Word: belli
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Francisco Attorney Melvin Belli is no admirer of the American Bar Association to which he belongs, or of its president, Walter E. Craig. Self-styled defender of unpopular causes, Belli has voluble and repetitive contempt for lawyers who prefer corporate problems to trial work, and as he sees it, Craig exemplifies the prosperous defenders of vested interests...
...Belli has finally taken his case against Craig and his colleagues to court. What brought things to a head was his verbal exchange with the A.B.A. president after Jack Ruby's trial in Dallas last March. After the jury found Belli's client guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the King of Torts exploded in a torrent of comment on the judge, the jury and the city of Dallas. He charged that Ruby had been convicted by "the biggest kangaroo-court disgrace in the history of American law"; he called the verdict "a victory for bigotry...
...defendants, said Belli in his complaint, belong to "a small coterie of individuals devoted to perpetuating ancient and customary injustices and Dickensian practices in law against individuals, seamen, railroad workers, union members, pedestrians, motorists, and those belonging to minority groups and unpopular causes." Craig himself had acted "willfully and wantonly and maliciously and viciously and with ill will and in spite and in an attempt to obstruct justice and deter the orderly administration...
...Moreno had asked Dallas Judge Joe B. Brown to let Ruby out to play himself on the psychodrama stage. Predictably, Judge Brown refused. Moreno also had asked former Defense Counsel Melvin Belli to re-enact his own part. Belli accepted, then failed to show. But every role had volunteers, and though members of the audience who sat as a mock jury took no vote, their consensus was plain: if the Dallas jury box had been packed with psychiatrists, Ruby would have been found "insane...
...Brown, who presided at Ruby's trial, flatly rejected defense attorneys' request for a new trial based on their claim of 203 errors in Brown's handling of the proceedings. The defense, now led by Texas University Law Professor Hubert W. Smith, who replaced bellowing Melvin Belli, said it would submit a motion for a new trial to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals within six months...