Defending Oswald

[aggle-rithm]

In that case, the question becomes "Have you ever fired a rifle?"

I first started to think that there's something odd about the conspiracy angle on the JFK assassination when I visited Dallas, Dealey Plaza and the 6th Floor Museum. First of all, compared to the way it looks on film and photographs, Dealey Plaza is very small -- so tiny, in fact, that when I was looking for it, I walked right past the place twice before realizing it.

That's EXACTLY the impression that I got. From all the footage and re-enactments, you would think it was the size of a football stadium. More the size of a small basketball arena.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Your statement seems to imply "all" conspiracy theorists, putting them in one group. I know many CTs, and not a single one questions the Challenger. Name one.

This reminds me of when Gravy went on the Loose Change forums and presented, as an obvious parody, his "theory" that the Challenger disaster was an inside job. The response to this was overwhelmingly, "ErmerGerd! I never thought of that! It WAS an inside jerb!" Almost NO ONE at Loose Change grasped that he was actually making fun of them.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Your comment on ESP makes no sense. Are you saying that there is less evidence than 50 years ago - so evidence has been destroyed?

And your response to my comment makes even less sense.

Allow me to rephrase: There is less reason to believe in ESP today than there was 100 years ago. Yet, the question of whether it exists or not is still hotly debated. If human beings could be counted upon to always be rational, then the debate would have died down with each discovery showing that it's all bogus. Instead, the debate intensifies, with even more strident calls for "more research" (code for "more money").

Same is true of the JFK conspiracy theories. Very sophisticated tests have done showing that the "official" story is the most plausible narrative, and that none of the arguments put forth by conspiracy theorists have any validity. And yet, it's still debated.

 

[Stellafane]

As to the OP, I'd demand a change in venue, arguing that I couldn't possibly get a fair trial in the state of Texas. And if by some miracle I were successful, I'd promptly put Texas on trial -- they hated JFK and made death threats against him all the time, they wanted their own boy LBJ to be president, I'm just the convenient scapegoat, yada yada. It wouldn't work of course, but I doubt that anything else would have either.

 

[Cainkane1]

The rosecuter could point out the fingerprints on the rifle used by Oswald. The defence might argue that pre trial publicity makes a fair trial impossible. This is texas and Oswalds goose is cooked.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I could have made that shot with one eye closed!

 

[not_so_new]

Hey Frishman

You really should read Meadmaker's post if you haven't already or read it again if you have. This is true skeptical thinking.

You may or may not accept what I'm about to tell you, and if you don't accept it, I've done this enough that I know nothing I say would convince you.

Some of us who are adamant about Oswald, and Oswald alone, being the President's assassin did not always believe that way. We are not "true believers" in the sense that no evidence would convince us. I am a "true believer" because I started out as a skeptic, and became a true believer because of the weight of the evidence. Ineed, before I looked beyond the conspiracy books, I was more than a skeptic of the Warren Commission. I had seen a lot of information on 1970's television, and read some books, and knew that the Select Committee on Assassinations had found that there probably was a conspiracy. Based on that information, I assumed that there was a conspiracy. Determined to learn more about this conspiracy, I began research, and instead found that there was no conspiracy at all.

It's incredible the amount of misinformation that authors put out, and you have repeated some of it here. For example, the Mannlicher Carcano rifle is not some piece of junk. It's a perfectly good World War II era military rifle. I once saw a 1942 magazine article talking about what our servicemen would face when they went into battle. I remember that article saying that "Giuseppe's rifle" had an accurate range to 800 yards. Oswald's longest shot on November 22, 1963, was 88 yards.

I'm not a great shot with a bow and arrow, but I know people who could repeat Oswald's accuracy and timing with a bow. (I'm cheating just a tiny bit on that one. The usual amount of time allowed for the three shots is 4.3 seconds, but subsequent research has shown that the three shots probably actually took more than 8 seconds to fire, which would put it within the range of timing and accuracy of a very good bowhunter.) For a rifleman with a bolt action rifle, 4.3 seconds is more than enough time, but a somewhat difficult shot. With 8 seconds, any second rate marksman could have done the job, and one of them did.

At any rate, I know far more about the Kennedy assassination than any sane person ought to know, precisely because I was a skeptic. However, reading the evidence changed my mind. The evidence against Oswald really is overwhelming, and there is no evidence that there was any involvement by anyone other than Oswald. The books, movies, and probably web pages that claim otherwise are presenting very distorted views of reality that make it look like evidence exists, but if you examine it skeptically, you'll see that most of that evidence is distorted, except where it is just plain manufactured. If you have a few questions, and are genuinely skeptical, I can see if I could answer them.

You have an advantage that I didn't have. I was researching this stuff more than 20 years ago, before there was a world wide web. I'm sure the truth is a lot more accessible than it was then. On the other hand, the availability of the internet has made misinformation much more accessible as well, so it might be more difficult to sort truth from fiction.

 

[LSSBB]

Oh, dear! "Back and to the left. Back and to the left."

So as to not continue the derail of this thread, you might want to drop into the CT section and read the JFK Assassination thread. That's one of the most commonly debunked but favorite true believer myths out there. You'll find a few supporters for your position dropping in from time to time. This thread's supposed to be a hypothetical on how one would defend LHO in a court of law, and ninety per cent of your suppositions wouldn't be admissible, as they're unrelated to the simpler charges that would be brought - two counts of murder, one (possibly two) of attempted murder.

He started over at the JFK Assassination thread, then he ran over here.

 

[aggle-rithm]

He started over at the JFK Assassination thread, then he ran over here.

Is there a word for resurrecting a long-dead thread just for the purposes of hijacking it?

"Frankensteining"?

 

[Lenbrazil]

Plus, we have E. Howard Hunt's taped confession.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96FDflK_Iug near 8:30 min.
Plus, attorney Barr McClellan's book on How LBJ Killed JFK.

Like you I doubt that LHO could have done all the shooting in the requisite time with his rifle but Hunt's "confession" was far from conclusive and was made by an ailing 88 year-old man.

St. John was estranged from his father from the late 1970s to the start of this decade.

He was convicted twice on felony drug charges in the Bay Area but served no prison time...

[...]

The materials they offer to substantiate their story, examined by the Los Angeles Times, are inconclusive.




Hunt answers questions on a videotape using speculative phrases, observing that various named figures were "possibly" involved. A chart Hunt sketched during one conversation with St. John shows the same rogue CIA operation he describes in the memoir. None of the accounts provides evidence to convincingly validate that their father disclosed anything revelatory.

Hunt's widow and her two children, 27-year-old Austin and 23-year-old Hollis, dismiss the brothers' story, saying it is the result of coaching an old man whose lucidity waxed and waned in his final months.

Kevan bitterly accuses her brothers of "elder abuse," saying they pressured their father for dramatic scenarios for their own financial gain. Hunt's longtime lawyer, Bill Snyder, says: "Howard was just speculating. He had no hard evidence."​

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/20/nation/na-hunt20/2

And Barr McClellan was a disbarred for forgery.

Sgt. Oswald

This shows how superficial your knowledge is LHO never made it past Pvt. 1st Class and was bucked down to Pvt. after being court martialed for fighting a Sgt. and shooting himself in the foot with an unauthorized pistol. Yeah that must have made him extra attractive for the KGB.

 

[Tomtomkent]

If there were fingerprints on the gun (not a palm print put on by his corpse days later at the funeral home) <snip>.

Could you please explain how this transfer of latent prints was achieved days after death? Why do you suppose just closing the hand of a dead man around an item would not transfer a latent print?

Perhaps you could offer some analysis of the prints from the rifle to prove they were not from the rifle?

 

[anglolawyer]

Hey Frishman

You really should read Meadmaker's post if you haven't already or read it again if you have. This is true skeptical thinking.

Yes, a nice post by Meadmaker and a nice thread. I have only read Bugliosi (abridged version) and watched some film online. The chaos at Dallas police HQ is something to behold, as is the extraordinary tussle over the president's body. I find it hard to believe a well-resourced (there's the rub btw.) defence team could not make something (i.e. doubt about key facts) out of all the clowning around that went on after the shooting.

 

[John Jones]

Is there a word for resurrecting a long-dead thread just for the purposes of hijacking it?

"Frankensteining"?

Thread necromancy?

 

[angrysoba]

Is there a word for resurrecting a long-dead thread just for the purposes of hijacking it?

"Frankensteining"?

Thread necromancy?

Long-dead-thread-jacking

 

[Meadmaker]

I did see the Bugliosi/Spence mock trial. Spence tried to come up with reasonable doubt and lots of unanswered questions, but that was the best he could do. There wasn't even a glove that didn't fit.

 

[vtbub]

As to the OP, I'd demand a change in venue, arguing that I couldn't possibly get a fair trial in the state of Texas. And if by some miracle I were successful, I'd promptly put Texas on trial -- they hated JFK and made death threats against him all the time, they wanted their own boy LBJ to be president, I'm just the convenient scapegoat, yada yada. It wouldn't work of course, but I doubt that anything else would have either.

I was surprised to see this thread come back to life after a year.

You kind of nailed one of the points I was trying to make a while ago.

Any reasonable chance Oswald's lawyers had needed the trail not to be held in Dallas. I certainly can see a judge at least giving the defense the benefit of the doubt there.

Since this was not a federal crime, however, any trial would have still been held in the state. It could have been in Houston or El Paso, but it had to be in Texas.

 

[kookbreaker]

Remember that Oswald would also be tried for shooting Tippet. He'd be executed just for that alone.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Remember that Oswald would also be tried for shooting Tippet. He'd be executed just for that alone.

Oh, right..."cop killer" doesn't look too good on a resume in Texas.

 

[Brown]

Remember that Oswald would also be tried for shooting Tippet. He'd be executed just for that alone.

As I'd posited previously, Oswald's trial for murdering Tippit would not be joined with any trial for murdering the President, and that the Tippit murder trial would very likely occur before the presidential assassination trial:

First, the murders of Kennedy and Tippit were separate incidents, with separate facts, distinct sets of evidence, different weapons and separate witnesses. Accordingly, there is a question whether there would be one murder trial for Oswald or two. It would seem to me that more likely there would be two trials, and the Tippit trial would probably be first. (Why? It's the more clear-cut case, the amount of evidence is more manageable, and it represents quick justice for a local boy; plus, when Oswald goes on trial for killing JFK, the jury is going to know that Oswald is already a convicted cop-killer.) The possibility of pleading guilty to one crime to avoid conviction for the other seems slim in Oswald's case.

There is no requirement that prosecutors prove any motive on Oswald's part. In other words, there is no legal mandate for the prosecutors to prove that Oswald killed Tippit because Oswald was responsible for the assassination and Oswald was in flight from his actions. The prosecution has to prove that the killing of Tippit was intentional, but that is not the same as proving motive. The prosecution would be smart to treat the assassination of the President as a distinct incident separate from shooting of a policeman.

Oswald would likely have tried to avoid having the Tippit trial come first, but such efforts would have been unlikely to be successful. And the case against Oswald for murdering the policeman was very solid. So the chances are that, when Oswald was put on trial for the assassination of JFK, he would already be a convicted cop-killer.

Occasionally, some folks suggest that Oswald could try to argue at the assassination trial that he was a pawn under the control of shadowy plotters, and that others hated the President more than he did. Apart from the observation that such is defense is usually foolish, Oswald's conviction for cop-killing would weigh against it, as would Oswald's attempted assassination of General Walker; these were violent acts involving deadly force that Oswald did on his own.

 

[BazBear]

If there were fingerprints on the gun (not a palm print put on by his corpse days later at the funeral home),

Evidence of this occuring?

and the gun had the power and accuracy to do the job, then you can say there is no reasonable doubt. The Italian $15 rifle was not good enough for the task.

BS. I own a 6.5mm Carcano, it's original purpose was killing human beings. Those shots were not particularly hard. Let's not forget he missed a shot, something a trained hitman would have been very unlikely to do.

But Sgt. Lee Harvey Oswald (USMC) did not have the means (rifle),

See above.

motive (he liked JFK),

No, he didn't like Kennedy, JFK was anti-Communist and anti-Castro

or opportunity (he was in the lunch room. Mac Wallace's fingerprints were on a box in the the 6th floor TSBD sniper's nest),

He was there a couple of minutes after he made the shot, sure. And yadda yadda yadda about the old Mac Wallace nonsense.

so there are reasonable doubts.

Not that I can see.

Don't be a gullible truster. A debate does not go on for almost 50 years unless there is something to it.

Don't be a gullible CT parrot. And why can't the "debate" last this long and still be BS? The Pearl Harbor CTs have been spinning for over 70 years.

I thought this forum was for skeptics not true believers.

Skeptics believe what the preponderance of credible evidence tells them, not the unsubstantiated crap you find in CT books or on CT web sites.