[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Hyun-ui] Francis Lee Bailey Jr., the lawyer who defended football star OJ Simpson, passed away on the 3rd (local time) at the age of 87.
On the 3rd (local time), AP News and others reported that Bailey died at a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Bailey first gained fame when he took on the "Sam Shepard case." Shepard, a neurosurgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, was convicted in 1954 of murdering his pregnant wife. At that time, Bailey overturned the original verdict by arguing that the jury had been improperly influenced by media coverage and other exposures.
He mainly defended controversial figures such as Army Captain Ernest Medina, who was indicted in 1971 for the My Lai incident, and Patty Hearst, the heiress of "newspaper king" Randolph Hearst, who committed a bank robbery in 1974.
In a lifetime interview with The New York Times (NYT), Bailey said, "As a professional, I cannot refuse cases that put me to the test, make me famous, or have high fees."
Above all, he is famous for defending Simpson, who was charged in 1994 with murdering his ex-wife and her lover. At that time, he successfully secured a not guilty verdict by arguing that Mark Furman, the criminal investigator in the OJ Simpson case, was a racist.
Bailey later lost his law license in Florida in 2001 and in Massachusetts in 2003 due to contempt of court and other reasons, and spent a miserable later life, including filing for bankruptcy in June 2016 for failing to pay $5 million (about 5.59 billion KRW) in federal taxes.
Meanwhile, Simpson expressed his condolences on Twitter that day, saying, "Bailey was one of the greatest lawyers of this era" and "We have lost a great man."
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