Former O.J. Simpson lawyer F. Lee Bailey has lifted the lid on the trial of the century by saying prosecutor Marcia Clark ‘hit on everybody’ and claims his Dream Team colleague Bob Shapiro was an ‘a**hole’ who couldn’t ‘cross-examine a toad’.
In a new wide-ranging interview with HuffPost Highline, the 85-year-old took shots at a number of people he crossed paths with at the height of his career as a famed defense attorney.
Bailey, who was one of the Dream Team lawyers who helped get O.J. acquitted of murder in 1995, was later disbarred from practicing law in various states for mishandling a client’s assets and has since declared bankruptcy owing millions to the IRS.
He reaffirmed repeatedly that he believes his client was ‘completely innocent’ of the 1994 murder of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
F. Lee Bailey (left) is pictured with O.J. Simpson (center) and fellow attorneys Johnnie Cochran Jr (right) and Bob Shapiro (background) after hearing the non guilty verdict back in 1995
‘People assumed he was guilty and his reputation couldn’t be resurrected,’ Bailey said of his client. ‘It’s not my belief. It’s a fact. He was completely innocent.
‘It infuriates me to be congratulated on ‘getting him off’. That is not the same as vindicating an innocent man. The American public has got its mind made up.’
Bailey said he believes Nicole was murdered by ‘hit men from Colombia who weren’t very bright’. He said the hitmen were actually looking for Nicole’s roommate to settle an unpaid cocaine debt.
The former attorney suggested that Nicole was murdered by mistake and that Goldman was ‘just very unfortunate’.
Speaking of the dramatic trial that was made into a recent TV series The People v. O.J. Simpson, Bailey expressed his ongoing hatred for the lead prosecutor Marcia Clark.
He said he had no regrets about the way Clark was treated at the time and refused to admit she was treated in a demeaning or sexist way. Clark’s hairstyles and general appearance were publicly scrutinized during the trial.
Bailey, who was one of the Dream Team lawyers who helped get O.J. acquitted of murder in 1995, was later disbarred from practicing law in various states for mishandling a client’s assets and has since declared bankruptcy owing millions to the IRS. He is pictured in 2016
Speaking of the dramatic trial that was made into a recent TV series The People v. O.J. Simpson, Bailey (right) expressed his ongoing hatred for the lead prosecutor Marcia Clark (bottom left)
‘She’s the one that changed her ‘do because she didn’t think she looked glamorous enough. Marcia Clark was a second- or third-rate lawyer. She didn’t do a good job. She hit on everybody but Bob Shapiro, who she hated,’ Bailey said.
‘She also had the vocabulary of a tank commander. She did not know how to cross-examine. I have nothing good to say about Marcia Clark.
When asked about the judge urging jurors not to be distracted by Clark’s short skirts and how the defense team called her ‘overly emotional’, Bailey said it was ‘all absolute bulls**t’.
‘She got treated fine,’ he said, adding that he never heard the judge commenting about Clark’s skirts.
‘I did not attend the whole trial. I would have heard of that. Marcia Clark was an offensive woman. She called me a liar on the record. Very unprofessional. Nobody mistreated her in a way that she didn’t bring upon herself.
‘She was actually the heroine of the trial and we were the bullies, because we were so many and so legendary. And she was just poor little Marcia, with her serf as an assistant. I never saw the press give her anything I would call unfair.’
Bailey also opened up about his ongoing feud with fellow Dream Team attorney Bob Shapiro that started during O.J.’s trial.
Bailey reaffirmed repeatedly that he believes his client was ‘completely innocent’ of the 1994 murder of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson (left) and her friend Ron Goldman (right)
Speaking of O.J.’s acquittal and the public’s perception of him, Bailey said: ‘It infuriates me to be congratulated on ‘getting him off’. That is not the same as vindicating an innocent man. The American public has got its mind made up’
‘We didn’t have conflicts on the Dream Team. We worked together. We tried to fire Shapiro for being an a**hole,’ he said, adding that they eventually kept him after he threatened to go public and say he thought O.J. was guilty.
‘O.J. knew that would be devastating before the trial, so we kept Bob aboard, but he remained a pain in the a** throughout the trial.’
Bailey went on to say that Shapiro had tried to convince O.J. into accepting a plea deal to reduce a possible sentence without speaking to the other lawyers first.
‘Shapiro had never tried a murder case. His only accomplishments in life were copping pleas and pretending that his special connections got a great deal for his clients. So the only way he could appear to be an important figure in the case was to be the guy who engineered a plea,’ he said.
‘It was silly. By that point, Johnnie and I wouldn’t have let O.J. plea to spitting on the sidewalk, because the prosecution didn’t have any evidence. All they had was a glove – you either tied the glove to O.J., or you didn’t, and they couldn’t.’
Bailey said Shapiro ‘didn’t know how to prepare a murder case’ but claimed he told his secretary that he planned fire Bailey and take the case over at the last minute.
‘He knew it would be a defining event. Only problem was: Bob Shapiro couldn’t cross-examine a toad,’ Bailey said.