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

[Bill Chapman]

I’m not a CTer, but I would defend Oswald by having him testify that he found and rifle on the sixth floor and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. Then, 45 minutes later, while out for a walk, he saw a police officer had been shot, found a gun laying on the ground and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. He intended to turn the gun over to the police so he put it in his pocket but then forgot about it.

He tried to turn the pistol over to another dumb cop in the TT.

[John Iacoletti]

I’m not a CTer, but I would defend Oswald by having him testify that he found and rifle on the sixth floor and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. Then, 45 minutes later, while out for a walk, he saw a police officer had been shot, found a gun laying on the ground and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. He intended to turn the gun over to the police so he put it in his pocket but then forgot about it.

No need, since they wouldn’t be able to actually demonstrate that he ever touched either weapon or had one of them in his pocket.

[Bill Chapman]

I’m not a CTer, but I would defend Oswald by having him testify that he found and rifle on the sixth floor and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. Then, 45 minutes later, while out for a walk, he saw a police officer had been shot, found a gun laying on the ground and picked it up. He wished he didn’t do that. He intended to turn the gun over to the police so he put it in his pocket but then forgot about it.

I would advise Oswald to make a deal to avoid the chair
That would make him a live nobody instead of a dead one.

[Allan Fritzke]

I would demand more than just physical evidence of the gun.  First and foremost, I would demand x-rays and autopsy photos to be produced in full and call my own expert scientists in the field to examine it.  All of that was hidden from public and most of it still is - if it hasn't been shredded.    I would dispute different cartridge casings at the scene and make a statement that a premeditated assassin would know exactly what armor and lead he is using and select the rounds carefully - not a mismatch.    If you like accuracy of Remington or Winchester, you stick with it!

I would put him on the stand.

I would also try to expose what ties he had already in the past with the CIA, possibly their special affairs staff (SAS).   I am sure he knew already that he couldn't win when he was arrested in the theater.   At best, he would have to incriminate the others that have made him into the lone assassin so he wouldn't hang alone.  That was only defense!    I don't believe that would have been hard to do.  He already said he was a patsy and innocent.   Given the opportunity (only 24 years old), he would have song like a songbird.  Being a patsy is slightly different than being framed. It implies that someone else has knowledge besides you and was working with you.  You were not acting alone!

First you need to understand his situation and concoct a plausible story and links no one wants to prove.  A matter of national interest if there are ties.  It was best just to remove him.  He looked like a talker when he came in front of the camera!   

Prior to the assassination setup, LHO might have even being coerced into believing he was some sort of double agent, working to gain foreign country access,  to gain him spy status and work as a mole in a faraway land.  (I advance this theory because he could have thought himself to be a Jason Bourne type figure and going deep undercover - he may have been mentally taxed and suffered from delusions of grandeur!) 

He would defect to Russia, learn Russia, maybe defect to Cuba, learn Cuban - whatever they wanted him to do.   If he thought he was deep undercover and his handlers were in on it,  his links from SAS or CIA  are unlinkable and won't be uncovered.   That would be a situation suggesting redaction of sensitive sources, a matter of national security and conspiracy would ensue if you were allowed to go down that path.   As a defense lawyer, that is best you could hope for operating against an unaccountable CIA or FBI organization that would be trying to hide its activities.

How did he manage to defect and then easily gain his passport back?   Then, just 18 months later, he decided to go to Mexico City to try to gain a Visa to go to another Communist country Cuba?  Those are serious questions.  First Russia, get rid of passport, get it back, then go to Cuba to do what exactly?      As a defense lawyer,  I would play it to the hilt that he was innocently following a scheme laid out by his handlers and that he had no hope of escaping what they required of him in his duty as a great countryman and patriot.   If he had ties, he would have to reveal his story as much as he felt safe to do and put huge amounts of pressure on the deep state.  Great argument to use. Best he ends up dead, no loose ends and the story and history is written around and about him without his input!   

I would also question what his purpose was to go to the theater and if he always carries a handgun.   Make it clear, that if you were the killer of the POTUS you wouldn't just hang around!   Since we know he owned a handgun, did he always carry a concealed weapon?  Call independent witnesses in the theater to verify that he had a handgun when he was arrested and someone took it in as evidence.    After leaving work early, ask if he did go back to his house, change clothes and then walk back to a theater.   "Why did you go to theater and what was your purpose to change clothes?"  "How many handguns do you have in your house?"  Is or are they automatics?   Do you own any others such as .22 revolver?   He surely must have been smart enough to know that early on he was a suspect or involved - otherwise you wouldn't arm yourself, shoot a policeman and then disappear into a theater after walking from your house.   Did someone tell him to go there and if so who did and what was motive?   Did he pay or sneak in?  Good questions someone to determine a second angle to the story.

Why carry a handgun to the theater?  Is that common practice in the day - especially if you claim you are innocent and a patsy.   Ask him to retrace his steps on the day.   Confirm his presence by asking where he was when the shooting take place?   Did he have any witnesses that can verify it?  Did he go home?  Did he walk?  Did anyone give him a ride?  Important questions to see if he can answer or just avoid answering and take the fifth.

I would also question him on his mental cognizance?  I would ask if he was trusted to have any security clearance while in the military?   At what level was he granted clearance?   Ask him if he remembers how many times he was court-martialed and discuss?  Open up his military record and examine it. 

A pre-planned self prepared assassination plan takes time and effort and is not happenstance when CIA and FBI have watched him for weeks/months and have a file on him.   Was he aware of the motorcade route and when did he first learn the President was coming past the TSBD where he was working?  Did he own a handgun or a rifle?  Ask him to describe the rifle or admit/deny ownership of the Carcano?     He may well deny owning any gun.  Or if upon examining of the evidence, presented against him, ask for an explanation of using an alias signature in the purchase.     Have him explain in his own words why he thinks he was a patsy?
 
I also would question if he remembers what he ate at lunch that day or where he ate it?   Any witnesses?   Did he eating a chicken sandwich?  Did he bring a lunch from home and did he pack it himself?  Confirm which floors he worked on and if he was on the floor where the shots purportedly came from that day.

I would also use witnesses that said the shots were fired in quick succession and  also witnesses that said it came from the fence and present that.  If everyone ran to the grassy knoll, I would present as many witnesses that backed that statement up as possible of where they thought the shots came from.   That is an effective case to put forward as it suggests no one knows exactly where shots came from and he is the patsy.

It is also worth explaining the physical limitations of a bolt action rifle mounted with a scope and having to reload between shots.  It is also necessary to point out that at age 17, he was considered a marine sharpshooter (score 212) and he was considered only a marksman 2 1/2 years later in 1959 (score 191).     Uncertainty should be drawn whether or not that markmanship included moving targets or a stationary one.  I would also ask if he attended shooting ranges regularly to keep up his marksmanship and how many times he did it in the last 4 years.   He should also be asked if he was an avid hunter and if he had a gun when he had sighted in and used it.  Did you maintain practice in Russia and in the last 18 months that you came back from there?   Are they any witnesses that saw you practice with the Carcano?   We can't expect to believe that someone can hit a target at 10 mph at least twice without carefully setting scope and gun - a topnotch marksman without practice!   I would also take the gun in question and shoot some rounds at a target and see if it is capable of firing accurate rounds at a bullseye.   If it can't repeat well or off target, how can this be the weapon?  That is a logical argument to launch to defend yourself and needs to be proved.

I would also bring an old injury out and discuss which hand he writes with?   Also which shoulder he shoots from, left or right.  He  was court-martialed 3 times, once for shooting himself in the elbow with a .22 while on duty.  Which elbow was it and did he suffer bone injury or did the bullet pass through without incident.  Is it stiff?  That may been able to be used to support a slow response or incapacity if injured of firing rapidly.   (That is same sort of argument used by OJ Simpson when he couldn't get the bloody glove to fit his hand in the court when presented with it.  It worked for him!)

Of course as a lawyer, you would never have been allowed access to FBI Director Hoover's memo comment.   If you would have, it would have been bitter/sweet evidence to use to cast serious doubt of the allegations against your client!

https://www.newsweek.com/jfk-assassination-files-hoover-wanted-public-convinced-oswald-was-real-694324

"The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin," Hoover said in the 1963 memo.

I think I have enough for a book, anyone want to buy it!!!!!!
 
   

[Tom Scully]

What follows, if not ignored, will be dismissed as a few separate coincidences. Below is a quote of my 2019 post in this thread, followed by a linked, partial quote of a Maryferrell.org page in the cryptonym section about GUIDE-223.

The central figure in this rather lengthy collection of words is Edwin M. "Squirrel" Ashcraft, chief of CIA DCD (Domestic Contacts Division) in 1963 - 64.
Ashcraft was a Princeton classmate of George Bouhe's sister's husband, the two attending annual reunions into the 1970s,

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/238376179/edwin-maurice-ashcraft
Edwin Maurice Ashcraft III
Died 18 January, 1981

...the boss of Moore in Dallas and of William Burke and Lloyd Ray in NOLA. Ashcraft had to have had intimate, realtime knowledge of Webster and Oswald, as well as of Frederick Merrill, the handler at Dept. of State of Ruth Paine.

George Bouhe died in Plainfield, NJ, the home of his sister and her husband, Ashcraft's classmate at Princeton.

Merrill's father and Webster's boss, Henry James Rand, were the two sons of the  highest executives of the Remington Rand Corp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rand_Jr.

WF Merrill :
Business: Rand in Command - TIME
Time Magazine
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,752940,00.html
July 27, 1931
In command of Remington Rand, Inc. there were until last week two outstanding figures. Now there is but one.

The remaining figure is that of James Henry Rand Jr., 44, chairman and president of the company. Soon after he graduated from Harvard in 1908 he went into the business of making business simpler. One of the first companies he worked for was his father's Rand Co., Inc., producer of card index systems. In 1915 he and his father disagreed.In 1927 James H. Rand Jr. put through his biggest deal of ... One possibility was that, although Remington Rand's profits have dwindled lately, President Merrill ...

Reagan and the architect of he 1980 October Surprise were both born in Tampico, IL, pop. 750, knew each other as boys, Hugh Downs married Shaheen's sister, Hugh's partner, Barbara Walters, acted as a go between with Shaheens arms dealer associates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shaheen
John Shaheen - Wikipedia
[1] Career Prior to World War II, Shaheen worked in publicity in Chicago. [2] During World War II Shaheen was at the Office of Strategic Services, and was awarded the Silver Star and Legion of Merit. [3] At OSS he was "chief of OSS Special Projects" and head of the Reports Declassification

We live in a society in which John Connally's children cannot be named in his wikipedia page, and the FBI could not connect the wife of its former agent, IB Hale, or his wife who sent Oswald to Leslie Welding, as Connally's deceased daughter, Kathleen's in-laws. Kathleen's spouse, Bobby Hale
and his brother were observed breaking into the FBI 1962 stake-out of Judith Campbell's L.A. apartment.

If the Warren Report were a used car..... and before the test drive, you insisted on a good long look under the hood...

Your Honor, an establishment rule: Other wikipedia bios of Texas Governors  (and to some extent, Navy Secretaries...) are permitted to name and to discuss their children!

I prefer to live in a world in which the establishment exerts less control. How about you?
Wikipedia obviously does not censor the bio article of Connally's immediate predecessor.:

Connally's successor as Navy Secretary is afforded a wider wikipedia "leash" but not when the subject is the matter of Korth's daughter
going out the same way as Kathleen Connally Hale (and George DeM, too!).... self inflicted 20 gauge! (See 1969 article image @ bottom of post) Verita Korth death certificate indicates no autopsy was performed and time of coroner inquest is 2-1/2 hours after time of death!
So much for any thorough investigation!

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYBY-7RW?i=258&cc=1983324


Mr. RANKIN. Did this friend and other Russian friends visit you at Mercedes Street?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes. When we lived at Fort Worth we became acquainted with Peter Gregory, he is a Russian, he lives in Fort Worth and through him we became acquainted with others.
Mr. RANKIN. Will you tell us insofar as you recall, the friends that you knew in Fort Worth?
Mrs. OSWALD. Our first acquaintance was Gregory. Through him I met Gali Clark, Mrs. Elena Hall. That is all in Fort Worth. And then we met George Bouhe in Dallas, and Anna Meller, and Anna Ray and Katya Ford.
Mr. RANKIN. By your answer do you mean that some of those people you met in Dallas and some in Fort Worth?.....


The answer to the question of whether George Bouhe's wife's husband Tilbury O. Freeman  was in direct contact (Freeman's roommate Burt Seay likely knew Squirrel Ashcraft well, in 1928) with CIA's Chief of Domestic Contacts, Edwin Squirrel Ashcraft, may lie in the keepsakes or memories of this man, last interviewed in late 2018!:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/948198/verita_korth_amarillo_globe_2_may_1969/

Joe Kennedy, Jrs' fatal flight was in this "operation" of Rand, Shaheen, and McGraw,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite

https://web.archive.org/web/20140419184429/https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,10365.msg304167.html

https://jfkfacts.org/curtis-lemay-to-jfk-during-the-cuban-missile-crisis/#comment-441710

“Info on Special Ops Wanted Bruce McCaw writes: My father, Lt. Col. John Elroy McCaw, worked on OSS Special Projects known as operations Aphrodite, Simmons, and Javaman. He worked with OSSers John Shaheen and Jim Rand and is particularly interested in Javaman, which called for blowing up the tunnel…”

Tampico IL. May 1,1951 “John M. Shaheen And Eastern Young Lady Wed…. while H James Rand of Cleveland, Ohio was best man.”

[quote ]https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=GUIDE-223&search=ashcraft%20parkland
....
 104-10181-10128: SUBJECT: ROBERT EDWARD WEBSTER, PROJECT LONGSTRIDE

One of the coordinating officers who played a role in this decision to prevent Johnson from becoming a CIA officer in 1958, still known only to us as SR/COP/FI, coordinated with East-West Contacts officer Frederick Merrill at the State Department during the defection of Robert Webster during 1959. "About 21 September 1959 Mr. (Robert) Crowley of OOCD informed me that REDACTED, Chief East West Contacts OO had received word that Mr. (Frederick) Merrill, East West Contacts State Department, that inquiry was being made by Rand Corporation of State Department to determine the whereabouts of Mr. Webster who had departed his office without notice to the parent company...to the best of our knowledge (Webster was not carrying out a CIA clandestine task and) Mr. Webster had not been briefed by and was unknown to either DDP or OO offices."

104-10182-10065: DEBRIEFING OF ROBERT EDWARD WEBSTER.

4/16/63 report: Ned Bennett is listed on the bottom as one of the participants in the debriefing of Webster in 1962. In 1967, Bennett was the one who "pulled together" the memo on "countering criticism of the Warren Report" and offered a game plan on how to discredit these researchers. 104-10404-10376, p. 2 (handwritten portion).

104-10408-10347: MFR: LEE HARVEY OSWALD FBI REQUESTS POLYGRAPH OF ALVARADO

12/3/63 memo by C/CI-SIG Birch O'Neal re polygraph of Gilberto Alvarado. Margainalia, when looked in a mirror, states "Ask Ashcraft - OO on Oswald" (bleed-through on upper right corner of the 12/3/63 Alvarado document). One analysis is that it was appropriate to ask E.M. Ashcraft, chief of the Domestic Contact Division - also known as Office of Operations or OO - about Oswald, because if anyone knew about Oswald, Ashcraft was in the right place as chief of Domestic Contact Division. Joan Mellen's analysis: "This is how it might have worked. Ashcraft would have called Thomas Casasin or Richard L. Winch or Donald E. Poole at SR6. This person in turn would have talked to Rudy Balaban (SR6 Research). Balaban, code name “Valentino,” would have consulted with Reed, who then called OS, the Office of Security, requesting permission to debrief Oswald. OS would pass the request on to Personnel Security Division, who would give a green light or a red light. On occasion Balaban and Reed would do debriefings together." Mellen also states: "This document was perused by historian, John Newman. Newman looked at a signature on the upper right hand corner, a signature that apparently had leaked off or burned off from another document, because it’s in reverse, as if it were viewed through a mirror. Newman concluded that the signature belonged to “Andy Anderson” because “00 Oswald” was written beneath it. The 00 Oswald were clear, but the signature was not that of Andy Anderson! This signature, revealing who ordered the debriefing of Oswald, in fact belongs to one E. M. Ashcraft, Chief of the Contact Division. He and Robert Crowley, OSB/CI (Domestic Contacts Division, Operational Support Branch, Counter Intelligence), were on the same level." For Newman's analysis, see 104-10331-10237. [/quote ]