Casus Belli

The Ruby trial was finally over, and Judge Joe B. Brown was relaxed and loquacious. Between puffs on his pipe, he allowed that Defense Counsel Melvin Belli was "a fine man" and "one of the most brilliant attorneys that's ever appeared in my court." Those were just about the only kind words that anyone could find to say last week about the King of Torts.

For all its vehemence, the anti-Belli criticism could scarcely match the violence of Belli's reaction to the verdict. As TV cameramen clustered around, Belli burst into a ranting tirade. He called the trial "the biggest kangaroo-court disgrace in the history of American law," charged that Judge Brown had made "some 30 errors," denounced Dallas as "a city of shame." He said that the jury, the selection of which had taken a full two weeks, had been "jammed down our throats." He would "stop practicing law," he said, "if we don't reverse this and make the people of Dallas ashamed of themselves."

Coast-to-Coast Shock. The reaction was immediate. In a speech to the American College of Trial Lawyers in Miami Beach, A.C.T.L. President Whitney North Seymour said that Belli's conduct "shocked all of us." Belli's denunciation of the judge and jury on TV, said Seymour, "cannot be allowed to pass by those responsible for maintaining the image of the American lawyer at home and abroad."

Walter E. Craig, president of the American Bar Association, rapped Belli hard in a speech to a gathering of lawyers in San Francisco, Belli's home town. The effect of Belli's "intemperate and abusive statements," said Craig, "was to question the integrity of the court and the jury. The canons of ethics provide that a lawyer having any justified grievance against a member of the judiciary should lodge that grievance with the appropriate authorities and not indulge in public defamation. Mr. Belli should know this. That he should so flagrantly disregard the code of professional ethics and his oath as an attorney is a discredit to him and to his profession." Belli responded by saying he would resign from the A.B.A.

Texans, predictably, mounted a strenuous counterattack. Governor John Connally called Belli's tirade against Dallas "reprehensible." Attorney General Waggoner Carr told University of Texas law students that Belli's behavior "should shock all of our bar members from coast to coast."

Sparrow & Peacock. By the judgment of his colleagues, Belli not only erred in his post-trial blowup; he also bungled his courtroom tactics.

One of his gravest mistakes was to underestimate his antagonist, bear-shaped District Attorney Henry Menasco Wade. Belli referred to him as a yokel and a hog caller. But Wade's slow twangy drawl and furrowed face camouflage a tough, sharp mind. Under Wade, says a veteran Texas trial lawyer, Dallas County has "the toughest prosecution in the state of Texas." During the trial, Wade made a sparrow-and-peacock contrast with Belli; he played the earnest, rumpled country boy v. the gaudy city slicker, complete with red velvet briefcase. And Wade certainly knew that in the eyes of a Texas jury, the contrast was all in his favor.

In his unruffled and modest answers to newsmen's questions after the verdict, Wade said that Belli "put up as weak a case of psychiatric defense as I have ever seen." Asked what he would have done if he had been on the other side, Wade replied that he would not have risked all in an attempt to prove Ruby insane. "I would have tried to go for leniency," he said. Many lawyers agreed that Belli blundered in putting all the defense's eggs in the insanity basket. "If I had been in Belli's place," said District of Columbia Criminal Lawyer. Myron Ehrlich, "I would have been more concerned about the jury's reaction to Ruby. I learned long ago that jurors damn seldom acquit on grounds of insanity unless there is a great deal of sympathy for the defendant."

Several lawyers found fault with Belli's style. In the opinion of St. Louis Lawyer Morris Shenker, "Belli violated almost every principle of a criminal defense. This was a case that called for humbleness. It required a serene, solemn and sober defense." Added Beverly Hills Lawyer Paul Caruso: "Wade was perfect in his role. Belli was too flashy. What Ruby needed was a defense lawyer who could have matched Wade's demeanor, perhaps a small-town Texas lawyer, old-fashioned and down to earth, with suspenders instead of a velvet collar." The professional verdict on Belli's conduct of the defense was neatly capsuled in a Texas lawyer's quip: "They found Melvin Belli guilty and gave Jack Ruby the chair."

Anti-Everything. Apparently unbothered by the verbal brickbats, Belli went right on talking. He professed to be worried that Ruby might be murdered in jail. "Then they would make it appear a suicide and this vicious city would have him off their hands." He called Dallas "antiSemitic, antiscience, anti-American, anti-everything," and said he wanted to "get that stinking Dallas out of my nose."

But then came the final indignity: Jack Ruby, too, turned on his defender and fired him. Ruby's brother Hyman, a Chicago salesman, explained that Belli's opinions about Dallas, the jury, Judge Brown and D.A. Wade "are not shared by Jack or any member of his family."

To replace Belli and conduct the appeal, the family chose Houston's Percy Foreman, president of the National Association of Defense Lawyers, and one of the top criminal lawyers in Texas. Like Belli, Foreman charges high fees. A prosperous Texan charged with homicide once said that he could not decide whether to call in Foreman and spend the rest of his life in the poorhouse or take his chances on a moderate sentence and keep his estate. The Ruby family claims to be out of cash, but Foreman is optimistic: "There is some property they will try to sell." Foreman may well be worth his fat fees. In defending some 700 persons accused of capital crimes, he has lost only one to the electric chair.

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