So, if 100 people identified Oswald running down the road with a jacket on after the Tippit shooting, that still wouldn't be conclusive?
Really?
You wouldn't be able to draw a conclusion from that?
No, at least not a definitive one, because eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence.
This part of the case hinges on the answer to one single question alone; Did Oswald leave the rooming house wearing a jacket?
If he didn't, the Tippit witnesses, who saw a man wearing a jacket, couldn't have seen Oswald, regardless of their subsequent indentification at the line up. As a consequence, it needs to be determined if Oswald did in fact leave the rooming house wearing a jacket or not. If he didn't, he also couldn't have ditched it, right?
So, let's consider the circumstances; the only witness who claims Oswald left the rooming house is Earlene Roberts, a woman who was described by her employer as a person who makes up stories, which goes towards her credibility or lack thereof. In addition, we know that Roberts was blind at one eye and thus had limited eyesight. She also testified that she was trying to get the television to work when Oswald came in. For anybody who knows the lay out of the living room of the rooming house, this means that he was looking towards the front windows of the house and thus had her back turned to the living room. She saw Oswald come in, but did not notice anything about him other than that he seemed to be in a hurry. When asked she couldn't describe one details of the shirt Oswald was wearing when he came in. To get from his room to the front door Oswald only had to walk diagonally through the living room, which is a minor distance and easy to do without Roberts (with her back towards the room) noticing him until the very last moment, when he got parallel to her as he reached the front door. I believe she only saw Oswald for a second or two as he went through the doorway. Add to this the fact that Roberts in her testimony was shown CE 162, the only gray jacket Oswald owned, and she could not conclusively identify it because she believed the jacket had was wearing was actually darker.
Secondly, there is the story of Wesley Buell Frazier, who testified that Oswald was wearing a gray jacket during the trip to Irving on Thursday evening. It is true that Frazier couldn't identify CE 162 (and CE 163 for that matter) during his testimony, but we know that Marina testified that Oswald only owned two jackets. CE 163 was later found at the TSBD, which implies this was the jacket worn by Oswald on Friday morning. And that only leaves CE 162 as the jacket he could have worn on Thursday night, which of course begs the question how that same jacket could have made it's way from Irving to the rooming house between Thursday evening and Friday 1PM?
And then there is the matter of the jacket itself. There is no chain of custody for the jacket found at the parking lot. It is allegedly found by an officer who has remained unidentified until now. On the DPD radio recordings an (also unidentified) officer called in that a white jacket was found. Captain Westbrook claims that he was shown the jacket before he went on to the Texas Theater (what's a personnel officer doing there?) and that it was given to another unidentified officer. Then the jacket disappears out of sight, until a couple of hours later when it shows up at the DPD HQ in the hands of Captain Westbrook, who submits it to the DPD Identification Bureau. It is still a mystery how that jacket got to the DPD HQ and/or how Westbrook ended up having it. At the time Westbrook submitted it the jacket has initials on it from several DPD officers who, as it turns out, were never at the parking lot where the jacket was found and who most certainly were never part of the chain of custody, which is probably why the WC only had Westbrook on the stand to "identify" the jacket. And finally there is one more observation to make; the jacket was submitted to the Identification Bureau after the officers who conducted the first search of Ruth Paine's house had returned to the DPD HQ. Is that a mere coincidence?
To argue that Oswald left the rooming house wearing a jacket because witnesses at the Tippit scene said he was wearing a jacket is a
circular logic fallacy.1. Oswald left the rooming house wearing a jacket, so the witnesses who saw Tippit's killer wearing a jacket were correct in their identification of Oswald.
2. Witnesses saw a man, they believed to be Oswald, wearing a jacket, therefore we know Oswald must have left the rooming house wearing a jacket.
Most witnesses at the Tippit scene only saw the man very briefly and I know from personal experience (because I had to do it once) that it is very difficult to identify a person with 100% certainty. The figures of the Innocence Project don't lie;
The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing."[2] This non-profit organization uses DNA evidence to reopen criminal convictions that were made before DNA testing was available as a tool in criminal investigations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_identificationI recently read a story about a man who was wrongly convicted because multiple witnesses identified him as the perpetrator of a crime. There was only one problem, the man was in another State when the crime took place. During the court case the jury did not believe him, but the Innocence Project was able to conclusively prove that he was telling the truth and got him a new trial and a subsuquent acquittal and release.
Also, the likelihood of
all witnesses identifiying the same man in a proper and fair line up is a mathematical impossibility.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=98761&page=1Normally, if 10 people watch a particular event, like a car accident, you get 10 different accounts of what happened. Yet, here we are to believe that without exception all witnesses identify the same man? Really? So the mere fact that all the witnesses said the same thing actually speaks against the information being correct and/or the line up being fair.
With all this in mind, there is no way to conclude with any kind of certainty that Oswald did leave the rooming house wearing a jacket, and if he did which jacket it was and/or if it is the same one that Bill Brown claims (without evidence) that he ditched.
Feel free to disagree, but if you do please go beyond a simple dismissal in Bill Brown style or a pathetic "so many words" reply by Richard Smith and tell me where I am wrong.
