The JFKA As A Whodunnit

[Lance Payette]

I am perhaps the only person who will find this amusing ...

I was reviewing some of the threads at the Ed Forum where Lawyer Jimbo chided me for my lack of lawyerly knowledge and skills. I came upon his citation of an article at Kennedys & King as to "what a real trial of Oswald, with everything on the table, would have produced." Larry Schnapf, who actually is a lawyer, described it as "a nice piece."

Actually, it's nothing but a three-article litany of supposed problems with the physical evidence. Nothing about what would have been far more critical to the defense: (1) Oswald's puzzling, non-assassin-like behavior before the JFKA and (2) severing the Tippit murder as we've discussed here.

The humorous part is the author of this scholarly legal analysis: "Johnny Cairns, an Edinburgh electrician." Hey, next time you need your kitchen rewired, just call me, a "former Arizona lawyer." I'm pretty sure I could do it.

Another crazy episode was spooky Jon Tidd, a well-established regular and active CT zealot when I arrived. He repeatedly suggested I wasn't a lawyer at all and started posing non-JFKA legal questions to see if I could answer them - a veritable JFKA forum bar exam! The absurdity? Tidd was a FELLOW ARIZONA ATTORNEY and could have verified my bar membership in good standing at the Arizona State Bar site in 15 seconds! To his everlasting credit, at least as far as I'm concerned, James Gordon summarily banned him.

Hoot, here is Johnny my lad on a podcast. I must admit, not what I expected.

[John Corbett]

I watched about 2 minutes of the video and realized it would be an hour and 13 minutes out of my life that I would never get back.

[John Corbett]

Jesus, "a dog with a bone," as Mark Urik said about someone not long ago. Apparently you simply cannot admit you are wrong and let it go. I am on the verge of suffering not merely "Sandy Larsen flashbacks" but "Sandy Larsen PTSD."

Look, booby, you cited (1) the Manson case, which was tried as a conspiracy case, and in fact the Tate and LaBianca murders were committed in the same manner by the same people on two successive nights, and (2) the OJ case, where the two murders were committed at the same time and place using the same weapon and obviously by the same perpetrator. Neither is the situation with JFK and Tippit.

Yes, obviously, crimes including murders are often tried together. This is why EVERY STATE has a statute or rule that crimes may be tried together if they are part of the "same criminal episode" (or words to that effect). DUH, YES? Likewise, EVERY STATE has a statute or rule that the crimes may be SEVERED, meaning SEPARATE TRIALS, if the defendant can show a single trial would result in unfair prejudice. DUH, YES? The very existence of these rules refutes the silly arguments you keep making. DUH, YES?

Because you are an "everything is black and white" know-it-all who has no clue how lawyers think - just like Sandy Larsen! - you seemingly can't grasp that every situation is different. What the hell was your career - IRS tax auditor? It can't have been anything requiring nuanced thinking.

Sometimes the prosecution would want separate trials, sometimes the defense would want one. Sometimes the prosecution would want one, the defense two. Often neither side cares one way or the other. It's always a matter of trial strategy. A simple Google search will generate multiple appellate cases where severance was an issue, with a defendant typically arguing that severance should have been granted and he was prejudiced because it was not.

For the last time: The JFK and Tippit murders are not inevitably connected, except in the mind of an LN zealot. The evidence and witnesses would be entirely different. There would be HUGE risk that a jury would connect the two and decide that Oswald "must have" killed Tippit if he killed JFK or "must have" killed JFK if he killed Tippit. This is the potential prejudice of trying both murders together, and it is precisely the invalid connection that Bugliosi made in the mock trial (where there obviously was not going to be a motion for severance because it was just a TV show).

I can GUARANTEE you that in a trial of Oswald the defense would be arguing both that (1) two trials were required because the murders were not part of the same episode, and (2) even if they were, severance should be granted because of the potential prejudice of trying them together. If the motion were denied, the defense would pursue what is called an interlocutory appeal, meaning an appeal before the trial even begins. If the interlocutory appeal were denied, the defense would preserve the severance issue as a major one on post-trial appeal. The correctness of the defense's position would be so clear in this case that I strongly doubt the prosecution would even oppose severance.

Apparently every forum has its Pretend Lawyers. At the Ed Forum, I not only had goofy Sandy, who was some sort of civil engineer, but even Jim DiEugenio lecturing me as to how I didn't understand the rules of evidence. Yeeesh ...

Rather than refute the above post point-by-point, I will simply say that you are the one that made the claim that the JFK and Tippit murders would have been tried separately yet you can't point to a single precedence that supports that claim. Just to refresh your memory, you made this exact statement:

"In my humble opinion, in the real world the murders would have required bifurcated trials."

You have offered nothing but your humble opinion to support that statement.

On the one hand we have the OJ murder case in which he killed two people in the same place at the same time in which the two murders were tried in a single trial. Then we have the Manson murders in which multiple people killed multiple other people in four different places on four different dates, also tried in a single trial. In between those two extremes we have Oswald killing two men on the same day less than an hour apart and in two locations that are about a 5 minute drive apart and you insist that would have required two separate trials. What was unique about Oswald's murders that would have required separate trials that wouldn't have applied to either of the two other cases.

[Lance Payette]

[John Corbett]

I guess that's as articulate a response as any.