Three evenly spaced shots, or "bang . . . . . . . . bang - bang"?

[Andrew Mason]

That little film clip demonstrates just how unreliable eye and ear witness testimony is. All those witnesses observed the same event and yet their accounts varied greatly. There was no consensus whatsoever. If all we had to go on was those accounts, we could conclude that most of them got it wrong. We wouldn't know which ones got it wrong and it's possible they could all be wrong but it is not possible they could all be right.

If you think that is a representative sample of the witnesses, you haven't read the evidence. What it doesn't show is that of the many witnesses who, without prompting of any kind, recalled a pattern to the shots, the vast majority distinctly stated that the last two were closer together.

[Andrew Mason]

There's a big difference between identifying a person seen at and/or or leaving from a crime scene and trying to say from which direction and at what frequency three (or more???) shots were fired in a large echo chamber like Dealey Plaza.

D'oh!

Yes there is. Eyewitness IDENTIFICATION evidence is prone to error and much less reliable than observation of the number and pattern of three shots.  This is because it is not just about witness observation.  It is about forming an opinion that the person you saw was the same person seen in the line-up.  The famous case of Adolph Beck in England where several people misidentified Beck as the thief in an offence that occurred 17 years earlier. After serving his lengthy prison sentence, five women wrongly identified Beck again as the culprit in another fraud case and he was found guilty.  However, before sentencing, the real thief was found and, as it turns out, was the same person who had committed the first offence as well. This led to a public inquiry that established strict rules for admitting this kind of evidence.

On the other hand, simple witness observation of salient details (those recalled without prompting by most witnesses) is highly accurate as shown by the studies compiled by Eliz. Loftus in her book Eyewitness Testimony (1979), Harvard Press.

Having said all that, the eyewitness identification evidence that Oswald was the person who shot Officer Tippit is supported by a great deal of other evidence and, therefore, the conclusion that Oswald shot Tippit is reliable.

[Tom Graves]

Yes there is. Eyewitness IDENTIFICATION evidence is prone to error and much less reliable than observation of the number and pattern of three shots.  This is because it is not just about witness observation.  It is about forming an opinion that the person you saw was the same person seen in the line-up.  The famous case of Adolph Beck in England where several people misidentified Beck as the thief in an offence that occurred 17 years earlier. After serving his lengthy prison sentence, five women wrongly identified Beck again as the culprit in another fraud case and he was found guilty.  However, before sentencing, the real thief was found and, as it turns out, was the same person who had committed the first offence as well. This led to a public inquiry that established strict rules for admitting this kind of evidence.

On the other hand, simple witness observation of salient details (those recalled without prompting by most witnesses) is highly accurate as shown by the studies compiled by Eliz. Loftus in her book Eyewitness Testimony (1979), Harvard Press.

Having said all that, the eyewitness identification evidence that Oswald was the person who shot Officer Tippit is supported by a great deal of other evidence and, therefore, the conclusion that Oswald shot Tippit is reliable.

You've got it backwards.

The ten or so eyewitness' identification of the person who murdered Tippit and/or fled the scene was much easier than the hundred or so earwitnesses' trying to remember how many shots were fired at JFK in the echo chamber known as Dealey Plaza, not to mention how those (two? three? four? five? fifteen?) shots were distributed.

D'oh!

[John Corbett]

If you think that is a representative sample of the witnesses, you haven't read the evidence. What it doesn't show is that of the many witnesses who, without prompting of any kind, recalled a pattern to the shots, the vast majority distinctly stated that the last two were closer together.

I don't care if it is representative of the body of witnesses or not. It shows that people can watch the same event and remember it very differently which is why I don't put much faith in witnesses or corroboration of witnesses by other witnesses. People can make the same mistake, even large groups of people. That's why we have a large group of witnesses who said it sounded like the shots came from the GK.

[John Corbett]

There's a big difference between identifying a person seen at and/or leaving a crime scene and trying to say from which direction and at what frequency three (or more???) shots were fired in a large echo chamber like Dealey Plaza.

D'oh!

The important point is that the eyewitnesses who IDed Oswald as Tippit's murderer were corroborated by the fact Oswald had the Tippit murder weapon in his possession when arrested a short time later along with the same two makes of bullets that were recovered from Tippit's body. I'd call that damn good corroboration.

Without that corroboration, you could make a strong argument for reasonable doubt for Oswald in the Tippit murder. A majority of the wrongfully convicted inmates who were later freed by the innocence project by DNA evidence were convicted due to mistaken eyewitness testimony.

"According to the Innocence Project, as of January 2020, 375 convictions had been overturned through DNA exoneration since 1989. Mistaken identification by eyewitnesses played a role in 61% of those wrongful convictions."

[Tom Graves]

The important point is that the eyewitnesses who IDed Oswald as Tippit's murderer were corroborated by the fact Oswald had the Tippit murder weapon in his possession when arrested a short time later along with the same two makes of bullets that were recovered from Tippit's body. I'd call that damn good corroboration.

Without that corroboration, you could make a strong argument for reasonable doubt for Oswald in the Tippit murder. A majority of the wrongfully convicted inmates who were later freed by the innocence project by DNA evidence were convicted due to mistaken eyewitness testimony.

"According to the Innocence Project, as of January 2020, 375 convictions had been overturned through DNA exoneration since 1989. Mistaken identification by eyewitnesses played a role in 61% of those wrongful convictions."

Due to the complicated factors in Dealey Plaza, I think convicting Oswald for the murder of Tippit on eyewitness testimony alone would have been easier than "convicting" him (or any other bad guy) for having fired, from the Sniper's Nest, a missing-everything shot at JFK at hypothetical Z-124 (i.e., half-a-second before Zapruder resumed filming at Z-133), which Roselle and Searce have shown was very probably the case.

https://d7922adf-f499-4a26-96d4-8ab2d521fa35.usrfiles.com/ugd/d7922a_e280e26982b44f2c97c6e6e27026e385.pdf

[Benjamin Cole]

Most earwitnesses heard three shots.

This does not preclude near-simultaneous shots heard by most witnesses as one shot, or the use of a silencer, meaning there were more than three shots.

Most witnesses place the second and third shots as close together.

Secret Service man Kellerman, in the JFK limo, said the the last two shots came in a "flurry" and Gov JBC, before the WC and the HSCA, said the shots arrived in the cab of the limo as if from an "automatic" rifle.

I thought JBC had meant a "semi-automatic," when he testified by the WC, but he repeated his word "automatic" before the HSCA. So JBC says the shots were fired so rapidly he suspected an automatic rifle.

Kellerman, Weitzman and JBC were all knowledgable about weapons and gunfire.