Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (25 page)

Chapter 7

THE CASE AGAINST LEE HARVEY OSWALD

LEGAL ASSUMPTION

All the evidence in The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald stipulated as admissible is
authentic
. This admissible evidentiary record is
comprehensive
,
credible
,
sufficient
, and
consistent
to the extent that it precludes reasonable doubt regarding
both
of the following propositions regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:

PROPOSITION ONE

There was one and only one gunman in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and that gunman was neither aided nor abetted by any person or group.

PROPOSITION TWO

Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that killed President John F. Kennedy.

Remember, if reasonable doubt is established for even one of the first 3 statements above, then the conclusion cannot be supported!

Along these lines, I need to make two important points: Reasonable doubt applies to the legal assumption as well; if the legal assumption is invalid, the propositions must fail by
definition
. What is also interesting is that if the
first
proposition is not demonstrated, the case for the
second
proposition
also
begins to fall apart, and the conclusion must fall as well, for reasons we will detail shortly.

Let’s discuss these in turn.

LEGAL ASSUMPTION

All the evidence in The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald stipulated as admissible is authentic. This admissible evidentiary record is comprehensive, credible, sufficient, and consistent to the extent that it precludes reasonable doubt regarding both of the following propositions regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:

Underlying the entire case is the legal framework within which it is analyzed. The United States Constitution refers to the concept of “due” process, and there are numerous protocols which are due. If these protocols are absent and/or violated, they can result in a “not guilty” verdict purely on what someone may refer to as “technicalities,” but in fact are constitutional safeguards designed to make sure that innocent people do not go to jail. Millions of American soldiers have risked their lives in a defense of these “technicalities,” if that’s the word you want to use. But if so, it’s the
wrong
word: at the risk of stating what ought to be obvious, the Constitution isn’t a “technicality,” it’s the
supreme law of the land
. And the officers of government take an oath of office that they will follow that law.

One of the key protocols defining the process that is “due” is known as the
Federal Rules Of Evidence
, and its chief reason for being is to mandate, as close as possible, the satisfaction of the above. Underlying these Federal Rules are, of course, the laws of logic, which inspired not only the Federal Rules but all the other rules of evidence in United States.

With that in mind, we start with the most basic concept of all, that any evidence offered to prove a case be
authentic
. This
authenticity requirement
is a
sine qua non
parameter for any case to go forward.

A key case in this area is
Miller v. Pate
(386 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 785), which was argued before the Supreme Court on January 11, 1967, and decided October 13, 1967.

In that case, a prisoner (Lloyd Miller) was appealing his conviction for murder. Key evidence securing his conviction was underwear shorts covered with reddish-brown stains. The prosecution said that Miller was wearing the shorts when he committed the murder, and referred repeatedly to bloody shorts, as well as a scientific analysis showing that the stains were
blood
. The jury even heard
expert
testimony that the stains were, in fact, blood (
Miller
at 3-4):

Against this background the jury heard the testimony of a chemist for the State Bureau of Crime Identification. The prosecution established his qualifications as an expert, whose “duties include blood identification, grouping and typing both dry and fresh stains,” and who had “made approximately one thousand blood typing analyses while at the State Bureau.” His crucial testimony was as follows:

“I examined and tested ‘People’s Exhibit 3’ to determine the nature of the staining material upon it. The result of the first test was that this material upon the shorts is blood. I made a second examination which disclosed that the blood is of human origin. I made a further examination which disclosed that the blood is of group ‘A.’”

Now, an “expert” said that, and not just any expert, but an expert who had approximately 1000 blood typing analyses to his credit. Experts wouldn’t lie, would they? We certainly would hope not, especially since
false testimony could send an innocent man to his death
.

Because we don’t want to believe that anyone would do anything so malicious and for apparently no good reason, we naturally are more likely to believe the “expert” than the “murderer,” and as a result, this evidence was extremely important in securing the conviction against Miller (
Miller
at 4-5):

The “blood stained shorts” clearly played a vital part in the case for the prosecution. They were an important link in the chain of circumstantial evidence against the petitioner, and, in the context of the revolting crime with which he was charged, their gruesomely emotional impact upon the jury was incalculable.

But then, at a later proceeding, Miller was permitted to have the shorts examined by a different expert, a chemical microanalyst. What was discovered was shocking (
Miller
at 5):

What the microanalyst found cast an extraordinary new light on People’s Exhibit 3.
The reddish-brown stains on the shorts were not blood, but
paint
. . . . The witness said that he had tested threads from each of the 10 reddish-brown stained areas on the shorts, and that he had found that all of them were encrusted with mineral pigments “. . . which one commonly uses in the preparation of paints.”
He found “no traces of human blood.”
. . . It was further established that counsel for the prosecution had known at the time of the trial that the shorts were stained with paint. The prosecutor even admitted that the Canton police had prepared a memorandum attempting to explain “how this exhibit contains all the paint on it.”

Needless to say, this discovery of inauthentic evidence completely obliterated the case of the prosecution (
Miller
at 7; footnotes omitted):

More than 30 years ago this Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment cannot tolerate a state criminal conviction obtained by the knowing use of false evidence.
Mooney v. Holohan
, 294 U.S. 103. There has been no deviation from that established principle.
Napue v. Illinois
, 360 U.S. 264;
Pyle v. Kansas
, 317 U.S. 213; cf.
Alcorta v. Texas
, 355 U.S. 28.
There can be no retreat from that principle here.

Once again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is no isolated phenomenon. Readers interested in this area of law are referred to the following articles available at a county law library near you:

• Conviction on testimony known to prosecution to be perjured as denial of due process. 2 L ed 2d 1575, 3 L ed 2d 1991.
  
• Conviction of criminal offense without evidence as denial of due process of law. 80 ALR2d 1362.
  
• Suppression of evidence by prosecution in criminal case as vitiating conviction. 33 ALR2d 1421.
  

Thus, in the legal assumption I have broken out the authenticity requirement separately, when it could be considered to be a subset of either
admissible
or
credible
evidence. However, as I stated, this is a special category, because if you can show that the prosecution has admitted into evidence that which he could have reasonably been expected to know was inauthentic evidence, it taints all the other evidence that has been admitted, and with the essential cornerstone of the case removed — a belief that the evidence-gathering authority is
itself
credible — the entire structure erected by the prosecution must fall.

If the evidence
is
authentic, we can then move to the other criteria: conclusions must have
admissible
evidence behind them, and we are not entitled to see conclusions as true without an evidentiary base that satisfies the
four
criteria discussed in the earlier chapter.

Now that we have a better understanding of the legal assumptions, let’s move to a discussion of the propositions, and the sources stipulating them.

PROPOSITION ONE

There was one and only one gunman in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and that gunman was neither aided nor abetted by any person or group
.

What is the source of the content of this proposition? We have several sources, two official government investigations, and two notable books which are proponents of the
Lone Assassin Theory
:

Warren Report, Page 21

“The Commission has found
no evidence that anyone assisted Oswald
in planning or carrying out the assassination.”

Warren Report, Page 22

“On the basis of the evidence before the Commission it concludes that Oswald
acted alone
.”

Warren Report, Page 375

“THE EVIDENCE reviewed above identifies Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy and indicates that he
acted alone
in that event. There is no evidence that he had accomplices or that he was involved in any conspiracy directed to the assassination of the President.”

Reclaiming History, Page xxvi

“[A] tenacious, indefatigable, and, in many cases, fraudulent group of Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists have succeeded in transforming a case very simple and obvious at its core — Oswald killed Kennedy and
acted alone
— into its present form of the most complex murder case, by far, in world history.”

Case Closed, Page 413

“None of the early critics created a cogent alternate account to compare to the one set forth of Oswald
acting alone
.”

The record, however, is not completely unanimous. In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) stated
“[t]he committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”
(HR 95) However, the HSCA did so exclusively on the basis of acoustical data (HR 93) which some commentators later (accurately or inaccurately) claimed to be of suspect validity. Consequently, if the validity of the acoustical data was somehow to be impeached, the HSCA also would have concluded that Oswald acted alone since their belief was based on no other evidence.