David Von Pein's "evidence" deconstructed

[John Iacoletti]

Caroll said he initialled the gun in the presence of Hill in the personnel office.   So I take it that your point is that Hill was part of a giant conspiracy to fabricate evidence and to plant a gun that fired the shells found at the Tippit murder scene and then trick several officers into identifying it as the gun that Oswald admitted he was carrying.

You claimed that Carroll "put his initials on it before turning it over to Hill".  Are you at least going to admit you were wrong before moving the goalposts?

Who said anything about a "giant conspiracy"?  Who knows where Hill got the gun he carried around in his pocket for 2 hours?  What "trick"?  How would they know it was the same gun?  Just because Hill said so?

[John Iacoletti]

No one has to prove each fact beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case. They just have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the offence: that Oswald caused the death of JFK and that he intended to do so.  That can be proven on many pieces of evidence, none of which need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Many things that are individually not evidence of anything do not magically combine to become evidence of something.

[John Iacoletti]

If you apply this method or approach to any other event you can essentially render what happened impossible to explain (or you can substitute any other explanation instead).

Some things are impossible to explain.  Deal with it.  Making up an unsubstantiated "explanation" may be comforting, but that doesn't make it a fact.

[John Iacoletti]

What it appears to boil down to, in just about every discussion, is a distrust of anyone in authority and anyone who believes that the authorities are capable of telling the truth. Their minds appear to be closed to any possible chance of that being the case.

"Authorities" need to be verified as much as anybody else.  What it appears to boil down to on your side is a blind trust of anyone in authority as unassailable (as long as it fits the predetermined narrative), whether it's verifiable or not.

[Andrew Mason]

The problem with LNs in general is that they instantly go into drama mode when they are asked a simple question, like the one we are discussing.

Nobody is accusing Hill or Carroll to be part of the dramatic "giant conspiracy". The question is about the chain of custody and evidence authentification. If you can not autheticate a piece of evidence you also can not rely upon it. In this case, Carroll not initialling the revolver before giving it to Hill and then initialling it several hours later is a violation of basic chain of custody rules. The same goes for initialling the revolved based upon something another officer said.

It just goes to weight.  There is no way that you can conclude that the gun with the officers' initials was anything other than Oswald's revolver.  Even if you think that there is a scintilla of doubt about it, the only other conclusion would be that there was an enormous conspiracy to falsify evidence.  The possibility that it was not the gun retrieved from Oswald and was innocently and unintentionally replaced by another gun that just so happened to have fired shells that other officers said they picked up at the Tippit murder scene is a non-starter.

He was never shown the revolver now in evidence and only confirmed that he had indeed a revolver on him which he said he had bought in Fort Worth several months later. So, to claim that Oswald confirmed that he ever had the revolver now in evidence is a lie, plain and simple.

I did not say that Oswald identified the revolver CE143 as belonging to him.  The officers did that. 

I said that Oswald admitted to carrying a revolver and I was suggesting that you were proposing that there was a conspiracy to "then trick several officers into identifying it as the gun that Oswald admitted he was carrying."

[Martin Weidmann]

What it appears to boil down to, in just about every discussion, is a distrust of anyone in authority and anyone who believes that the authorities are capable of telling the truth. Their minds appear to be closed to any possible chance of that being the case.

Have you ever wondered why the chain of custody for evidence actually exists?

[Andrew Mason]

Have you ever wondered why the chain of custody for evidence actually exists?

It is to demonstrate to the court that the evidence that purports to be taken from a scene was, in fact, so.  But the court doesn't have to determine that beyond all doubt.  No one monitors each exhibit 24 hours a day.  If there is a serious breach, the court may be asked to have it declared inadmissible.  But not all breaches result in the evidence being declared inadmissible.

If law enforcement is unable to demonstrate who had custody of the evidence for some period, the accused can apply to the court to have the evidence excluded.  But if the application is rejected and, therefore, admitted on the basis of credible testimony to establish the chain of custody, the evidence is heard by the jury.  Discrepancies can be relevant in assessing the weight to be given to it, but the evidence is still admitted.

[Martin Weidmann]

It just goes to weight.  There is no way that you can conclude that the gun with the officers' initials was anything other than Oswald's revolver.  Even if you think that there is a scintilla of doubt about it, the only other conclusion would be that there was an enormous conspiracy to falsify evidence.  The possibility that it was not the gun retrieved from Oswald and was innocently and unintentionally replaced by another gun that just so happened to have fired shells that other officers said they picked up at the Tippit murder scene is a non-starter.
I did not say that Oswald identified the revolver CE143 as belonging to him.  The officers did that. 

I said that Oswald admitted to carrying a revolver and I was suggesting that you were proposing that there was a conspiracy to "then trick several officers into identifying it as the gun that Oswald admitted he was carrying."

There is no way that you can conclude that the gun with the officers' initials was anything other than Oswald's revolver.

I would agree with you if the chain of custody was solid.

Even if you think that there is a scintilla of doubt about it, the only other conclusion would be that there was an enormous conspiracy to falsify evidence.

You watch too many movies, I think.. All it would have taken was one person to replace the revolver they took from Oswald with the one that was used to kill Tippit.

The possibility that it was not the gun retrieved from Oswald and was innocently and unintentionally replaced by another gun that just so happened to have fired shells that other officers said they picked up at the Tippit murder scene is a non-starter.


If the revolver was indeed replaced, it was not done innocently or unintentionally.

I did not say that Oswald identified the revolver CE143 as belonging to him.  The officers did that. 

No they didn't. Carroll could not say who he took the revolver from and Hill testified that Carroll had told him it was Oswald's gun. Neither Carroll or Hill knew if it was Oswald's revolver or not!

I said that Oswald admitted to carrying a revolver and I was suggesting that you were proposing that there was a conspiracy to "then trick several officers into identifying it as the gun that Oswald admitted he was carrying."

You can call it whatever you want, but the bottom line is that no officer actually saw and initialed that revolver until several hours after Oswald's arrest when Hill showed up at the personnel room with a revolver and told the officers that it was Oswald's. Hill may well have believed that what he said was true, but he really had no way of knowing that for sure, as he merely accepted Carroll's word for it.

None of those officers had to have been part of a conspiracy, if there was one. They were merely acting in good faith but that doesn't mean they were doing the right thing.