If I Had Planned The Conspiracy ...

[John Iacoletti]

If CTers would stay in their lane and stop trying to play Oswald Defense Counsel, they would look less silly.

You would look less silly if you would stay in your lane and stop playing prosecuting counsel. And just deeming unathenticatable evidence to be authentic by assumption.

[John Iacoletti]

The issue at trial would not be whether Oswald was the lone assassin but whether he fired at JFK from the 6th floor of the TSBD. If he did, he was guilty regardless of who else may have fired.

That's a fair point, but this isn't a trial of Oswald.  We're actually interested in what happened.

Stringing together speculative conspiracy factoids is not a defense outside of forums such as this. That's what CTers never seem to understand. They seem to think a trial of Oswald would have looked like a mini-trial of 875 conspiracy factoids and 12 different woulda coulda conspiracy theories. No.

And what the LN-faithful never understand is that stringing together speculative LN mythology does not demonstrate who killed Kennedy.

[John Iacoletti]

From the existing documentation, it can reasonably be inferred that Davenport showed up at the Homicide office with the bullet and button Mollenhoff  had removed from Tippit's body. This shortly after Hill gave the revolver to Baker. Fritz told Davenport to take the spent bullet and button to the ID bureau, then slew two birds with one stone by giving Davenport the gun and cartridges to take as well. 

An inference isn't a chain of custody.

[John Iacoletti]

As usual you're missing the point, in the case of the revolver.

Oswald was arrested while carrying the revolver.
Oswald admitted to carrying the revolver.
Oswald ordered the revolver.
The revolver in evidence is the exact same revolver that he purchased.
Oswald being in a bind about the rifle being mail order, simply made up a fictitious Fort Worth origin for the revolver.

Claims aren't evidence.

Besides as I said yesterday, why swap a revolver that is extremely difficult to match the expended bullets with another revolver that is extremely difficult to match the expended bullets, that only makes sense in the Bizarro World of CT's.

This conspiracy that I just made up in my head wouldn't do something like this.  Therefore there was no conspiracy.  Therefore Oswald did it.

[Mitch Todd]

And even if the chain of custody is a mess, that does not itself actually invalidate item evidence.

As the chain of custody is one of the main ways to authenticate a piece of evidence. Without authentication, how can you still consider an item valid evidence?

The problem is, I keep seeing people trying to use "authentication" as some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card. The MO for this is to move goalposts or otherwise demand an unreasonable level of proof, proclaim the evidence to be "unauthenticated," then leap headlong the conclusion that the item in evidence must then be fabricated or otherwise invalid. Reliance on such is just wishful thinking: lack of formal authentication does not in itself invalidate evidence.


 

[Dan O'meara]

You're starting to sound like a Harvey & Lee fan. Let us hope not.

What a truly bizarre thing to say.

To repeat for the last time: We don't know if any evidence has a fatally defective chain of custody until the prosecution attempts to introduce it into evidence, by which time the prosecution will have assembled what it believes to be an adequate chain. You can't simply look at documents or what one witness said to the WC and declare there is a defective chain of custody. Defects have to rise to the level of creating genuine doubt that what is offered into evidence is not what was taken into evidence at the time or has otherwise been altered.

I've asked you to name a single piece of evidence in the JFK case, other than the rifle, that doesn't have a defective chain of custody.
You claim to know all about this case, so should be familiar with the various chains of custody relating to this case.
If you do genuinely know about this case you'll know that there isn't a single piece of relevant evidence that doesn't have a defective chain of custody.
It was kind of a trick question.

So you've side-stepped the issue with this statement:

"We don't know if any evidence has a fatally defective chain of custody until the prosecution attempts to introduce it into evidence, by which time the prosecution will have assembled what it believes to be an adequate chain."

Do you stand by this statement as far as the JFK case is concerned?
As I understand it you are a lawyer whereas I have zero experience and little knowledge of the Justice System and its particulars but I don't accept this statement.
For instance, it is a fact that CE399 has a defective chain of custody.

This was a sudden, unanticipated, chaotic event. It is not surprising that documents and memories were all over the map. Again, it always seems to me the CTers have a very artificial, non-real-world perspective, as though law enforcement in these circumstances should have been operating with one eye on how everything might look to CTers with CT microscopes 10, 30 and 60 years later. The fact that a defense attorney might be able to poke holes (raise doubts) about an item of evidence does not mean there is a fatal defect in the chain of evidence.

"This was a sudden, unanticipated, chaotic event."
This sounds like a lot of murders.
I don't think we need to accuse law enforcement of forgetting the basics in all the 'chaos'.
We don't need to imagine they forgot what a chain of custody was.
We should remember that this was the most important case that any of these men had ever worked on and that they were making their very best effort.

"The fact that a defense attorney might be able to poke holes (raise doubts) about an item of evidence does not mean there is a fatal defect in the chain of evidence."

You don't really seem to understand what's going on here, which is surprising considering your lawyerly claims.
Nobody is talking about inventing a fatal defect in the chain of evidence by poking holes about an item of evidence (not being a lawyer I'm unfamiliar with this type of jargon)
The doubts about an item of evidence are being raised BECAUSE the chain of custody is defective!

The chain of custody for every single piece of evidence (other than the rifle) in the JFK case is defective.
What do you think of them apples?

[Martin Weidmann]

The problem is, I keep seeing people trying to use "authentication" as some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card. The MO for this is to move goalposts or otherwise demand an unreasonable level of proof, proclaim the evidence to be "unauthenticated," then leap headlong the conclusion that the item in evidence must then be fabricated or otherwise invalid. Reliance on such is just wishful thinking: lack of formal authentication does not in itself invalidate evidence.

I keep seeing people trying to use "authentication" as some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card.

Remarkable! Evidence is authentic or it isn't. There is nothing inbetween.

 Asking for authentication isn't a "Get out of jail free" thing, it's about ensuring that a piece of evidence is authentic and thus valid to support a claim of guilt!


The MO for this is to move goalposts or otherwise demand an unreasonable level of proof,

lack of formal authentication does not in itself invalidate evidence.

Asking for authenticated evidence is an unreasonable level of proof? Really? So, are we supposed to accept any evidence regardless if it's authentic or not?