Would Oswald have been convicted?

[John Mytton]

The WC was committed to the LN narrative from its creation.

Exactly right! The WC report was a political document and not the result of a honest and thorough investigation.

...and thorough investigation

This is why you lose, you will only accept a finding that mirrors your own flawed, inept, biased research. Pathetic!

The Warren Commission's findings were actually quite thorough which included the testimony or depositions of 552 witnesses and more than 3,100 exhibits, making a total of more than 16,000 pages. And the HSCA who were trying their damnedest to find a conspiracy, came to the same conclusion that Oswald fired three shots and killed Kennedy and wounded Connally.



BTW, after 62 years and the additional research of thousands of researcher who have collectively spent IMO millions of hours investigating this crime are still no closer to discovering who was behind the conspiracy and that's because there was no conspiracy, a lone nut who hated America, defected to the enemy and wanted to be known forever, took his rifle to work and assassinated Kennedy. Case Closed!

JohnM

[Tom Graves]

Moved to the Politics thread.

[John Corbett]

Oswald would have easily been convicted of both murders and almost certainly would have been sentenced to death. I have serious doubts that the sentence would have ever been carried out. The infamous Clutter family murders in 1959 were also committed in November. It took 5 1/2 years for them to exhaust the appeals process before Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were hanged for the crimes. A similar length appeals process would have delayed Oswald's execution until 1969. By that year, there was a de facto moratorium on executions as the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the death penalty. In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 margin that while the death penalty was constitutional, it created very specific guidelines for how it could be applied. They ruled that all current death penalty statutes failed to meet those guidelines and vacated all existing death sentences. In so doing, SCOTUS spared the lives of Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson as well as hundreds of other condemned convicts. Had Oswald been on death row at the time, he too would have been spared and the little bastard might still be doing time in the Texas Penitentiary. For that reason, I remain grateful to Jack Ruby. He did us all a huge favor by exterminating Oswald. I just hope Oswald suffered a great deal before he took his last breath.

[John Mytton]

Oswald would have easily been convicted of both murders and almost certainly would have been sentenced to death. I have serious doubts that the sentence would have ever been carried out. The infamous Clutter family murders in 1959 were also committed in November. It took 5 1/2 years for them to exhaust the appeals process before Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were hanged for the crimes. A similar length appeals process would have delayed Oswald's execution until 1969. By that year, there was a de facto moratorium on executions as the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the death penalty. In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 margin that while the death penalty was constitutional, it created very specific guidelines for how it could be applied and they ruled that all current death penalty statutes failed to meet those guidelines and vacated all existing death sentences. In so doing, SCOTUS spared the lives of Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson as well as hundreds of other condemned convicts. Had Oswald been on death row at the time, he too would have been spared and the little bastard might still be doing time in the Texas Penitentiary. For that reason, I remain grateful to Jack Ruby. He did us all a huge favor by exterminating Oswald. I just hope Oswald suffered a great deal before he took his last breath.

That's interesting.

Oswald was ready to die.
He wrote in his "Historic Diary" about his suicide attempt and after he kills General Walker, Oswald writes in his Walker Note "If I'm still alive" obviously fully expecting to be killed by the Police.

And when arrested in the Texas Theater he pulls out his revolver and tries to kill McDonald, an act which if he succeeded would mean instant death. "Suicide by cop"

Also when he was arrested and riding back to DPHQ after he's told "I hear they burn for murder." Oswald replies with "Well, they say it just takes a second to die".

Oswald was unhinged with a death wish!

JohnM

[John Corbett]

That's interesting.

Oswald was ready to die.
He wrote in his "Historic Diary" about his suicide attempt and after he kills General Walker, Oswald writes in his Walker Note "If I'm still alive" obviously fully expecting to be killed by the Police.

And when arrested in the Texas Theater he pulls out his revolver and tries to kill McDonald, an act which if he succeeded would mean instant death. "Suicide by cop"

Also when he was arrested and riding back to DPHQ after he's told "I hear they burn for murder." Oswald replies with "Well, they say it just takes a second to die".

Oswald was unhinged with a death wish!

JohnM

It all would have hinged on whether Oswald chose to use the full appeals process available to him. Only one person who committed a murder after the JFKA and before the Supreme Court vacated all existing death penalty statutes was executed and that was a man who chose to accept his sentence without appealing it.
I believe the last execution in the US  prior to SCOTUS vacating the death penalty was in California in 1967 but that was for a murder committed before the JFKA.

Interestingly, the first two convicts executed after states reinstituted the death penalty were also men who chose not to fight their sentence. The most famous was Gary Gilmore made famous by Norman Mailer's book The Executioner's Song, later made into a TV movie starring a very young Tommy Lee Jones. Gilmore died by firing squad in Utah. I'm going to go out on a limb and trust my memory rather than look it up but I believe the second was a guy named Jesse Bishop and I think he died in Californias's gas chamber. I will look it up after I post this to see how good my memory is.

UPDATE: I looked it up and I correctly named Jesse Bishop and his method of execution but he died in Nevada's gas chamber, not California's. He was also the third person executed not the second. John Spenkelenk was the second and he died in Florida's electric chair. I remember the name and where he was executed and how but I thought he died after Bishop. Spenkelenk did fight his execution but ran out his appeals. Now it takes about 25 years for the appeals process to be exhausted. I have no idea why it should take so long but attorneys have figured out how to game the system and put off executions for decades.