Word: belly
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...visitor flew in with a flourish. His pink face and silver hair gleamed above polished cowboy boots and a grand, fur-collared overcoat. San Francisco Lawyer Melvin Mouron Belli had come to Dallas to defend Jack Ruby, the only man ever to commit a murder while the whole nation watched. Now, whether or not Judge Joe Brantley Brown decides to let live TV turn the trial into a flamboyant show, a flamboyant courtroom drama is already a certainty. "We will plead him not guilty by reason of insanity," announced Belli after a two-hour interview with his newest client...
Whatever the performance he extracts from his psychiatric consultants, moist-eyed Mel Belli is sure to provide other actors in other parts. But if his past courtroom productions are a guide, Belli himself will play the leading role. He has appeared for the defense in more than 100 murder trials, has earned the title of "King of Torts" by his masterful presentation of medical evidence that has won his clients awards as high as $675,000 in personal injury cases. His chief strategy has been "demonstrative evidence"-graphic, often grisly visual aids-human skeletons, elaborate anatomical models, huge photographic blowups...
...creating the Impact. Belli adds to such devices a superb sense of dramatic timing. In one of his most famous cases, he represented an attractive young woman who had lost her right leg. As the trial opened, Belli brought to the counsel table a large, L-shaped package, ominously wrapped in butcher's paper. For days, he shifted the bundle absentmindedly as he addressed the jury, but made no reference to it. Finally, he unwrapped the package slowly as the jury watched in horrified fascination. If the artificial leg he revealed was an anticlimax, Belli immediately rebuilt the tension...
...Belli any slouch at dramatizing psychological injuries. In one case that has become a legal classic, Belli represented a California fireman who became psychotic after he was injured when a truck rammed the fire engine he was riding. To re-create the exact details for the jury, Belli used an enormous aerial photo of the intersection where the collision occurred. He questioned a parade of 29 witnesses, spotting each person's location precisely on the photo, to prove that the fire siren must have been audible in the cab of the truck. Then he diagramed the positions of other...
...Belli says that "most of the verdicts are justified, because judges and the law have put so many safeguards around doctors." He points out that in some states (e.g., Arizona, New Mexico) malpractice cases are "very rare indeed," because doctors flatly refuse to give testimony that would show medical negligence by their colleagues. Says Belli: "It's the damnedest conspiracy, but it's understandable: the doctors fear reprisals-their insurance can be yanked, or they can be bumped off the hospital staff or find empty chairs beside them at the medical banquets." Doctors' self-imposed silence...