Lawyers: 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.