sound as though she meant it, so I called the police in her home town, telling them what had happened and giving them her name. They indicated she was a very violent woman and might well do exactly what she'd threatened. They told me they were going to have a talk with her or remove her husband from the scene. I don't know which they did.

[Q] Playboy: Any other such calls?

[A] Bailey: Not too long ago, a woman called me from a distant state and said, "My husband is dead. I'm afraid I shot him. I've been sitting here with the body for a couple of hours now and I don't know what to do." I called the police and got them up there after I'd made sure she had counsel--and, sure enough, she was telling the truth.

[Q] Playboy: Did she ask you to defend her?

[A] Bailey: That was why she'd called. She told me it was an accident; she hadn't meant to do it and she was bewildered. That's exactly the point at which a lawyer should come into a case.

[Q] Playboy: Did you take the case?

[A] Bailey: Yes. It's still pending, so I won't name it. The police department and the prosecutor there don't know I've taken it yet. I'm operating through counsel in the area. I'm keeping my involvement quiet, because there are times when a client can be done a great disservice if an otherwise unremarkable case is projected into the headlines due to my name being connected with it. In this instance, for example, a prosecutor who might otherwise be willing to regard the killing as an accident would now feel under tremendous pressure to bring her to prosecution, on the theory that she wouldn't have hired a lawyer like me unless she had intended to kill the man.

[Q] Playboy: At what point will you reveal you're in charge of the case?

[A] Bailey: When it goes to trial.

[Q] Playboy: What effect does your renown have on juries?

[A] Bailey: It can be a disadvantage. For one thing, publications insist on parlaying an image of me that involves being flamboyant, being cute and tricky, being skilled in the use of electronic instruments and all that sort of thing. Accordingly, the jury is at first suspicious of me. Also because of the renown, there's an immediate assumption by the jury that my presence means a tremendous amount of money is being asked to get the defendant off. So these days, at the start of a trial, the jury may well have all or most of these preconceptions. And if the trial is short, these suspicions involving me could be extremely disadvantageous. If the trial proceeds for a few days, the jury will then be able to use its own judgment, on the basis of what it actually sees and hears. And it will find that I try cases very soberly, in a low key, with an occasional injection of a little bit of humor. And then a lot of these preconceived notions will be wiped away. At least I hope so.

[Q] Playboy: In the courtroom, how important is the personal impression you make on the jury in determining the outcome of a trial?

[A] Bailey: It's vital. In a trial, the order of importance of the principals is either the defendant first and the defense counsel second, or the reverse. If the defendant testifies and makes a good impression--that is, if he's believable--he'll always be acquitted. But if he does not take the stand because, for one reason, his decision to testify would allow the prosecution to introduce his past record, then he may be reduced to the status of a cigar-store Indian or a pawn on a chessboard. He's only seen, but never comes alive. And even though he may be innocent, if he takes advantage of his constitutional right to stay off the stand, I have great difficulty in believing that any juror accepts the judge's instruction that the defendant's not testifying is theoretically no implication of guilt. Under those circumstances, the defendant is in a terrible box. Therefore, it's sometimes a good tactic to attempt to get the jury to try the defendant's counsel. The goal is to get them to acquit you.

[Q] Playboy: To what extent do you "play" a jury--attempt to appeal to their emotions rather than their reason?

[A] Bailey: I do damn little of that. In days gone by, lawyers did place great importance on that approach, and it may have been effective decades ago. But today, despite my claim that you don't get enough jurors of very high intelligence, you don't any longer have 50 percent of a jury without a high school degree. Usually 90 percent have at least a high school diploma. And you simply cannot use old-style rhetoric on that kind of jury. Consider what happened recently in the Bobby Baker case in Washington. Edward Bennett Williams, an extraordinary attorney, made a final speech in that case that was out of the Old Vic tradition. The jury, however, found Baker guilty, and the foreman said afterward, "We were genuinely impressed by the speech, but it was the evidence we considered while we were deliberating." That incident made me even more certain that the old days are gone. I'm not saying that I ignore emotion when I address a jury, but the emotion I show has to be warranted by the circumstances of the case. If you try to create emotion just for effect, it falls flat. I happen to function particularly well when I can show cold indignation or derision. I've indulged in some of both, but only when the circumstances have warranted either. What people see of lawyers on television, of course, is something quite different; it's theatrical combat. And that's why I always tell a jury when I start my argument that it is not an argument; it's an analysis of the evidence. I also always tell them that Perry Mason is fictional, and the fact that I don't solve the case in the courtroom doesn't mean my client is guilty. Erle Stanley Gardner, who's a good friend of mine, is a master plotter of his stories, but his influence has been pervasive, and he sure makes it tough for the rest of us.

[Q] Playboy: You've often said you prefer jurors who can understand complex reasoning and complicated evidence rather than those who can be swayed by emotional oratory. Why?

[A] Bailey: There are criminal lawyers who feel the only people they ought to allow on a jury are the salt-of-the-earth type of citizens, who will do rough justice. This type is especially attractive to a guy who has a guilty client for whom there's a lot of sympathy, because a jury sometimes will acquit just because they're sympathetic. I don't think I do very well, however, before the salt-of-the-earth type--either because I don't have a lot of dramatic ability in that area or because that type is inclined to be suspicious of someone like me, feeling "This is a high-powered lawyer and he's probably trying to trick us." I've found intelligent jurors much more preferable, especially when we're trying complex issues such as the blood evidence in the Sheppard case. We looked for scientists when we were selecting that jury, because only scientists could fully appreciate the thoroughness of Dr. Kirk's methodology. We did get a very bright young engineer who could understand how a competent scientist operated and who could understand the validity of his techniques. In the Coppolino case, in New Jersey, intelligent jurors were necessary because, among other reasons, the evidence of the pathologist wasn't the easiest thing in the world to understand. In general, if you have something to talk about in a case, it's easier to persuade intelligent people. But if you're just going to do a lot of smoke-screening, you'd better get the intelligent ones off a jury.

[Q] Playboy:Time magazine said you used a hypnotist in the Sheppard retrial to help you pick and "psych" the jurors. Is there any truth to that?

[A] Bailey:Time doesn't even have the right trial. In the Coppolino case, there was sitting at the defense table during the jury selection process a medical doctor, William Joseph Bryan, Jr., who is also a lawyer and a hypnoanalyst. He was the one who asked me to defend Coppolino; he's a friend of his. And Dr. Bryan, because of his many years of talking with patients, of trying to figure out what's really bothering them that they're not talking about, has an ability to spot reactions that I'd maybe pick up only half the time. Little slips of the tongue, movements of the body. From these subtle signs, he can very rapidly discern which way a prospective juror is leaning, and he can also suggest questions to ask him.

[Q] Playboy: It has been said that no attorney asks his own witness--and so far as possible, opposition witnesses--any question to which he doesn't know the answer. How true is that?

[A] Bailey: It's not true. We don't like to ask questions to which we don't know the answers, but it often happens. What you try to do is develop the questioning step by step, in such a manner that you'll see the answer three questions before the jury does. And if you don't like what's coming, you change the subject. But in every trial, you'll get answers you didn't expect. However, the better the preparation and the better the method of cross-examination, the less likely you are to be caught with what we call a pants-dropper.

[Q] Playboy: Can you recall any particularly damaging pants-droppers with which you've been confronted?

[A] Bailey: Nothing highly dramatic, nothing that caused the outcome of a case to shift. But I can clearly recall the numerous occasions in which I've had a tremendous feeling of tightening when I heard the wrong answer. I once cross-examined a woman who claimed she had seen two men rob a bank. Since her opportunity to have observed that act had been quite limited, I doubted that she could identify the men with certainty. But as I started to cross-examine her, her story got tighter and tighter and it became very apparent to me that she was probably telling the truth or believed she was. A witness who believes he is telling the truth is every bit as dangerous to cross-examine as one who actually is. In this case, the woman turned out to be by far the most damaging witness. There were five other people who claimed to be able to identify the bank robbers and they all came apart. She didn't. But the jury stayed out 12 hours in a six-to-six deadlock and then finally acquitted.

[Q] Playboy: One of the impressions many viewers get from television courtroom scenes is that an astute counsel can lead a witness and bring out material damaging to the other side, until the point at which the judge rebukes him and says, "Strike that from the record!" How often does this really happen?

[A] Bailey: What you're talking about is putting a question that embodies certain inadmissible facts, although you know the question is improper and that you have no evidence to back it up. What you're trying to do through that tactic is to leave the jury with the impression you could have proved these things if somebody hadn't objected or if the judge hadn't intervened. That kind of tactic may be used often, but I don't do it. I think it's unethical and I scream rather loudly if the prosecutor does it. I object strenuously, because the admonition from the bench, "Forget you ever heard it," is completely ineffectual. A juror may have to sit through four weeks of evidence, and there's no possible way for him to remember the circumstances under which a relevant fact hit his memory--unless, perhaps, it's so startling a fact that one of the jurors will remind the rest that the judge told them not to consider it. But, in any case, I don't think anything is ever wiped from a jury's mind.

[Q] Playboy: A number of veteran trial lawyers say they can predict, in most cases-- no matter what tactics they've used--how a jury will decide. Can you?

[A] Bailey: To some extent, yes. But not always. You occasionally get surprised. I was surprised by the result of the DeSalvo trial in Cambridge, and I think most of the observers were. As you know, he wasn't tried as the Boston Strangler. The sex crimes for which he was on trial took place after he had stopped killing. I urged that jury to find DeSalvo not guilty by reason of insanity, though a much more appropriate verdict would have been guilty but insane. However, a jury under present law cannot bring in such a verdict, although it should be able to. I pressed--unsuccessfully, as it turned out--for the verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, for two reasons. First of all, it was a dry run for a possible trial of DeSalvo as the Strangler. I wanted to see what a jury would do. Secondly, I wanted him to be denominated for what he is. He is insane. And being so denominated officially, he would be sent to a mental hospital to be studied by psychiatrists.

[Q] Playboy: At the time of the trial, wasn't he already being held at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane?

[A] Bailey: Yes, but that's not a place where he can be deeply studied or treated. Also, his being there was not synonymous with his having been judged officially insane. He had, after all, been declared capable of standing trial on the crimes he had committed after he'd stopped killing.

[Q] Playboy: In any case, why do you think you lost the trial?

[A] Bailey: In retrospect, I can see what happened. The jury had been confronted by a medical record that made it clear that psychiatrists had examined DeSalvo prior to his killing spree as the Boston Strangler, had judged him not to be dangerous and had allowed him to roam at will in society. The failure of those psychiatrists to recognize the nature of DeSalvo certainly did not instill any confidence in the jury that some other psychiatrist in the future would not let him out again. So the jury probably was determined to see that he got a sentence they had confidence would stick--and that sentence was imprisonment. Another factor, of course, was that we were trying the DeSalvo case in the wrong context. I was not permitted to introduce any evidence in the trial about those homicides. And the post-killing crimes that were at issue had involved some degree of rationality. In each case, he would break and enter, commit a sex act, steal and leave. The only evidence I had in the trial that was helpful toward a plea of insanity was the actual commission of the sex acts. But those sex counts were the least important in this trial in terms of the sentence. In addition, there was missing the one thing that is essential in almost any successful plea of insanity: sympathy. Juries ordinarily will not acquit on the basis of insanity, no matter how strong the psychiatric evidence, if they have no feeling whatsoever for the defendant. And I couldn't even try to engender sympathy for DeSalvo. The prosecution had all the sympathy on its side, sympathy for the poor victims whose dignity had been completely destroyed. So, although I was surprised at the verdict at the time, I can see how it happened.

[Q] Playboy: A little more than a month after he had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, DeSalvo escaped briefly from Bridgewater. He didn't seem to have tried to elude recapture. Why?

[A] Bailey: DeSalvo wanted to make a demonstration, like a civil rights worker. What he was demonstrating for was his need for treatment. He had admitted he was the Strangler and he had expected that he would not simply be clamped into a dungeon for the rest of his life. He was also demonstrating against the state's refusal to admit so far that he was the Strangler. But by escaping, he forced them to decide whether they were going to continue to con the public or send out the kind of alarm that made it clear they knew he was the Strangler. And, of course, they did send out that kind of alarm. Furthermore, he was demonstrating to dramatize the fact that he and other inmates had been in Bridgewater for years without any effective examination or treatment.

[Q] Playboy: There are reports that Massachusetts' former Attorney General, now Senator, Edward Brooke, as well as the officer who arrested DeSalvo and psychiatrists who were deeply involved in the case, are convinced that DeSalvo is not the Boston Strangler--that, in fact, there is at least as much evidence against two other men, one of whom killed the elderly women, and the other the younger victims. And those who claim DeSalvo was not the Strangler add that his confession is hardly proof enough, since he is well-known as a compulsive confessor.

[A] Bailey: That is all straight horseshit. And Brooke has not said publicly that he doubts DeSalvo is the Strangler. In a conversation with me, as a matter of fact, he did admit that he believed the Strangler was DeSalvo.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from DeSalvo's confession, what evidence do you have to support that belief?

[A] Bailey: Through many intensive interrogations, Albert showed that he knew a great many things about the crimes he could not possibly have known had he not been the Strangler. His confession has been checked out in thorough detail. There's simply no doubt about it.

[Q] Playboy: Not in the DeSalvo trial, but in the Coppolino and Sheppard trials, you chose to defend your clients by impugning the character and the reputation of opposition witnesses. Doesn't this kind of courtroom behavior conflict with your self-description as a man concerned with protecting individual rights and as an attorney who conducts his cases in "a low key," without theatrics?

[A] Bailey: I don't have any relish for cutting somebody up on the witness stand, but there are times when it's essential; and usually anybody who has to be chopped up on the witness stand deserves it. He's either lying--the result of which can be the imprisonment of my client for no good reason--or he has some interest in the case about which he's not being entirely candid. I just have no choice, in those circumstances, but to go ahead and take him apart as best I can.

[Q] Playboy: Your critics have implied that there is an element of ruthlessness involved in some of your cross-examinations. After the Sheppard retrial, Time quoted you as saying, "We had to destroy Marilyn," Sheppard's murdered wife.

[A] Bailey: I didn't say that. What I did say was that, in the first trial, evidence that tended to demean her reputation was deliberately kept out for reasons I've already explained. In the second trial, I had to bring that evidence in, because the only theory consistent with the facts was that a sexual aspect of the case had caused a nonstranger to come into the house.

[Q] Playboy: What about your systematic effort to destroy the reputation of Marjorie Farber in the first Coppolino trial? Do you think you might have been a bit overzealous in that case?

[A] Bailey: Oh, no. I held back more information on Mrs. Farber than I've ever held back on any witness.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Bailey: We had to decide at the outset whether to attack her wholesale or whether to treat her with a sad wag of the head as a woman so frustrated that she would go to the lengths she did to accuse Carl of two murders. I was inclined toward the latter approach, because if I were to attack her too hard, I might create sympathy for her, no matter what her character. And so we went after her that way, as a frustrated woman. We didn't attack her wholesale. Neither I nor the other side brought out the fact that she and Carl had taken a little trip together. The omission of that trip is a perfect example of a jury occasionally not getting the whole truth because neither lawyer wants to bring it forward. In this instance, I saw no reason to take Coppolino down by bringing it out; and the other side didn't want to take Mrs. Farber down.

[Q] Playboy: Why would the exposure of that trip have been so injurious?

[A] Bailey: Because they took it immediately after the death of her husband. Doing that made her seem a very callous person, and I suppose it made Carl look callous, too. Actually, that trip didn't involve any sex orgy. I think they registered in separate rooms, and as far as my client has told me, nothing untoward happened. She was just sort of recovering from the death of her husband. But a jury could certainly have drawn additional inferences from that, and so it just wasn't mentioned by either side.

[Q] Playboy: In the second Coppolino trial, you were caught unawares by the state's medical evidence and by the testimony of several of its witnesses. How much of the prosecution's evidence and the statements of its witnesses do you feel the defense should be permitted to see before trial?

[A] Bailey: All of it. All of it. And that includes police evidence. In criminal cases, we should have as thorough a pretrial discovery method as in civil cases. And the defense lawyer should have the power to subpoena Government witnesses before trial. Those witnesses thereby would be forced to either answer the defense attorney's questions or take the Fifth Amendment.

[Q] Playboy: What if you had the right of total pretrial discovery and found out thereby that your client was guilty?

[A] Bailey: My duty in that case would be not to suppress any of the evidence indicating guilt and not to do anything to prevent the prosecutor from finding out about that evidence. But my duty would not include bringing that evidence forward myself, because the defendant does have his Fifth Amendment right not to articulate anything that will hurt him, and I am really his vocal cords.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been able to prove actual suppression of evidence by the other side in any of your cases?

[A] Bailey: In the Sheppard case, some of the state's evidence was blood--the same type as Sam Sheppard's--on the ground around the Sheppard house. The state's theory was that Sam, walking with the bloody murder instrument as he looked for a place to dispose of it, had dripped the blood. The instrument was never found, but the blood was there. It turned out that a man who had been cleaning windows there the day before the murder had cut himself rather badly on a sharp piece of wire or something. He had walked around, looking for a rag, and had dripped blood. His type was the same as Sam's. The man had reported his accident to the police on the day of the murder, but they never brought it to the attention of the defense lawyers in Sam's first trial. Naturally, the man did not testify at the first trial, because the defense didn't know about him, and the prosecution wanted to suppress his story. For the second trial, however, we found him and he did testify.

[Q] Playboy: Have you experienced any other incidents of suppressed evidence by the prosecution?

[A] Bailey: Not of suppression. But I have had trials in which witnesses were encouraged by the other side not to say something in a way that would help the defendant or were encouraged not to involve themselves in the case at all if they were going to hurt the prosecution. Prosecution lawyers have considerable control over their witnesses, because prosecution lawyers are regarded as officials. And it's highly undesirable to quarrel with them, because their retribution may be pervasive. I did have one trial in which a police lieutenant was ordered to lie and he did and he got caught at it because he was contradicted by a priest. That was the end of the case as far as the jury was concerned. A jury will not tolerate lying by either side.

[Q] Playboy: Because of your own ability and that of your investigators, you've had considerable success in criminal law. But how would you assess the criminal bar as a whole in this country? Do you still stand by your statement to the Saturday Evening Post that "the criminal bar ends up with a few of the best lawyers and a lot of the worst ones running around ... taking pleas of guilty for $25 or $50"?

[A] Bailey: Let me put it this way: If you were to have to defend your life in this country today, you'd have to choose very carefully from a very small selection of lawyers if you wanted the best the system could offer.

[Q] Playboy: Starting with F. Lee Bailey?

[A] Bailey: I don't mean to start with myself. I won't name names, because there are some good lawyers I haven't met; but by my standards, of those lawyers I know, no more than five would be satisfactory to me in a capital case. And more likely three. I'm speaking of the whole country, because although I obviously don't know every lawyer in this field, I've had quite a bit of contact with the bar throughout the country. And none of these five men, by the way, practices criminal law exclusively. They rely to a greater or lesser extent on the income from civil business to carry them.

[Q] Playboy: Why are there so few first-rate criminal lawyers?

[A] Bailey: First of all, society doesn't make the criminal lawyer's lot a happy one. The news media announce that someone has been indicted. The immediate presumption in the public's mind is that a man who has been indicted is guilty. Accordingly, the lawyer who defends him is held in rather low esteem, because he's thought of as the man who's there to try to beat the system, to "get him off," in the popular phrase. As a result, I get hate mail and death threats just for filing an appearance to defend someone in a highly publicized case. Some of the death threats are obviously from cranks, but some make you pause and wonder. Especially when they say, "We'll rub out your whole family or kidnap your boy because you're letting loose all these evil people on society." In any controversial case, hate mail is apt to be pretty heavy. So, to start with, you have to have a strong ego, as I said, and be somewhat of a loner by temperament to go into criminal law. Secondly, society has done almost nothing to ensure that competent lawyers will find criminal law as attractive financially as civil law. Criminal law is the only occupation in the United States today in which you are ordered to work for nothing or to work for such little compensation that the occupation becomes unattractive to people who don't mind doing hard work but like to be paid for it.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be doing quite well.

[A] Bailey: My career has been an exception, almost a fluke. You won't find any other criminal lawyer in my age bracket who is doing as well as I am now. How often can you expect a young lawyer to get a series of such highly publicized cases as I've had? You cannot take my situation as any kind of norm. The norm is this: The average citizen cannot afford financially to defend himself adequately in a criminal case. Take murder, for instance. In the average murder case, to get good counsel and good ancillary help--investigation, experts, printing and other expenses--costs $50,000. Most people can't put up that kind of money. And that's the cost before appeal. It can go much higher than that if you go through the six appeals that are currently available. Most defendants cannot put up that kind of money. Knowing that, most good lawyers stay out of criminal law. So the criminal defendant is likely to get a second-rate lawyer who'll work for a very small fee and who accordingly won't do extensive preparation and investigation, because he wants to spend as little of that fee as he can.

[Q] Playboy: Since you put such stress on the need for extensive preparation and investigation, what do you recommend should be done in this area so that the average criminal defendant can get a better chance at equality before the law?

[A] Bailey: To begin with, every lawyer in a serious case without the money to do what has to be done to prepare it thoroughly should immediately request that investigative funds be made available to him by the state. The basis of that request is that a defendant who does not get the advantage of everything he would have had if he could have afforded it is not getting equal protection under the law. If the funds are refused and the lawyer can show he was impaired in his function because of lack of investigative resources, the case should be reversed. Eventually, on that constitutional basis, I believe lawyers will be able to get sufficient funds to prepare and investigate.

But that's only a start. The entire system of criminal law has to be revamped, and I hope to see it done. We have to develop a way by which the very best potential trial lawyers in every law-school class will be encouraged to enter the business of criminal law. And that means subsidizing their further training. When a young attorney of real quality graduates and gets his LL. B., he should then have one additional year of academic training in cross-examination, investigation, tactics, arguments. And he should be paid a salary by the Government while he's doing this. Then, during three subsequent years of internship, he should work for a judge for a year, with a prosecutor for a year and with a defense lawyer for a year. This internship should also be subsidized, in increasing amounts. By the end of the four-year period, he'll be ready to go out and make a pretty good income from private cases. His practice obviously won't consist entirely of murder cases, and there will be enough cases at fees of $3000 and $5000 each to ensure his making a decent living. Being qualified, he'll be able to earn that kind of fee. Furthermore, when there is a need for him to be appointed to defend someone without money, he'll be able to do a first-rate job. And secondly, he should be paid about as much to defend an indigent as he would receive from a client with decent assets. And he should have enough public money to hire good investigators at their regular rates. Society will get back the money it will have spent for his training and for his fees in appointed cases; fewer people will be in jail who ought not to be there, and that will save a lot of money. Right now, with the training I've had on the job and with the enlightened series of Supreme Court rulings in recent years, I could walk into most state courts and, with a writ of habeas corpus, yank out 30 percent of those inside, because their cases had not been properly tried or appealed.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that 30 percent of those convicted and imprisoned are innocent?

[A] Bailey: A distinction has to be made between those convicted who are innocent and those who were guilty but wrongfully convicted of the charge against them. An example of the latter situation is when a man is convicted and sentenced for first-degree murder when the charge should have been manslaughter. There are many times when a man is convicted and sentenced for a more serious charge than the evidence warrants. My estimate as to those who have been wrongfully convicted on the charge against them is ten to fifteen percent. With regard to the absolutely innocent who are convicted, that most often happens in circumstantial cases where there is no direct evidence to go on--especially identification cases involving eyewitnesses. Identification testimony is dangerous, particularly when there is no corroborative evidence. You get this sort of thing in bank-robbery cases, some homicides, some rapes. That kind of testimony is opinion, not fact. Police usually tell such witnesses, "Don't be shaky, we have other information under the table." That's usually a lie, but by saying it, the police bolster such witnesses. My estimate is that in perhaps 40 percent of criminal cases, under these circumstances, the system misfires.

[Q] Playboy: How would you restructure that system to get better prosecutors as well as better defense lawyers and judges?

[A] Bailey: Here you've come to the heart of the new system I'd like to see. I don't think defense lawyers should always be on the defense side of cases, nor do I think prosecutors should be only prosecutors. I think we could benefit immeasurably by adapting the British system in such a way that a highly skilled trial lawyer could defend a case one week and prosecute a case the next week. We would begin by separating, as they do, the solicitors from the barristers. Under the British system, a solicitor is a lawyer who can do everything except go into a court and try a case. When he has a case to be tried, he takes his file on it--his investigation--to a barrister. A barrister is a specialist in actual litigation; he is a trial animal, so to speak. He is not an expert on how to draw up a contract, but he is an expert in taking witnesses apart. We would then, as the British do, separate the barristers from the Queen's Counsel. The latter are particularly eminent barristers. If we had those distinctions, what I would like to see happen is for the district attorney to be a functionary who would not actually try cases. In each particular case, the court would appoint a prosecutor for that case from the American equivalent of a group of members of the Queen's Counsel--that is, highly skilled trial lawyers who deal only with life and liberty cases. That same lawyer might be appointed by the court the next week as defense counsel. The advantages of this system to the defendants in criminal cases are clear. There would be a reservoir of expert trial lawyers trained, I emphasize again, at Government expense. A defendant could hire one of them, or if he had no money, one would be appointed to defend him. And by having this core of trial lawyers also available to prosecute, we would have done away with the concept that a politician is fit to be a prosecutor. Under the present system, there's too much political advantage for a district attorney in getting a conviction. That advantage would be removed if a highly professional trial lawyer, and not the district attorney, handled the prosecution side of a case. And we would also avoid indictments made on thin evidence for political reasons. So here you would have the adversary system in criminal cases at its best--each side represented by one of the best lawyers the system can produce. And here again, the public would also profit economically, because the trials would be more efficient, the appeals and reversals less frequent.

[Q] Playboy: Under the present system, do you feel there should be more effective means for suing prosecutors for false charges and for overzealous behavior?

[A] Bailey: Yes. I think the most disappointing aspect of our whole social structure is that a man can be completely wronged by the processes of the law, can be imprisoned, can have his estate taken away from him, can be practically ruined, and then when it is later discovered that a mistake had been made in his case, he gets no restitution. He doesn't even get a pat on the back. Sam Sheppard is the outstanding example of this in the country today. It should be possible for every person acquitted to file an action for malicious or unnecessary prosecution. As of now, Government officials are immune from such a suit. They shouldn't be. Let me give you another example besides Sheppard. A man in Rhode Island was convicted in a sex case on the basis of eyewitness identification. I found out that Albert DeSalvo had committed that crime and told the attorney general of Rhode Island about it. The case is now being re-examined. Certainly, that man ought to have the right to seek restitution.

[Q] Playboy: Among the investigative methods employed by some prosecutors is the use of electronic eavesdropping equipment. Melvin Belli has said: "I can understand how the use of wire-tapping, however distasteful, might occasionally be unavoidable in order to bring a guilty man to justice--or to save an innocent one." How do you feel about it?

[A] Bailey: I don't think you can ever permit its use to bring a guilty man to justice or to bring to justice a man you think is guilty. If you allowed that, the exception would be so broad as to emasculate any rule against eavesdropping. But when it comes to preventing an innocent man from being incarcerated, I'm inclined to think--especially once the process of justice has failed and the jury has convicted despite the man's innocence--that all stops are out. If, for example, I were satisfied that two police officers or prosecutors were sitting down and having a conversation in which they were admitting they knew the man was innocent and were revealing facts they had concealed, I would bug them, tap them, do almost anything under the sun to get that information before the court--even at the risk of my license. There's a vast difference between the use of such methods by the prosecution on the one side and by the defendant on the other. The Government is never badly hurt by an acquittal, but a defendant is destroyed by a conviction. Much is justified in defense of innocence that I would not like to see used by the Government in pursuit of the guilty.

[Q] Playboy: But if that kind of evidence were illegally obtained by you, how could you get it before the court?

[A] Bailey: In the circumstances I just described, I'd put the policemen or the prosecutors on the stand and ask them whether they made those statements. If they denied it, I'd offer the evidence, no matter how gained, and let the court decide whether or not it wanted to admit that evidence. I think the public reaction would be overwhelming. And it is possible for a judge, if he sees fit, to bend over backward for a defendant. In this case, he might declare a new trial.

[Q] Playboy: The thrust of all your remarks so far has been in favor of the rights of the accused. However, there is a growing conviction--and not only among conservatives--that the rights of society need more strengthening. A recent report by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice included a statement by seven of the nineteen members of the Commission declaring that recent Supreme Court decisions limiting police interrogations and confessions had tilted the balance of justice too far in favor of defendants. Three of the seven holding that belief are past presidents of the American Bar Association. Do you share their concern?

[A] Bailey: No, I don't agree with these alarms about criminals being coddled by the new rulings. The fundamental safeguard of our system is that 100 guilty men may be acquitted before one innocent one is convicted. But the system has not been working that way. Judge Curtis Bok of Pennsylvania said a while ago that of those who go to trial, more innocent men are convicted than guilty men set free. I agree with him. And these recent Supreme Court rulings are vitally important, because they can help reduce the number of innocent men who are convicted. The point about such decisions as Escobedo and Miranda is that they don't protect the habitual criminal to any extent. Long before he read about the Miranda decision--which says the suspect has the right to remain silent and the right to have a lawyer present--the habitual criminal knew he didn't have to talk to a police officer and that he'd be a damn fool if he did. These decisions protect those who don't know their rights, and under the Constitution, that's the way it must be. What I would like to see is a sharp improvement in the layman's understanding of his rights and everyone else's. That could be done through the educational system. The Supreme Court is doing a great deal to prevent the system's misfiring at the point of arrest and interrogation, but if the average man on a jury will not respect a reasonable doubt or the presumption of innocence or the burden of proof, the system can misfire at that point--probably against the defendant.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of the average man's respect for the law, to what do you ascribe the apparent proliferation in our society of bad samaritanism--the apathetic refusal, as in the Kitty Genovese case, of those who "don't want to get involved" by going to the aid of people in distress?

[A] Bailey: What particularly concerns me about that kind of behavior is that it indicates a lack of belief by citizens in their own governmental and societal structure. If a citizen really understood and believed completely in our processes of law, if he really recognized how central they are to his own well-being as well as everyone else's, he would be much more likely to become involved in a situation such as the Genovese case. And even though it might be at a personal sacrifice, he would much more willingly get involved as a witness in a criminal case than usually happens now. And it's here that I think something can be done through the educative process to make more people aware of how this system operates, how it could be made to operate better, what their rights are and what everyone's rights are. That's why I do as much lecturing as I can.

[Q] Playboy: With your busy lecture schedule and your heavy case load, how do you decide which new cases to handle?

[A] Bailey: Certainly I can't take all the cases I'm asked to. Deciding which ones to accept is like the picking of a juror or the setting of a fee. There are no fixed criteria to which I look immediately in order to decide whether I'll take a case. It depends on many factors. First, whether the defendant is willing to accept the kind of representation I offer him--and that does not involve a guarantee of success; it does not involve my pulling any fast tricks to win his case; it does not involve his lying to me. I have to be convinced he's looking for a reasonable service and not wizardry. Too often, people with impossible cases will approach me and say, "Well, you've been winning all these other cases, so, of course, you'll win mine." That's not true. There are impossible cases. And after I find out these things, a large part of the decision is a result of my sitting down and talking with the fellow. Assuming that the fee is satisfactory--and that's not as important a criterion as is often thought, because it can range from a dollar to $100,000--much depends on whether I can become a little sympathetic toward his situation.

[Q] Playboy: What are your criteria in deciding how much to charge?

[A] Bailey: It's a judgment made up of many factors--including the defendant's ability to pay and some estimate on my part of the culpability he should bear for having gotten into the jam in the first place.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't that part of the criteria make you into a moralist?

[A] Bailey: No, because I'm never going to charge more than what I consider a fair fee, in any case. If I choose to cut it--which I sometimes do--the degree of the client's culpability for having gotten into trouble is one of the considerations I use in deciding whether I'm going to cut it. I try many murder cases for a fee of less than $50,000, and yet any murder case is worth at least that much if you're going to do it right. For example, there may well be appeals for which the client cannot afford the additional fees and expenses. Jake Ehrlich [a prominent San Francisco criminal lawyer] says that in a first-degree murder case, a fair fee is everything that a defendant owns. That may be justifiable in some cases, but very often it's not enough. That is, the client doesn't have the resources commensurate with all the time and expenses that go into the case.

[Q] Playboy: How high do your fees go?

[A] Bailey: They could easily go to $100,000. None ever has, but some come close. That doesn't mean that in those instances, I get anything like $100,000 for myself. There are costs I have to pay, and I don't keep awfully good track of a lot of expenses. I do a lot of traveling, for example, which may involve several cases at a time, and if I'm not sure how that should be apportioned, I take it out of my own income. I can't charge a client for an expense I'm not certain is entirely his, so there's a certain amount of slippage there.

[Q] Playboy: It's been reported that part of your fee for the Sheppard case will come from the royalties for his book, Endure and Conquer, and from a percentage of the sale of the screen rights to it. Is that true?

[A] Bailey: When Sam came up for retrial with no funds even to produce the experts we needed in the case, I had to put up some of the money on my own. At that time, he had only one asset--his share of the book rights. So, at his suggestion, he assigned that share to me, and I will hold the assignment until the bills and some fees are paid, and then that share reverts to him.

[Q] Playboy: There was also a report that you got a share of the profits from Gerold Frank's book The Boston Strangler.

[A] Bailey: I had no share whatsoever in the profits from that book. I am involved in the sale of the movie rights, however, and I'm negotiating with publishers about books concerning several of my clients; but I'm not trying cases to get publication and movie rights, as some of my critics seem to think. I am involved in such negotiations because these are sources of revenue for clients and thereby I am guaranteed that I'll be paid for having defended them.

[Q] Playboy: How much do you make a year from all these sources?

[A] Bailey: In 1965, my gross income was about $100,000. For 1966, it was somewhat over that figure, and in 1967 it will probably go much higher. But that's gross income. My net income is low--less than $30,000 a year. You see, some 75 to 90 percent of that income goes for overhead. I have a large staff and tremendous traveling expenses. I just bought, for example, an eight-seat Lear jet for $450,000. But since I do try many cases in many different parts of the country, it's essential that I don't have to worry about transportation.

[Q] Playboy: But even at relatively low net income, you do have a large home and appear to live very well, almost flamboyantly. How do you manage it?

[A] Bailey: It depends on your definition of the word. The jet, as I said, is functional rather than flamboyant. My home includes an office, a library, a conference room and a guest room. I often take clients and others connected with my cases there. So it's not a conspicuous-consumption kind of showplace. And furthermore, not being a millionaire, and having a low net income, I hardly live as flashily as some magazines might have you believe. And since I work long hours over long periods of time, I don't have that much time, anyway, for a flashy personal life.

[Q] Playboy: If your public image as a flamboyant personality is so exaggerated and if you are as concerned as you say with elevating the stature of the criminal lawyer, why have you agreed to play yourself in a movie version of the Sheppard case?

[A] Bailey: I agreed to play the part only if the movie were done in a quasi-documentary fashion that would reflect the actual developments in the case as they occurred, without giving undue emphasis to the conduct of anyone involved. If the script depicted me as a hero, I wouldn't do it. Instead of heroism and wizardry, the movie will reflect all the dogged work involved--along with the usual quantum of mistakes and the enormous persistence that are endemic to my work. Instead of scenes showing flamboyance, there will be scenes showing the pounding out of brief number 11 at two in the morning. It is only by taking the part that I'm able to have any control at all over how the story is handled. I expect that because of this film, the public will have a better understanding of how the law works and how it ought to work better. The great misunderstandings about the nature of this profession have been caused in large part by the media, particularly television and movies. And that's why so many of the public feel that if you win a case, you're a shyster. And if you lose a case, you're a bum. I'm in this picture to counter that kind of impression.

[Q] Playboy: You've been quoted as saying that as your fame increases, "as far as my own life goes, all the press attention keeps me in line from acting socially as I might otherwise act." What did you mean by that?

[A] Bailey: Well, for one thing, the natural tendency if someone is nasty or rude to you is to snap back and chop them up a bit. But now, I'm instantly aware that if I do that, I'll be termed a bully, so I'm a little more tolerant of irresponsible personal abuse. Not that I get that much. It isn't a serious problem. What I also meant was that as a lawyer who is continually going into strange jurisdictions where I'm in combat with strange prosecutors, I have to cope with the temptation certain prosecutors have to follow me around and see if they can catch me doing something embarrassing--which then would be spread all over the papers.

[Q] Playboy: Was it this need to be circumspect in your behavior that you had in mind when you said, "What separates the successful criminal lawyer from the unsuccessful, in the end, is the ability to hold his booze"?

[A] Bailey: I didn't say it in that way. I did make an observation that criminal lawyers tend to have a fairly high capacity for alcohol. It's a very high-pressure business. And if they do drink more than the average, they usually hold their liquor well. What I was saying was that a criminal lawyer who doesn't hold his booze well and goes jabberwocky can't have clients very long. Clients are not happy to have their affairs--which can be rather racy, whether they're guilty or innocent--spread around by a talkative drunk.

[Q] Playboy: Having demonstrated that you're a lawyer who does not "go jabberwocky" and who has no problem getting clients, what of the future? Do you think you might eventually try fewer cases and spend more time teaching and lecturing in order to effect the reforms of criminal law you've been calling for?

[A] Bailey: Never a lot of lecturing or teaching, but always some. I think I'd be more inclined to become active as one of the members of the board of directors in some organizational effort to improve the criminal bar rather than as a lecturer or a classroom instructor.

[Q] Playboy: As a man who has concentrated very profitably on criminal law and who intends to continue to, what has been your greatest satisfaction in the six years you've been practicing?

[A] Bailey: My greatest satisfaction is that during the past six years there has been the beginning of a marked improvement in the status of the criminal lawyer. First of all, the Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval to the criminal lawyer by proclaiming, as they strengthen the protection of the rights of the accused, that the criminal lawyer is an important part of the system. They recognize that if it had not been for the criminal lawyer, they would not have had the opportunity to make the rulings they have made. Furthermore, many Supreme Court Justices have made speeches in conventions and elsewhere in which they state that the criminal bar is understaffed and is poorly operated. Since I have felt, ever since I became a lawyer, that the criminal bar has to be drastically improved, this kind of reinforcement from such eminent authority is particularly satisfying. I'm especially gratified by my expectation that I will live to see the system overhauled and put on a much more decent plane.

[Q] Playboy: What about personal satisfactions as a result of the cases you've won?

[A] Bailey: In a business like this, personal satisfaction is not always associated with acclaim for a particular, highly publicized victory. The most satisfying moments occur when you feel you've functioned well within your sphere of responsibility, when you feel your presence has made a difference in a man's life. Early this year, I defended a military officer in Charleston, South Carolina. He had been indicted on a morals charge. Had he been convicted, he would have been completely destroyed. In these military cases, acquittals are rare, because the other side usually has the stuff. This one was a fluke. The man was innocent. He had to wait seven months with this horrible weight on him. We won the case, and I saw the enormous relief on his face and on his wife's. Someone on my staff said to me that night, "You look a lot happier than when you've won cases that got national headlines." And I was. When you can do something like that--when you can help prevent a man's life from being destroyed--you realize that the criminal lawyer has more power than any man on the face of the earth. That's why I'm in this business, and that's why I intend to stay in it.