(7 of 10)
Undaunted, Bailey came back with a new challenge to the conviction in federal court. His argument this time was that the judge at Sheppard's original trial seven years before had failed to insulate the jury from an anti-Sheppard newspaper campaign by changing the venue, sequestering the jurors, or at least ordering them not to read press accounts. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark 8-to-1 decision, agreed with Bailey, then 32, and ordered Sheppard freed or retried. At the new trial in 1966, Bailey easily won an acquittal for Sheppard.
Before long, Bailey's client list read like a Who's Who of the accused in the sensational crimes of the 1960s:
¶ Anesthesiologist Carl Coppolino, acquitted of killing his lover's husband, but later convicted, despite another Bailey defense effort, of murdering his wife.
¶ Albert DeSalvo, the apparent Boston strangler, convicted of robbery and various other offenses but not of the killings.
¶ Four alleged plotters in Massachusetts' $1.5 million "Great Plymouth Mail Robbery," all acquitted.
¶ Captain Ernest Medina, acquitted of Army charges that he ordered and participated in the My Lai massacre.
Many of Bailey's 1960s clients could pay him little or nothing. But, as he candidly concedes, their cases brought him other clients with substantial bank accounts. Bailey's fees are not as fat as some reports have suggested. In fact, his associates complain that the give-no-quarter Boston attorney gets embarrassed when it comes time to talk money with a client, so they usually do it for him. Bailey's firm has never charged a criminal defendant more than $200,000. One source close to the defense says the bill for the Hearst defense may not climb much beyond $100,000 in fees, $75,000 more in expenses.
During his halcyon years, Bailey's annual income was clearly healthy though—enough to satisfy his addiction to flight and gadgetry with such items as a twin-engine Turbo Commander turboprop and a Beechcraft. He also keeps a helicopter, built by his own company (Enstrom Corp. of Michigan), on his 78½-acre spread in Marshfield, Mass., 30 miles south of Boston. His 17-room house there is equipped with indoor and outdoor swimming pools and nearly every form of 20th century electronic communication short of his own hot line to Moscow. The gray-carpeted lair in his office in Boston, which he rarely visits, is known throughout Boston legal circles as the "throne room."
There are three steps at the entrance; a panel of Klieg lights is mounted above the master's desk for press conferences.