Three years after F. Lee Bailey was disbarred for allegedly misusing $6 million in stock that belonged to a client, the famed attorney is trying to pick up the pieces of his shattered legal career.
Bailey appeared in a Boston courtroom Thursday to ask for a hearing on his bid to regain his law license.
His attorney, Joseph Balliro, told a panel of three judges in U.S. District Court that his client’s disbarment was a “grave injustice.”
Balliro said new evidence has surfaced since Bailey was disbarred in Florida in 2001 — evidence, he said, that federal attorneys gave conflicting testimony about Bailey’s handling of his client’s assets.
“The Florida court never had an opportunity to see what we say is critical evidence,” Balliro said.
The three-judge panel did not immediately rule on Bailey’s request for a new hearing, but gave Balliro 30 days to present his argument in writing.
Bailey has represented the likes of O.J. Simpson, Patty Hearst and Albert DeSalvo, the man who confessed to being the Boston Strangler, over the course of a storied legal career that spans four decades.
Bailey was disbarred in Florida in 2001. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court followed Florida’s lead, revoking Bailey’s law license in 2002 — a move commonly employed to prevent disbarred attorneys from moving across state lines to practice law.