Oh, dear, what to do with folks like Martin?
Let's see, I am just like Trump, an "LN clown" who is "afraid" to reply to Martin's posts, and a purveyor of "an avalanche of arrogant word salad posts," "childish insults," "pathetic fictional dialogue" and "self-serving BS posts." Well, perhaps.
I think it would be fair to say I've gotten under Martin's skin, yes?
I actually started this narrowly focused thread in a sincere effort to provide a retired lawyer's perspective on how a chain of custody works, what it means for a witness to identify an item of evidence, and why the CT arguments about CE 399 (strictly in relation to the chain of custody) are flawed. I really didn't picture this thread generating any hysteria.
Martin immediately went off on the tangent that I was completely misguided because the Oswald defense would have not objected to the admission of CE 399 at all. I responded to each of his posts at considerable length. By his second post, I was "pathetic" and the purveyor of "self-serving BS," "the diehard LN cult manuscript," and "assumptions, cherry-picked evidence and a massive subjective bias." Later, I was accused of "massively contradicting myself," of possessing an "arrogant big head" and of posting a "word salad" unworthy of a response.
I warned Martin early in our relationship, when he questioned whether I was a lawyer at all, that he was dealing with a master of snarkiness and that if he chose to play this game he was going find out what master-level snarkiness looks like. He didn't take the hint.
Look, people, this is all silliness. Do you not understand that? The verdict of history on the JFKA is never going to change. CTers and LNers live in different realities, simple as that. No minds are ever going to be changed. At some level, who the hell cares who whacked JFK in 1963 anyway? Playing with the issues is kind of fun in the same way jigsaw puzzles (or perhaps chess) are fun, and that's about it. It's mental exercise, but it isn't going anywhere. If you're in love with your theory, go for it - but recognize that you're just playing around with ideas and that others, including LNers, are equally in love with their theories. If you become the functional equivalent of a religious fundamentalist about it, all the fun goes poof.
The problem with Martin and those like him is that they don't get the joke. They become enraged when they aren't taken as seriously as they think they should be taken. NONE OF IT IS SERIOUS, that's the joke. There are even LNers who don't get the joke. Do you think I'm serious with my Caped Factoid Buster nonsense? With assigning folks like Martin to some imaginary bin of those who are Not Worth My Time? Good Lord. On every forum on which I've ever participated - even golf and motorcycle forums - I've found it amusing to create some over-the-top persona and turn him loose. If he makes you come unglued, that's your problem and frankly a source of mirth for me until it reaches the level of upsetting someone to the extent it seems to have done with Martin. If you can't deal with master-level snarkiness, don't provoke me by playing that game; if you can, bring it - the wittier the better!
That being said, I shall herewith release Martin and his compadres from the imaginary Not Worth My Time bin and, if they say anything worthwhile (unlikely, but it could happen! 
) pledge myself to respond in a restrained and statesmanlike manner worthy of my Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary training.
Or maybe not.
Well, it didn't take you very long to stop ignoring me.
Look, people, this is all silliness. Do you not understand that? The verdict of history on the JFKA is never going to change. CTers and LNers live in different realities, simple as that. No minds are ever going to be changed. And there is the classic LN claim about the "verdict of history" which is typically used when arguments fail to persuade.
At some level, who the hell cares who whacked JFK in 1963 anyway?At any level, I, for one, do not care if Oswald did it alone or if there was a conspiracy. I have said so many times already. It's an historical event and nothing we can do or say now will alter that. As far as I'm concerned there isn't much point in trying to determine who was behind it or how it was done, if it was a conspiracy. Any evidence there might have been pointing to a conspiracy has disappeared a long time ago and most of the people involved are already dead or will soon be. As far as Oswald is concerned, if he did it alone, so be it. All I am really interested in is finding out if the evidence actually supports the "Oswald was the lone gunman" claim made by the WC.
The problem with Martin and those like him is that they don't get the joke. They become enraged when they aren't taken as seriously as they think they should be taken. NONE OF IT IS SERIOUS, that's the joke. Hilarious. Just because I have a different opinion than you, you jump to this pathetic conclusion. You sound like a school bully who pushes people around and when he gets confronted about it, he says "hey, it's just a joke. It's not serious"!
So, let's get back to the topic of this thread.
In an earlier post you asked what sense it made to call Odum as a witness, because the chain of custody would be determined by Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen, Rowley, Todd and Frazier. Then you make the argument that nobody knows what Tomlinson "had been saying" and that the FBI documents (CE 2011 and the Airtel) could well be correct. You assume implicitly that what Tomlinson said to Odum would satisfy the identification requirement, but you ignore completely the possibility that Odum never talked with Tomlinson and Wright in the first place. Tomlinson said in his deposition that he was shown a bullet once, in late November 1963, by SAC Shanklin. He said the same thing to Marcus in 1966. You then downplay what Wright told Thompson in 1967 by calling what he said "rather bizarre" and you make the speculative claim that
"It sounds as though what he said to Odum is similar to what Tomlinson said". I'm not sure where you get that from, but it sounds like wishful thinking to me.
Obviously, this is all theory, because if Oswald had lived and there was a trial, CE 2011 and the Airtel, would likely not even exist. Tomlinson and Wright would simply be called as a witness by either the prosecution or the defense, depending on what they would say under oath. Having said that, in this hypothetical scenario, Odum would be a crucial witness, because if he did indeed not have CE399 and did not show it to Tomlinson and Wright, it would completely destroy the credibility of CE2011.
As for Tomlinson and Wright, you said in another post;
If Tomlinson and Wright had both testified "No way is that it, the bullet I saw was a distinctly pointy-headed slug with a little yellow happy face on the side that we laughed about at the time" - well, yes, that would kill the chain of custody of CE 399.
If they had both testified "Well, obviously, I can't say that's the exact bullet because I didn't pay that much attention at the time and I don't know the full provenance of this CE 399, but there is nothing about CE 399 that would cause me to say it isn't the bullet" - then, indeed, by the time Johnsen, Rowley, Todd and Frazier had testified the chain of custody would have been satisfactory even if Johnsen and Rowley had testified the same way.
The test for admission is whether, when all is said and done, there is a likelihood the bullet being offered into evidence is the one found by Tomlinson at Parkland. It is not some "Gotcha!" test where evidence is kept out because every witness isn't able to provide an exact identification.
This is exactly the reason why your imaginary testimony by Tomlinson depends on him saying "it looks like the same bullet, but there is no way I can be sure". And once again you speculate that CE 2011 and the Airtel could well be correct.
The reason why I said that I am not convinced that the defense would object to CE 399 being entered into evidence is that fighting the admissibility in the knowledge that excluding evidence because of a weak chain of custody is extremely rare and may give that piece of evidence more credibility than it deserves. It would of course depend on what Tomlinson and Wright would say, but if their testimony benefits the defense they may prefer to destroy CE399 and the prosecution's case at trial, in much the same way as Johnny Cochran used the "gloves don't fit" incident.
The real question that should be asked, but somehow never is, is why do we have to speculate about what Tomlinson and Wright may have said. Why do we only have an FBI document, written by an unidentified officer, and an airtel that makes the "it looks like the same bullet" claim. This is a crucial piece of evidence, so why not have Tomlinson and Wright make an affidavit and eliminate the need for speculation? This alone, IMO, justifies the conclusion that the FBI had an ulterior motive for dealing with this matter in an airtel and an unsigned document (CE 2011).
