Joe Bauer Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 (edited) For all that this mock trial lacks (which we all acknowledge is an enormous body of evidence, testimony and research information ) , Gerry Spence's closing argument is still compelling.to watch and it does hit on still really important and weighty points of Oswald's innocence versus guilt. Spence's take on all the coincidences involving Ruth Paine including the draft of a letter Oswald just happened to have left for her to find and her finding ( or steering? ) Oswald to the perfect work place location on the Presidential motorcade route to carry out his supposed deed... still bring strong suspicion toward her possible involvement in some part of this affair. If Spence had the information that is now available I think he may have won that case. As ridiculous as it was in it's staging and presentation. The report of Ruth and her estranged husband Micheal Paine calling each other after the assassination with one them saying " we both know who's responsible" is one of the more intriguing gems in their story. Edited March 6, 2017 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Clark Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 14 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said: The report of Ruth and her estranged husband Micheal Paine calling each other after the assassination with one them saying " we both know who's responsible" is one of the more intriguing gems in their story. George De Mohrenschildt? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Tracy Parnell Posted March 7, 2017 Share Posted March 7, 2017 1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said: For all that this mock trial lacks (which we all acknowledge is an enormous body of evidence, testimony and research information ) , Gerry Spence's closing argument is still compelling.to watch and it does hit on still really important and weighty points of Oswald's innocence versus guilt. Spence's take on all the coincidences involving Ruth Paine including the draft of a letter Oswald just happened to have left for her to find and her finding ( or steering? ) Oswald to the perfect work place location on the Presidential motorcade route to carry out his supposed deed... still bring strong suspicion toward her possible involvement in some part of this affair. If Spence had the information that is now available I think he may have won that case. As ridiculous as it was in it's staging and presentation. The report of Ruth and her estranged husband Micheal Paine calling each other after the assassination with one them saying " we both know who's responsible" is one of the more intriguing gems in their story. I have never heard of that report, but just maybe they were talking about LHO. But if you want to debate the mock trial you should get DVP in here since he is the Bugliosi expert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawrence Schnapf Posted March 7, 2017 Share Posted March 7, 2017 Spence was not prepared for this mock trial. he made a mockery of the mock trial. A better conducted mock trial was the 1992 ABA two-day event in SF. Resulted in hung jury. so did one-day mock trial by Texas Bar Association in fall 2013. Indeed, a Yale mock trial in 1967 resulted in acquittal. Bill Simpich and I are organizing a two-day mock trial at the South Texas College of Law in Houston on Nov. 20 and 21st. We will be conducting a classic criminal trial examining the forensic evidence using 21st century technology such as 3D scans of the toolmarks and the x-rays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirk Gallaway Posted March 7, 2017 Share Posted March 7, 2017 (edited) Agreed, Purely from memory. I remember that being the first time i had ever seen Spence without that silly buckskin jacket that he had been wearing for the previous 15 years.i remember on a number of occasions, I thought Spence could have gone deeper, or asked more questions.I remember he never asked Ruth P. about her sister's employment at the CIA, which Garrison had revealed 20 years earlier and Ruth claimed she didn't know at the time. That's not to mention her Father, who secured a 3 year contract with an agency that had extensive ties to the CIA, though maybe that wasn't known at the time.. Nor did he ask her about not informing LHO that he had secured a second job at Trans Texas Airways for $100 more a month just before his first day at work at the TSBD. While i know this can be a hot topic with some here. I remember Spence using the TSBD picture to make the argument that Lovelady was really Oswald on the steps of the TSBD, and then later having Buell Frazier testify that the man was in fact Lovelady. So he raises doubt that Oswald was on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting, and then refutes it with a subsequent witness. He seemed to miss enunciating and reiterating his central points. I remember at the end of the witness testimony feeling very disappointed in Oswald's defense. Edited March 7, 2017 by Kirk Gallaway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 8, 2017 Author Share Posted March 8, 2017 Yes, Spence did a lousy job. The "trial" itself was exactly like Mr. Schnapf described... a " mockery of the mock trial." But, I do like dramatic court room closing arguments as shown in historical videos and even in the movies. Paul Newman's in "The Verdict" was great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 8, 2017 Author Share Posted March 8, 2017 Oh, Mr. Schnapf, are any of those other Lee Harvey Oswald mock trials on video? Something we can access? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Von Pein Posted March 8, 2017 Share Posted March 8, 2017 (edited) 13 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said: ...are any of those other Lee Harvey Oswald mock trials on video? Something we can access? 1964 (Theatrical Film):http://dvp-video-audio-archive.blogspot.com/2012/03/trial-of-lee-harvey-oswald-1964.html 1977 (TV Movie):http://dvp-video-audio-archive.blogspot.com/2012/03/trial-of-lee-harvey-oswald-1977.html 1986:http://On-Trial-LHO.blogspot.comhttp://dvp-video-audio-archive.blogspot.com/2016/12/dvp-audio-video-master-index.html#On-Trial-Lee-Harvey-Oswald 1992:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzWAr91aL-BEZlZyb1NKS3YzMXc/view 2013:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzWAr91aL-BEY01nZEdIdFE1Y0E/view Edited March 8, 2017 by David Von Pein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Von Pein Posted March 8, 2017 Share Posted March 8, 2017 (edited) Addendum.... Article about the 1967 Yale University Mock Oswald Trial: http://nebula.wsimg.com/f923c35a4ca9448335dc47e72b56dc62 Edited March 8, 2017 by David Von Pein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 8, 2017 Author Share Posted March 8, 2017 I wish the Judge in the Yale Law School mock trial would have allowed the newsman's cameras. Jeff Greenfield's summary was okay, but nothing compared to seeing this drama in the flesh. Come on Judge...this wasn't a real trial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted March 8, 2017 Share Posted March 8, 2017 Larry is exactly right about Spence. But he understates it. In my book, Reclaiming Parkland, I spend a full chapter--21 pages-- on the London phony trial and fully critique Spence's performance. Spence's big mistake was first participating in the thing, since as I show, it clearly favored the prosecution. The producer, Mark Redhead, favored Bugliosi. I mean, Sylvia Odio is not there? Give me a break. Bugliosi was allowed to use the NAA? I mean even back then there had been questions about it. The prosecution called twice as many witnesses as the defense. Plus Bugliosi was allowed to drag in the Tippit shooting? I mean, then why not have Spence bring in the murder of Oswald and how his client was murdered with the cooperation of the Dallas police? When VB was on his book tour, he mentioned how Spence had studied the case for six months with help from a couple of assitants in his law office. What a joke. That is about as bad as Posner's two years. This case is not able to be even partly digested in five years. And no one can master it in even ten years. It is simply beyond the reach of any one person since it demands expertise in too many disciplines. Spence thought he could get by with his country demeanor and eloquence. But he didn't fully understand the circumstances. With what we have today, after the ARRB, there is no way any prepared attorney could lose this case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 I have to disagree with those attacking Spence. As previously stated, he destroyed Guinn and the NAA on the stand, without even raising his voice. His objective as a defense attorney in a made for TV trial was not to attack the witnesses lined up by the producers (who were essentially his co-stars) but to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of millions of viewers. He did just that, IMO. He was so successful, in fact, that his success became an obsession for Bugliosi, who couldn't let it go, and spent the next twenty years inventing and refining arguments (many of them foolish and weak-minded) to try to remove the doubt sown by Spence (and Lane and Thompson and Lifton, etc.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 Spence was like other famous defense attorney's who, for whatever reasons, were into theatrics. Some could pull this off while still maintaining professional respect. Some were very talented and had much success. Most court room trials are at times so boring the jurors can even fall asleep, such as when the O.J. attorneys were discussing technical aspects of DNA. So in that vein I think jurors occasionally enjoy these overly-dramatic performances. And I just happened to like seeing these myself from time to time. However, with a subject as important as the JFK/Oswald/Ruby truth, I don't want to infer that I took this Bugliosi favoring-Spence shamefully unprepared theatrics mock trial show lightly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 (edited) For every one thing you bring up about Spence, you can bring up two things he did wrong. Pat thinks he did a nice job on Guinn. How can anyone excuse what he did with Charles Petty? Petty: "Its not essential to see the brain." (RP, p. 62) Spence should have impaled him right there. "Doctor, can you explain to the jury what brain sectioning is and why its done in a death by gunshot would to the head?" He did not. Harold Norman recited his story about hearing bullet cartridges hit the floor above him. Bugliosi then asked him if he would recall that noise the rest of his life. Norman said yes. (ibid, p. 55) Again, Spence should have impaled both Bugliosi and Norman. If this had been me, I would have looked at Bugliosi first and repeated his question rhetorically. I then would have walked over to Norman and said, "The rest of your life? You couldn't even remember it for four days!" I would have handed him the 11/26 FBI report with him and said, "Please show me where you talked about the event you would never forget to the FBI on your first interview. What happened Harold, temporary amnesia?" If you go through that chapter, you will see many more instances of this. Spence wasn't prepared. It is much easier to prepare the official version of this case, then it is to prepare for what actually happened. Edited March 9, 2017 by James DiEugenio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Von Pein Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 (edited) From Vincent Bugliosi's book, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy".... Quote "I have been asked over and over again how Gerry Spence and I ended up trying the case. If any reader of this book has the same question, I can only quote the producer of the docu-trial, Mark Redhead, for the answer. “I went around to loads and loads of lawyers, getting a sense of who were the leading lights,” Redhead says. “Bugliosi and Spence emerged as the naturals to take on the job” (Bill Bancroft, “Oswald Goes on Trial,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, November 9, 1986, p.21). Speaking of Spence, Redhead told the London Observer (November 23, 1986, p.27) he “found that Gerry Spence was the most sought-after defense lawyer in the States,” one whose “powers of persuasion,” a London newspaper wrote, “have in the past led him to be accused of hypnotizing a jury.” In a June 13, 1982, 60 Minutes special on Spence, “The Best in the West,” reporter Ed Bradley said, “Spence sees himself as a Marshal Dillon, a good guy fighting the bad guys for causes he believes in.” Addressing Spence, Bradley said, “You’re on the stand. You’re under oath. How good are you as a lawyer?” Spence: “I’m the best lawyer I ever knew.” Bradley: “Gerry Spence isn’t modest, but he probably isn’t wrong. He just may be the best trial lawyer in America.” Redhead told me that he first started talking to lawyers at the American Bar Association convention in London in 1985, and followed this up with speaking to trial lawyers at bar conventions in the United States. The first contact I had had with Spence prior to the London trial was when, I believe for the first and only time in his career, he prosecuted a case in the late 1970s, serving as a special prosecutor in a murder case in which he had been a close friend of the victim, whose wife and child were also murdered. Spence was asking for the death penalty, and like the great lawyer he is, he anticipated that defense counsel, in seeking from the jury a sentence of life imprisonment rather than the death penalty, might argue to the jury that the fifth commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Spence called me to find out how, as a prosecutor, you get around this argument. I wasn’t in, and when I called him back he wasn’t in, but I left a message with his secretary that most biblical scholars interpret the original language of the fifth commandment to mean, “Thou shalt not commit murder” (murder being an unlawful killing, not a sanctioned one), which is exactly how it appears in the New English Bible. In other words, you can’t kill in the first instance, which would be murder, but if you do, it’s not against the Bible that you yourself be killed. Indeed, Exodus 21, verse 12, reads, “Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death.” I am not a biblical scholar, but I knew from my prosecutorial background that not only doesn’t the Bible prohibit killing, it commands it when someone has committed murder. By the way, Spence got a conviction of first-degree murder and the death penalty in that case. I’ll never forget the first time I met Spence, a joint appearance with him a few years later in Wyoming. There was standing room only because in Wyoming, Spence is iconic. During the question-and-answer period that followed our addresses, a fellow got up and said to me, “Mr. Bugliosi, we have a problem around these parts. We all love and respect Mr. Spence, but if you want to kill someone around here, you can do it and all you have do is get Mr. Spence and he’ll get you off.” (Among many other murder cases he’s won, Spence had just won one where the local sheriff had killed someone—I believe he was in the backseat of the sheriff ’s car—and for whatever reason, most everyone thought the sheriff was guilty, but Spence convinced twelve local citizens, to most everyone else’s great displeasure, that there was a reasonable doubt.) I told the locals that “the next time you folks have a murder around these parts and you think the defendant is guilty, here’s my Beverly Hills phone number——, and if you want, call me and I’ll come up here and serve as a special prosecutor.” Little could I have known that just a few years later Spence and I would be squaring off in London, with me “prosecuting” someone whom I believed to be guilty of murder and Spence defending him. In the 60 Minutes special, while attesting to the fact that Spence was “uniformly successful with juries, just uniformly; you know, he never loses,” the segment made a point of emphasizing Spence’s fierceness in the courtroom—that to Spence, going to trial was like going off “to war,” with Spence himself saying that a courtroom fight was a matter of life and death, speaking metaphorically of the “swords” he puts through his legal opponents, “and I can almost hear the pop of it, when things just sort of disintegrate, and you can see [them] all just almost die in front of you.” Past courtroom opponents and co-counsels of Spence’s spoke of his stopping at nothing to win, including “trying to physically hurt” his opposition. One spoke of a major case where he said Spence “was physically leaning” on his opponents and, when he “turned his back on the judge,” faced his opponent and, ”you know, I won’t mouth exactly what he was mouthing at that stage, but it was very intimidating.” Of course, Spence’s extremely competitive nature is just one of the reasons why he is the great trial lawyer he is, separating him from his peers. I got the full “Spence treatment” at the London trial. And I’ll say this. I thought I was a courtroom battler, but Spence exposed me to a level of legal confrontation that I had never dreamed about. In several instances I was clearly able to turn his conduct around, right in front of the jury, to my distinct advantage, but I don’t intend to go into them here, except to say that Spence is such a colorful rogue that when you catch him with his hand in the cookie jar, instead of getting angry, except for one instance, I just handled the matter and smiled. I do, however, want to mention two out-of-court instances, one of which ended in a stalemate, the other which Spence won. The reason why I want to mention the stalemate one is that it ostensibly tended to confirm what the media, on both sides of the Atlantic, were saying about Spence and me, which didn’t begin to tell the whole story. Going into the trial I didn’t know Spence well, but I was aware of his superlative record, respected him, and certainly had no dislike for him. I hoped he felt the same way about me. But here’s a small sampling of what the media was saying: London’s Observer referred to Spence and me as “bitter rivals.” London’s Time Out: “The two lawyers had taken such a violent dislike to one another that it seemed possible that the trial would not be able to go ahead . . . As expected, Bugliosi and Spence went for one another from the beginning, much to the annoyance of the judge, who told each of them that if they had behaved like that back in Texas he would have had them locked up.” I don’t recall, now, Judge Bunton saying this to Spence and me directly, but he may have. He certainly told the reporter this, but in a later note to me he said his remark “had nothing to do with the courtroom performance of you and Gerry. It had to do with the pre-trial conference.” What happened at the pretrial conference was, looking back, humorous, at least to me. Judge Bunton, Spence, and I were arguing over the admissibility of a piece of evidence when Spence suddenly turned to me and said, with all apparent seriousness, “I’m just going to have to punch you in the nose.” Looking back, obviously Spence couldn’t have been serious, and perhaps was just trying to intimidate me, but at the moment I was stunned and responded, “You gotta be kidding. Who in the f—— do you think you are, you s—— of a b——? You may be bigger than I am, but I’m faster and in much better shape. I don’t know what you’ve been getting by with around the country, but you’re in the majors now, and you’re not going to get by with it here. I’m going to have to teach you some manners.” Judge Bunton and the typically proper Brit, Mark Redhead, sat there openmouthed and speechless. Now the humor. Spence said, “I don’t see any reason why I have to sit here and take this kind of abuse,” and proceeded to leave the room with his law partner, Ed Moriarty. Moriarty came back into the room a few minutes later and said Gerry didn’t intend to resume the pretrial conference if I (the one whom his partner had threatened to punch in the nose) didn’t treat him “in a civil manner.” I forget what happened next, but Gerry returned to the room in a few minutes. Later that afternoon I was working in my room at our hotel, the Savoy, when Moriarty called to say, “Gerry is downstairs in the dining room. He’d like you to come down and talk for awhile,” which I did. “Gerry, how you doing ol’ buddy,” I said warmly. “Fine. Now, Vince, we’re in this f—— trial together, and it ain’t to any of our benefit to fight like this. There’s no reason why we can’t get along.” “I agree, cowboy.” To this day, I call Gerry “cowboy,” not in denigration, because Spence is a great trial lawyer, but Gerry “thinks” he’s a cowboy, coming into court with his Stetson hat, suede jacket, and cowboy boots. And he does own a thirtyfive- thousand acre ranch eighty miles from his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Though the trial that followed contained many tense, confrontational moments between Spence and me, from that moment on we got along fine and have become good friends. Spence is someone I have a lot of respect for, not only because he’s the best criminal defense attorney and plaintiffs lawyer in the country, but because he’s a man of compassion for the little guy, as I am. He also happens to be one of the finest writers of nonfiction books in America, bringing a wonderful literary quality to his writing that is largely absent in the nonfiction genre. He’s a golden nugget waiting to be discovered by mainstream book reviewers. About the incident that Spence won, the night before the trial we all appeared in court to familiarize ourselves with the courtroom and everyone’s position in it, right down to the court reporter. Spence proceeded to sit in a seat at the counsel table that was closest to the jury and always occupied by the prosecutor, the defense attorney invariably sitting at the other end of the table. I walked over to Spence and said, “Cowboy, you’re sitting in my seat.” Spence said he wasn’t, that it was his seat, and “I’m not budging.” I said, “Gerry, lawyers and judges from several countries [in addition to the United States and Great Britain, I believe France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark] are going to be watching this trial and you know that we’re trying to make the trial as authentic as possible, and if they see you sitting in the prosecutor’s seat it’s just going to look very strange to them, like we don’t even know where to sit in a courtroom.” (The London Sunday Times of November 23, 1986, gave its readers a different reason why I wanted Spence away from the prosecution chair. “Bugliosi was determined to keep his rival as far away as possible from the jury, because Spence has a reputation for being able to hypnotize jurors.”) But Spence was adamant. “Listen,” he said, “I lecture to thousands of lawyers around the country and I tell them I always sit next to the jury, that you are a second-class citizen if you sit away from the jury, and there’s no sense in suggesting to the jury that the prosecution is closer to them than the defense. If I have to get up at five in the morning, I’m the first one who enters that courtroom and I make sure I sit next to the jury.” “Gerry, what you say may have some merit, but this is just not the way it’s done in courtrooms throughout the land.” “It is where I practice law,” he said. I appealed to the judge to order Spence to sit in the defense seat, which he politely did, telling Spence that in Texas the prosecutor “always sits next to the jury.” But Spence ignored the judge and said, “Either I sit where I am right now or I’m going back to Wyoming tonight.” The Brits were absolutely terrified, having invested well over a million dollars and a year and a half of very diligent effort to track down witnesses and put the trial together. It was all about to go up in flames. Mark Redhead was as pale as a ghost and was once again shocked by the conduct of Spence and me. In Britain, lawyers are very dignified and reserved, and now twice, within two days, Redhead was being exposed to conduct that was both foreign to him and an assault on his British sensibilities. (He told London’s Evening Standard that the verbal fisticuffs between Spence and me were like a heavyweight boxing match. “I felt I was refereeing some almighty punch-up and if one of them happened to duck while the other was swinging a punch it was liable to be me who’d receive a bash on the nose. They weren’t exactly gentlemen.”) But Mark took my side in the dispute, whereupon Spence said to him, “I told you that I would insist on sitting next to the jury and you gave me your word I could. I don’t like goddamn bastards who break their word.” Mark, almost trembling, looked at Spence and said quietly, “I don’t remember this.” “Well,” Spence said, “there’s not going to be any goddamned trial here. I’m ready to go home.” I finally broke the impasse, once again finding the situation humorous, by telling Redhead with a smile and to his great relief, “Mark, the problem we’re having here is that American lawyers are different from British lawyers, but even among American lawyers, Gerry and I are on the fringes. You people here in England are civilized, I’m half-civilized, and the cowboy is completely uncivilized. Let Gerry stay where he is. It’s no big deal.” And Spence, who refers to himself as a gunslinger, won the fight and sat next to the jury throughout the whole trial. The trial, as hotly contested as any real trial I had ever participated in, had its light moments, as when Spence, deliberately trying to unnerve me before the jury, kept pronouncing my last name with a hard g, as in “bug.” I finally said, “It’s Booliosi, Mr. Spence, the g is silent.” “That’s the only thing that’s silent about Mr. Bugliosi,” Spence retorted, impressing the media on both sides of the Atlantic with his witticism. And then there was the occasion when Spence, at the lectern, started reading from an HSCA volume in his cross-examination of Dr. Charles Petty, the Dallas medical examiner who was my expert forensic pathologist. “Where are you reading from?” I asked Spence from my position at the counsel table to Spence’s right. Spence, ignoring my request, continued to read from some page in some volume of the HSCA. “Where are you reading from?” I persisted. Spence, showing a little irritation, finally told me volume 7 of the HSCA, and then resumed his reading. “What page?” I again popped up, not to interrupt Spence, but to make sure he wasn’t missing a word, or reading selectively. Clearly irritated now, he answered sharply, “Page 129,” and said to the witness, “I’ll read it again now, without counsel’s interruptions, if I might,” and continued to read on when, to his exasperation, he heard a persistent voice once again coming from his right. “What paragraph?” I asked, “so I can follow you, Mr. Spence . . . That’s the typical thing to do.” Gerry, now more than irritated, and feeling I had gone too far, did not reply, telling Dr. Petty, “I’ll start once more,” but Judge Bunton interceded, telling Spence, “Give the paragraph and let’s go; page number, paragraph” and adding something I hadn’t asked for, “and line.” The jam-packed courtroom was already smiling and enjoying the interplay when Spence, a thespian at heart, seized the moment and said to Bunton, “I’ll even give it [page 129] to counsel so he can see it. It’s in yellow. Here you go, counsel,” he said as he left the lectern and approached me at the counsel table. “As a matter of fact,” he said as he sat down next to me, “let’s you and I read it together.” The situation was getting more and more humorous, and the courtroom burst into laughter when Judge Bunton said from the bench, “It’s nice to see both of you sitting side by side. It warms the cockles of my heart.” When the laughter subsided, Spence and I returned to serious lawyering, with Spence finally reading to Dr. Petty the language he had set out to read a while back, in which the HSCA said that the autopsy photos of the president’s brain did not indicate the degree of laceration that would be expected if the bullet had entered the president’s skull at the point the autopsy report said it did, the back of his head. It was perfectly proper crossexamination by Spence, but because the language was taken out of context it could easily lead the jury to believe that maybe the shot never came from Kennedy’s rear, where I was maintaining Oswald was. Because we were operating under very tight time constraints and I wasn’t sure at this point if Judge Bunton would allow me to conduct redirect examination, where I could clarify the matter, when Spence got up from his seat beside me to return to the lectern after he finished reading what he wanted to Dr. Petty (and confident he had heard the last from the unwelcome voice to his right), I immediately got up too, and walking behind him, started reading aloud to the jury—as if continuing on from where Spence had left off—later language on page 129 where the HSCA said it concluded that the head shot came from behind. Stung, Spence asked Judge Bunton in front of the jury if he could mark page 129 as a defense exhibit and show it to the jury “so there will be no question that I told them the truth.” Spence had, in fact, told the jury the truth, as far as it went. If anyone was out of line, it wasn’t the cowboy, it was I, since I had read into the trial record an excerpt from page 129 at a time when the witness on the stand was still Spence’s, not mine. In any event, the trial received rave and widespread reviews from virtually every major news outlet in the country, many doing feature stories. In addition to Time magazine’s saying that the docu-trial was “TV’s best courtroom drama ever . . . a fascinating lesson in history and the law . . . Spellbinding,” the Los Angeles Times said, “Extraordinary. Not to be confused with other TV law renderings. It is very close to the real thing.” Miami Herald: “The trial has the ring of reality. It is history because it is honestly and painstakingly executed.” New York Times: “Compelling. In Spence and Bugliosi, we are watching a master defense attorney and prosecutor at work.” New York Post: “Absolutely riveting courtroom drama. A serious undertaking.” New Orleans’s Times-Picayune: “Innovative, riveting, perhaps even historic television. Maybe the best courtroom drama ever made for television.” San Jose Mercury News: “Vincent Bugliosi and Gerry Spence do battle in a fashion that puts Perry Mason and the entire firm of ‘L.A. Law’ to shame.” Seattle Times: “Pits two legal giants against each other in a totally unscripted situation. The greatest pleasure comes from watching two brilliant legal personalities at work.” Cox News Service: “The realistic trial is dominated by the hand-to-hand courtroom combat of the opposing attorneys, Gerry Spence and the relentless prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. Will intrigue viewers for decades to come.” USA Today: “Spence and Bugliosi are experts. They taunt each other, humble witnesses and dig for facts like dogs digging for bones.” People: “Riveting. Bugliosi questions cops, people who were there that day, people who knew Oswald, and experts on forensic firearms, photography and chemistry. In his three piece suit, he is all business. Spence, in his cowboy hat, is all theatre. An experiment that works.” Los Angeles Herald: “The most potent drama ever put to tape. The hard-nosed, hyper Bugliosi and condescending, ridiculing Spence go at one another like frenzied rhinos.” The Australian: “An irresistible piece of television.” London Sunday Times: “Genuine. An epic programme.” London Standard: “What we shall never know is how a jury might have reacted if Oswald had survived to stand trial, but London Weekend Television has come up with the next best thing, a trial-in-absentia of the man accused of shooting Kennedy, complete with judge, jury, witnesses, and opposing counsel. A major contribution to one of the enigmas of twentieth century crime.” London Telegraph: “I wish to record admiration, gratitude and quite frankly awe for what LWT gave us last night.” London’s TV Mail: “As close to the real thing as we are likely to see. Great stuff.” One thing that everyone agreed on—it was close to a real trial. Judge Bunton said, “Bugliosi and Spence were extraordinarily well-prepared. Both of them worked very, very hard getting this case ready for trial. The trial was of the highest caliber, one that measures up to any legal standards. We weren’t playing games. This was a trial.” " -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 3-9 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History" (c.2007) (W.W. Norton & Co.) Edited March 10, 2017 by David Von Pein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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