Oswald was visited in jail by two lawyers from the ACLU, and he declined to have them represent him. He said he preferred counsel of his own choosing, and that man was John Abt, who had defended some communists in a Smith Act trial.
Oswald tried to get in touch with Abt over the weekend, but Abt was away for the weekend and not reachable.
What rights would a court reasonably find were violated by the laws of the day? At no point did Oswald decline to be interviewed by the police while he was in custody, and at no point did he refuse to answer questions because he wasn't represented by a lawyer.
His belongings were stored at the Paine's home and in a roominghouse, although most were in the Paine's garage, and both Mrs. Paine and Oswald's wife gave permission to the police to search the garage. I don't believe anything of value was found in his room at the roominghouse. So there wasn't any illegal search and seizure rules that were violated, as far as I know.
Most of the rest of the evidence was the hard evidence recovered like the rifle and the bullet fragments found in the limo and the like. Not sure what would be throw out on appellate review. What do you suggest might be overturned?
Hank
All good points, but it's difficult to say how it would all have played out. In the Miranda case, the Supreme Court (perhaps sick and tired of all of the crap that cops would try to pull, with different police departments each having their own brands of crap) set out a fairly specific procedure for everybody to follow. Advise the suspect of his rights. The suspect can't waive his rights unless he knows what they are. If the suspect wants an attorney or invokes his right to remain silent, you can't question him. He gets a lawyer if he wants one, even if he cannot afford one. And if you violate the suspect's rights, any evidence that flows from that violation cannot be used against the suspect at trial.
So were Oswald's rights violated under Miranda (and similar cases)? It's a tough question, the evidence on that point is incomplete (the guy who probably would complain the most was himself murdered; the cops and the district attorney would take the position that they take in EVERY case like this, namely, that there was no harm so no foul; and the documentary evidence is comparatively meager). Also, the circumstances of the case can often affect the law.
Miranda himself was a child rapist (if I remember right). If Oswald's case had hit the US Supreme Court before Miranda's, would the outcome have been the same? Would we today be talking about "Oswald rights" instead of "Miranda rights?" Would the Supreme Court have been as open to protecting the rights of a Marxist presidential assassin as they were for protecting the rights of a rapist of children? Tough call.
After the Miranda case was decided, there were a number of decisions refining it, finding exceptions to it and backing off parts of it. One of those decisions was the second Williams case, a case with which I have some famliarity.
Robert Anthony Williams was accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering a little girl named Pamela Powers. Williams was seen leaving the downtown Des Moines, Iowa, YMCA with a rolled up carpet that had two small, white feet protruding from it. Pamela had been at the YMCA but was discovered to be missing. Williams was taken into custody in Davenport, Iowa, and he had no body in his possession; law enforcement undertook a search for Pamela's body, on the assumption that Williams dumped it somewhere between Des Moines and Davenport. The weather was cold; it was near Christmas-time. (Apollo 8 was making the first manned mission to the Moon.)
In Davenport, Williams was advised of his rights and invoked his right to counsel, and a lawyer named McKnight represented him. Williams was to be transported by car to Des Moines, but the officer riding with him (whose name was Leaming) refused to allow Williams's lawyer to ride along. During the ride to Des Moines, Leaming told Williams that he wanted Williams to think about the fact that this little girl ought to have a "Christian burial." Leaming knew that Williams considered himself religious, and the ploy worked. During the ride to Des Moines, Williams said he would lead the police to the girl's body, and he did.
Williams was convicted of murder.
Following several reviews of the conviction, Williams's case wound up in the US Supreme Court in 1976-77. This was the FIRST Williams case. The Court ruled in early 1977 that Williams had been denied his right to counsel and that evidence resulting from this denial had to be excluded. In this case, that would mean that all evidence pertaining to the little girl's body--a CRUCIAL piece of evidence in a murder case!!--would be excluded.
The State of Iowa nevertheless decided to put Williams on trial again, and argued that the rights violation had no effect. The cops already had good reason to think Williams had dumped the body, and in fact they were searching nearby when Williams spilled the beans. Further, the cold weather would have preserved the evidence even if the cops took longer to find the body. The discovery of the body was inevitable. Had Williams not said anything to Leaming, the cops would have found the body on their own in a matter of hours. With this evidence, Williams was again convicted of murder. His case then went through the appellate courts again and eventually got to the US Supreme Court again (the second Williams case). Would the Supreme Court recognize an "inevitable discovery" exception to a rights violation? The Court did.
This was about seventeen years after Kennedy's murder.
So ... Oswald's counsel could have been in a position to argue that his client's rights were violated very early on in the case. He might try to argue that the taint of this violation extended to anything that may have followed from it: witnesses questioned thereafter (e.g., while checking an alibi), any leads obtained from questioning those witnesses, evidence found thereafter, and so on. Remember, had Oswald not been murdered, the interrogations would have continued, and who knows what a moderately skilled lawyer might have been able to say was evidence contaminated by the repeated violations of Oswald's constitutional rights? The cops might try to say, "Well, we would have found this evidence anyway," but the inevitable discovery principle would not be officially recognized until the early 1980s.
Chances are that much of the really key evidence would NOT be deemed to flow from any improper interrogation of Oswald: the gun, the bag, the bullets, the body, the medical evidence ... and this may be enough to secure a conviction were Oswald to be re-tried. But other evidence--some documents, photos, witnesses, proof of motive--might be excluded, and Oswald may have had greater opportunity to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt.
