F. Lee Bailey

* After weeks of waiting, trial watchers in the O.J. Simpson case have finally seen the “greatest trial lawyer of the 20th century,” F. Lee Bailey. He revealed a style that is given to extravagant exaggeration, deliberate display of emotion for effect, caustic speech and groundless accusations.

To the legal profession this may be the ideal example of a defense attorney, but to me he is the epitome of asininity.

FRANK LLOYD

Los Angeles

* I’ve seen the greatest basketball player in all of human history in Michael Jordan; the finest tenor in decades in Luciano Pavarotti; and now, I’m told, I’m watching the foremost barrister of the second half of the 20th Century in Bailey. Are you kidding? If Bailey is to law what Jordan is to basketball and Pavarotti to opera, the profession is teetering on the brink of debacle!

JIM CARNETT

Costa Mesa

* There’s something wrong with my TV. Each time I try to get the Simpson trial, I get the LAPD trial instead.

POLLY HUTCHASON

Los Angeles

* To see how totally out of control our judicial system has become in handling famous murder cases, consider:

The Sacco-Vanzetti trial (1927) took six weeks; the Hauptmann trial for the Lindbergh baby kidnaping (1935) took six weeks; the Leopold-Loeb trial (1924) took seven days. And, although it wasn’t a capital case, the Scopes evolutionary trial (1925) featured Clarence Darrow and had plenty of opportunity for legal histrionics. It took all of 10 days.

A trial lasting six months or more is a mind-numbing, pocket-draining travesty. Can’t we find some way to stop this nonsense?

EDWARD K. CONKLIN

Manhattan Beach