Anyway, I figure that Michaelis knows what's what regarding this issue more than you or I could.
You can figure that as much as you like but as Michaelis wasn't even working for Seaport (he was a manager for Merchanteers Inc who supervised Seaport Trading) when the order was processed, I wouldn't be so sure about his level of intimate knowledge of their procedures as you want to be. In any event, your comment is nothing more than a weak and flawed "because he said so" appeal to authority.
Merchanteers operated J.G. Rose's mail-order operations, which operated under it's own name and also DBA Seaport Traders. Michaelis was the office manager for the whole shebang; if anyone knew how Seaport Traders' workflow and documentation operated, it was Michaelis.
inform the shipper that REA had received the COD money and forwarded it to the shipper
And how do you think they forwarded the money? Did they send somebody from Dallas to California with the cash perhaps?
I already said it: "...Seaport Trader's probably did enough business with REA that they had an active account. I'm willing to bet that the draft was simply credited to ST's REA account, and whatever money was paid to REA was the balance of the account after it had been settled for the week/fortnight/month."
Seaport Traders' possession of the completed document is demonstration that the item had indeed been paid for by the consignee.
Really? So, you claim that somehow the invoice was returned to Seaport in addition to the COD money?
No. I claimed that the "Brief of information for COD Shipment," (Michaelis Ex 5/DL-30) was returned. Michaelis Ex. 2/DL-28 and Ex. 3/DL-27 are the copies of the invoice that Seaport Traders kept for reference.
So, you get you "knowledge" from an on line dictionary? Wow! By it self what the dictionary says is true, but the problem here is that there is no witness who could identify the revolver by an easily identifiable feature like the serial number, because nobody really saw the revolver up close until Hill produced it at the police station. So, what you would be left with is the identification by initials inscribed in the item by the officer who collected it. This of course is again a massive problem because, until Hill produced the revolver at the lunchroom of the police station some two hours after Oswald was arrested, nobody had placed any initials on it. And, if memory serves, some of the initials on the revolver are from officers who actually never handled the revolver at all.
I've been getting my information from people who've dealt with these sorts of issues, one of whom pointed me to the SCSC decision I put up in another post. The links I've posted are there as a reference, so you don't just have to take my work for it. By contrast, you've yet to offer us anything other than your own unsupported assertions.
This kinda brings you back to square one; a chain of custody exists to prevent and/or eliminate, as much as possible, the possibility of tampering with the evidence. Due to the two hour gap between Oswald's arrest and the initialing of the revolver at the police station's lunchroom nobody has any way of knowing if the revolver Hill produced was indeed the same one as the one taken from Oswald at the Texas Theater.
You destroy your own argument as a revolver is in fact a piece of fungible evidence as it can be substituted!
Your quotes are ok. They just work against you.
So far so good. It would be fair to conclude that what Hill received was in fact the revolver taken from Oswald
But then, this happened;
Which is exactly where the problem lies; None of the officers who initialed the revolver Hill gave them had any way of knowing that this was in fact the revolver taken from Oswald. All they knew is that Hill told them it was, but even Hill had no evidence for that!
I have already explained how wrong you are. I can't explain it any better, but I'll give it one more try by asking you a simple question;
We agree that Hill took possession of the revolver taken from Oswald at the Texas Theater. And we also agree that the DPD officers initialled the revolver now in evidence some two hours later in the DPD lunchroom after Hill showed the weapon to them.
So, here is the question; How do we know with any kind of certainty that the revolver initialed by the DPD officers is in fact the same revolver as the one taken from Oswald some two hours earlier?
And, when you answer bare in mind that a chain of custody authentication of evidence just about always comes up when the word of a law enforcement officer about that evidence is questioned or challenged.
So, please try to answer the question with something else than "because Hill told us so"! Can you do that?
That being said, the problem is that you have yet to show that there is a bad light on the investigation here.
Classic LN reversed burden of proof BS. The claim is that the revolver is authentic. That needs to be proven!
The best you can do is insinuate that Hill might have done something with the weapon taken from Oswald, but you have no evidence whatsoever to support the supposition.
I do not insinuate anything nor do I need evidence. The law says that evidence has to be authenticated in order to prevent tampering by law enforcement (which, and this might come as a shock to you, does indeed happen from time to time). One of the ways to do so is by producing a sound chain of custody!
Without such evidence, you instead try to assert some strict standard behavior regarding chain of possession, but a little digging appears to show that no such standard actually exist.
Actually what seems not to exist is an ability on your part to understand what is written.
On the other side of the thread fork, I think I'm now getting you to understanding that the evidence rules for something like the revolver aren't as rigorous as you'd previously thought. From what I've been told, in court it would really just be the prosecutor asking Hill, Carroll, and McDonald if they could identify the weapon, and once they did, it would be admitted. Further, I'm informed that attempting to attack the chain of custody on an item considered non-fungible at this point isn't considered a good strategy: "It raises this big flag to the judge, prosecution, and jury, that says 'DESPERATION MOVE.'" Of, course, a desperate defense attorney may have no better choice. So far as criminal law is concerned, without positive evidence that a non-fungible item was altered, replaced, or misplaced, there is no good reason in attempting the argument. And the normal standard of guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt," not "to an epistemological certainty."
That being said, I continue to be mystified by your repeated reference to some lunchroom meeting. Going back through the record, there is no reference to a meeting in a lunchroom, or to Hill going off by himself with the pistol, as you've based your argument on.
What the record presents: MacDonald testified that he grabbed the pistol from Oswald. Carroll testified that he seized the weapon from McDonald's hand during the scuffle, which McDonald's testimony corroborates. Hill and Carroll testified that Carroll gave Hill the pistol. The short rest of the story is that Hill, Carroll, Lyons, and Bentley proceeded to the personnel office to write out reports on the arrest, where they were later joined by Hawkins and McDonald. Hill, Carroll, and Hawkins testified either that they initialed the gun in the personnel office and/or saw someone else do it.
What the record does not present: anything involving a lunchroom, or that the gun was marked in a lunchroom, or that Hill somehow slipped away from everyone at any point between his being given the weapon and the point at which the pistol was marked.
I really have no idea where you got the "lunchroom" from. Hill said
they went "across the hall for a cup of coffee" at some point after finishing the arrest reports (this was probably to the dispatch office, given the floor plan) but neither Hill nor anyone else mentioned a lunchroom. In fact, there was no a lunchroom on the 3rd floor. So how did the lunchroom enter the conversation? And where did the idea that Hill disappeared with the pistol come from? If you look at the testimony, Carroll was with Hill from inside the Texas Theatre through the marking of the revolver. Carroll then is in the presence of the gun the entire time, so he would know it was the same weapon that he seized in the theater, pretty much voiding the argument you keep trying to make.
