CT's, in court how would you defend Oswald?

[Tom Scully]

Also, it looks like the rifle is too far below his face to be aiming with the scope or the iron sights.

I don’t have any way to adjust the arms, legs, head, etc independently. So you have to use your own imagination to bend the neck so that his right eye is looking through the scope and his arms and legs are positioned properly. If someone knows of a suitable character that has those abilities, I would be happy to use it.

Why go here? 56 years and nothing is on...as far as advancing to a consensus on reliability of Brennan claims. Why do so many gravitate toward
eyewitness testimony, either to attempt to impeach it or to embrace it without appearing to some of us to have any solid foundation to justify the embrace?

Mark Lane with Playboy Mag. interviewer, three generations ago. It is a fact Mary Bledsoe had a curious familial connection with RD Matthews.
Does everyone understand the contrast? This Bledsoe background detail is progress in that it is not reasonably countered. Debating the question of Brennan
is obviously a waste of time, yet here we are, again? Why?

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/P%20Disk/Playboy/Item%2041.pdf
….
PLAYBOY: But didn't the Commission have eyewitness evidence that shots did come from the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository?

LANE: The Commission had one "star" witness who testified that a man fired from that window. He was Howard L. Brennan, a 45-year-old steamfitter. There was some other evidence that
shots came from there, but it was vague and frequently contradictory, so the Commission relied largely on the testimony of Brennan. He told the Commission he was seated on a concrete wall across the street from the Book Depository, 107 feet from the building and about 120 feet from the sixth-floor window. The Commission concluded that this placed him in an excellent position to observe anyone in the window." Brennan said he heard a noise he at first thought was a motorcycle backfire—so, naturally, he looked up to the sixth floor of the Depository, and saw a man standing behind the window firing a rifle. Brennan signed an affidavit to that effect on November 22, swearing that the man in the window 'was standing up and resting against the left window sill." However, the Commission concluded the window was open only at the bottom. So if Oswald, or anybody else, fired through that window from a standing position, he would have had to fire through the glass—which was unbroken. The Commission slithered out of this one by determining that "although Brennan testified that the man in the window was standing when he fired the shots, most probably he was either sitting or kneeling." The reason they gave was that the window ledge was only about a foot and a half from the floor, thus creating the illusion from the street below that a person was standing rather than sitting c.r kneeling behind the windov,
 But Brennan himself invalidated this explanation, for he swore he saw the man both stand up and sit down—and withdraw from the window more than once. In any case, here we have the Commission contradicting its own star witness on a vital point of his testimony —the position of the assassin at the time of the crime.

PLAYBOY: Important as it may be, this is just one point, on which anyone could be mistaken. Was Brennan's testimony inconsistent in other respects?
LANE: Yes, it was. When Brennan was taken to the police line-up on November 22, to pick out the man he claimed to have seen in the window, Oswald was in the line-up, but Brennan failed to make a positive identification. When Brennan later testified before the Commission, he said he had known it was Oswald all along—but didn't select him from the police line-up because of his fear that the assassination was a Communist plot and "if it got to be a known fact that I was an eyewitness, my family or I, either one, might not be safe." In other words, Brennan admitted to the Commission that he had deliberately lied to the Dallas police on November 22 when he told them he could not definitely identify Os- wald in the line-up. And yet the Commission chose to believe his subsequent identification of Oswald as the man in the window. In any court of law, Bren- nan would almost certainly have been discredited as a witness. The Commission concluded that Brennan was able to identify a man standing behind a half closed window 120 feet away from him. This was the Commission's star witness to support their conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald fired at the President from the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository.

PLAYBOY: Do you think that no shots actually came from the Depository?
LANE: It's not as simple as that. ...

[Colin Crow]

Of course nothing can ever be proven about such interesting speculations but you must have a theory as to why these three men remained silent. Was it the natural fear of black men in the company of white law men or something more sinister?

What we do know is that Williams had taken a position in the SN after noon some time and vacated his position about 5 minutes before the shooting. When taken to City Hall to make a statement before 2pm I think we can assume the following. He knew that shots were fired from above and likely from an area he had just occupied. Maybe he knew that JFK had been killed. He saw Oswald enter in custody and during his statement he was questioned specifically about Oswald.

Williams either was aware of someone on the 6th floor when he was there or not. The shooter was either aware of Williams or not. If Williams saw Oswald on the 6th floor before the shooting I suggest he was either very protective of a fellow employee or very stupid not to inform the police of that fact during his first statement. I suggest he was neither.

[Colin Crow]

We know the head shot and we know that Kennedy must have been struck while he was behind the sign and those two bullet casings are the two closest to Oswald, the third shell was further away and this is because the rifle was pointed more forward and is consistent of an earlier shot as confirmed by the Willis girl who stops and turns because as she said, she heard a shot.

JohnM

Exactly......shells bounced off the boxes to the shooters right......first shot is shell further away. Second and third are those against the wall.

[Charles Collins]

Why go here? 56 years and nothing is on...as far as advancing to a consensus on reliability of Brennan claims. Why do so many gravitate toward
eyewitness testimony, either to attempt to impeach it or to embrace it without appearing to some of us to have any solid foundation to justify the embrace?

Mark Lane with Playboy Mag. interviewer, three generations ago. It is a fact Mary Bledsoe had a curious familial connection with RD Matthews.
Does everyone understand the contrast? This Bledsoe background detail is progress in that it is not reasonably countered. Debating the question of Brennan
is obviously a waste of time, yet here we are, again? Why?

Brennan wasn’t the only one that was fearful. Connally had the windows blacked out and steel plates placed inside the windows while he was in Parkland for ten days. Many eyewitnesses never came forward or waited many years before they did due to their fears.

[John Mytton]

Brennan wasn’t the only one that was fearful. Connally had the windows blacked out and steel plates placed inside the windows while he was in Parkland for ten days. Many eyewitnesses never came forward or waited many years before they did due to their fears.

Exactly, I think some Depository workers deliberately said nothing, this exchange from Dougherty is I feel an honest recollection, some fellows saw Oswald with a package but who wants to admit that they could have stopped a Presidential Assassination but didn't.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see Lee Oswald carry any sort of large package?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I didn't, but some of the fellows said they did.
Mr. BALL - Who said that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, Bill Shelley, he told me that he thought he saw him carrying a fairly good-sized package.
Mr. BALL - When did Shelley tell you that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, it was--the day after it happened.

JohnM

[Tom Scully]

Brennan wasn’t the only one that was fearful. Connally had the windows blacked out and steel plates placed inside the windows while he was in Parkland for ten days. Many eyewitnesses never came forward or waited many years before they did due to their fears.

Exactly, I think some Depository workers deliberately said nothing, this exchange from Dougherty is I feel an honest recollection, some fellows saw Oswald with a package but who wants to admit that they could have stopped a Presidential Assassination but didn't.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see Lee Oswald carry any sort of large package?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I didn't, but some of the fellows said they did.
Mr. BALL - Who said that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, Bill Shelley, he told me that he thought he saw him carrying a fairly good-sized package.
Mr. BALL - When did Shelley tell you that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, it was--the day after it happened.

JohnM

But this is supposed to be a discussion of whether a criminal defense in a criminal court of law could possibly impress upon a jury that reasonable doubt
as to the question of Oswald's guilt persisted, or if it had been put to rest by the prosecution.

How would a defense attorney, presumably in late 1964, present in court crimminal proceeding, the details in your last post?
Connally was governor of the state he was hospitalized in. Does it not follow that his staff in Austin effected the window protection you described
with no supporting cite? How is their decisions on how to temporarily secure the governor in a Dallas hospital material to what an Oswald defense attorney
should present to a jury? Aren't you simply sharing some rather vaguely presented feelings of some witnesses and those of Connally's wife and staff
because you have been influenced by those details, seemingly emotions driven, concerns that I assume are anecdotal if you are offering no supporting cites?

And John, aren't you citing the testimony of a guy with this "baggage", contradicting himself, out of the gate, as to the time he returned to work,
and his father lived with him. If you had something solid, I expect you would have brought it?

[John Mytton]

Exactly......shells bounced off the boxes to the shooters right......first shot is shell further away. Second and third are those against the wall.

 

There is no doubt that there were 3 shots and the majority of eyewitnesses only heard the shots from only one direction.





JohnM

[Colin Crow]

Exactly, I think some Depository workers deliberately said nothing, this exchange from Dougherty is I feel an honest recollection, some fellows saw Oswald with a package but who wants to admit that they could have stopped a Presidential Assassination but didn't.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see Lee Oswald carry any sort of large package?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I didn't, but some of the fellows said they did.
Mr. BALL - Who said that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, Bill Shelley, he told me that he thought he saw him carrying a fairly good-sized package.
Mr. BALL - When did Shelley tell you that?
Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, it was--the day after it happened.

JohnM

Perhaps as the revelation of the "commie" assassin was revealed that fact may have influenced some. However I believe that those who provided statements early on Nov 22 would be as forthcoming as possible given the suspect was in custody and no threat to them at the time. These would include; Williams, Shelley, Arce, Lovelady, Dougherty, Brennan and Rowlands. It would not include Buel Frazier or Linnie May Randle.