"Evidence" that was never identified

[Pat Speer]

38 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

“Almost entirely.”  And under what circumstances do we NOT ignore the chain of possession?

When the photo is contradicted by the physical evidence, the contemporaneous written accounts of witnesses in position of authority, the properly prepared medical evidence, and consensus witness statements.

Military men protecting the military.  That’s it.

 

Your not trusting the statements of a witness is not the same as a judge refusing to allow evidence brought forth by such a witness into the record. The medical evidence would have been allowed into the record. Obviously. 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Your not trusting the statements of a witness is not the same as a judge refusing to allow evidence brought forth by such a witness into the record. The medical evidence would have been allowed into the record. Obviously. 

Only medical evidence prepared according to proper protocols, obviously.

[Michael Crane]

18 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

While we don't know what happened to the brain, there is no real evidence indicating Bobby disposed of it.

But Pat,

Didn't Burke Marshall say that Robert made it unavailable? Or he believes that Robert made it unavailable?

Edited July 11, 2023 by Michael Crane

[James DiEugenio]

402 hearings  are what they are called in California.

You can look it up.

Any defense lawyer in this case would take about two weeks on them.

Judges do not like it when the prosecution defrauds the court.

That is what happened with CE 399. See Bardwell Odum. 

And man with Stringer saying he did not use the film or the press pack process?  Which is how those photos were taken.  And then bringing in Knudsen?

And that is just for starters. 

If you want to read something that is out of this world, find the Joan ZImmerman interview with James Mastrovito of the Secret Service..

Here it is:  

https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/pdf/md261.pdf

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Can we be frank?

The JFK case was never really investigated until the ARRB.

Because it was the ARRB that declassified the HSCA files.  And what was in those classified files was much more revealing than what was in the HSCA volumes. THe ARRB also managed to salvage a lot of Garrison's files which are a treasure chest of info about New Orleans.

We also now know from Epstein's book that Specter told him that when he figured out the timing factor in the Z film, he went back and told the Commission:  We either go with the Magic Bullet or we start looking for a second gunman. 

We know how seriously Redlich took that.  And we know from Liebeler that they were having no dissenters.  In that sense Sylvia Meagher was correct, the Commission members were Accessories after the Fact.

So this case was not really investigated until 1994.

Does anyone think that without the ARRB we would have ever heard of Sandy Spencer or Mastrovito or Knudsen?

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Gil Jesus]

9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

Judges do not like it when the prosecution defrauds the court.

That is what happened with CE 399. See Bardwell Odum. 

 

Amen.

This case would have never made it to trial in today's system for a few reasons.

1. Oswald's Constitutional rights were violated under the 5th and 6th amendments. He was denied legal counsel and police continued to question him after he'd "lawyered up". Anything he said after he requested a lawyer and was denied one, was NOT admissable as evidence. He did not refuse legal representation, that was a fairy tale made up by the Dallas authorities, as this video proves.

Since Oswald requested a lawyer at the time of his arrest in the Texas Theater, anything he said during his interrogation would not have been admissable as evidence.

At the Tippit arraignment, Oswald protested bitterly about not having a lawyer. The judge ( David Johnston ) was obligated under Texas law to assign Oswald a lawyer. He refused to and when he and the police officers who were present at the arraignment were asked if Oswald said anything, every one of them "couldn't remember" what Oswald said. Amazing how all of these officials couldn't remember the same thing.

2. Witness identifications as a result of the police lineups would have been thrown out because of the unethical construct of the lineups, which made Oswald the only choice. Oswald was shown with police officers who were not the same age, not the same height or weight and were not dressed the same as either Oswald or the witnesses' descriptions of the killer. In the first two lineups, one of the fillers was blond. In the third lineup, two of the fillers were blond. In the last lineup, Oswald was shown with two teenagers and a Mexican.

Those lineups were unfair and any witness identification of Oswald as a result of those lineups would have been inadmissable as evidence.

3. Take the fact that the people who originally found evidence and did not identify the items in evidence as the items they found, and add to that the fact that much of that same evidence ( on my list ) was originally identified as something else, and you have prima facie proof that evidence was tampered with. ( by substitution )

I don't understand why people can't see that. General Walker did.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Gil Jesus

[James DiEugenio]

I agree that the line ups were ridiculous.

The whole idea of chain of custody is to prevent the police from either altering or changing evidence.

In the film we had two professionals speak to this issue:  Brian Edwards, a former police investigator  and SWAT team member for over 20 years, and Henry Lee. 

Lee had been a police captain in Taiwan for five years. Which meant he supervised a lot of investigations.  He also did so as Commissioner of Public Safety in Connecticut for two years. 

At a 402 hearing, either the evidence could be ruled out, or the judge can order its value be discounted.

Edited July 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Gil Jesus]

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I agree that the line ups were ridiculous.

The whole idea of chain of custody is to prevent the police from either altering or changing evidence.

In the film we had two professionals speak to this issue:  Brian Edwards, a former police investigator  and SWAT team member for over 20 years, and Henry Lee. 

Lee had been a police captain in Taiwan for five years. Which meant he supervised a lot of investigations.  He also did so as Commissioner of Public Safety in Connecticut for two years. 

At a 402 hearing, either the evidence could be ruled out, or the judge can order its value be discounted.

Thanks Jim.

I'm going to go back over the video and listen to what they have to say.

[Bill Brown]

 

As long as everyone understands that Oswald did not appear in lineups alongside men in suit and tie.

 

[James DiEugenio]

I really wish we would have used more of Lee.

But I was not around for the final edit.  We got kicked out of Oliver's office due to CV 19.

What he said about trajectory analysis in the JFK case was really important.

You cannot do it in the JFK case since neither wound was dissected.

One of his students once said online that one day Lee was lecturing, and somehow the JFK autopsy came up.  He said, Lee just jumped into that subject and went on for 20 minutes on how bad the autopsy was.  Whew.  Twenty minutes?

[Pat Speer]

On 7/11/2023 at 2:37 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Only medical evidence prepared according to proper protocols, obviously.

And you just made that up. Obviously. 

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

I really wish we would have used more of Lee.

But I was not around for the final edit.  We got kicked out of Oliver's office due to CV 19.

What he said about trajectory analysis in the JFK case was really important.

You cannot do it in the JFK case since neither wound was dissected.

One of his students once said online that one day Lee was lecturing, and somehow the JFK autopsy came up.  He said, Lee just jumped into that subject and went on for 20 minutes on how bad the autopsy was.  Whew.  Twenty minutes?

Lee was one of the Three Investigators. These men made paid appearances together, in which the JFK assassination was discussed. They also sold books about the assassination, and made TV appearances etc. Baden is a full-blown lone nutter. Wecht is a full-blown CT. And Lee tries to have it both ways. As in the O.J. case, (where Baden served as a highly-paid defense witness), where Lee complained about the handling of the evidence (and misled the jury into thinking it had been faked), he goes on and on in his appearances and books about how the evidence was collected improperly (and by extension how he could ave done a better job). But he avoids like the plague what the evidence actually suggests. Instead he takes the stance that we'll never know because the police didn't do a good job. It's self-serving, and doubly-so because it allows him to take a middle ground between Baden and Wecht. 

[Pat Speer]

21 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Can we be frank?

The JFK case was never really investigated until the ARRB.

Because it was the ARRB that declassified the HSCA files.  And what was in those classified files was much more revealing than what was in the HSCA volumes. THe ARRB also managed to salvage a lot of Garrison's files which are a treasure chest of info about New Orleans.

We also now know from Epstein's book that Specter told him that when he figured out the timing factor in the Z film, he went back and told the Commission:  We either go with the Magic Bullet or we start looking for a second gunman. 

We know how seriously Redlich took that.  And we know from Liebeler that they were having no dissenters.  In that sense Sylvia Meagher was correct, the Commission members were Accessories after the Fact.

So this case was not really investigated until 1994.

Does anyone think that without the ARRB we would have ever heard of Sandy Spencer or Mastrovito or Knudsen?

 

Do you really think the 30 year-old recollections of seniors is the best evidence? It's fairly ridiculous to assume someone would have an accurate recollection of a photo they developed more than 30 years before, especially when the recollection is at odds with photos currently in existence. And Knudsen? He developed photos. He didn't take photos. There's no way an official family photographer would be tasked with taking autopsy photos. That would be like sending a wedding photographer to film a crime scene...when the top crime scene photographer was already at the scene. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Micah Mileto]

On 7/11/2023 at 4:05 PM, Pat Speer said:

Yes, Cliff. You proved my point. They would ask Stringer if these were autopsy photos he'd taken. He'd say yes. And then for good measure they would ask Humes if the body in the photos was President Kennedy and reflect the wounds he saw on 11--22. He'd say yes. If the defense then so reckoned, they could call contrary witnesses, should any come forward. But no judge is gonna withhold evidence from the record because someone not tasked with gathering that evidence (such as the Parkland witnesses) had a contrary recollection. 

Say there was a hit and run accident, in which the driver was pulled over two blocks later by the cops, and where the DNA of the pedestrian was found on the car. Say the defense has witnesses who will say the car they saw hit the pedestrian was a different color. Is a judge gonna withhold all evidence related to the car? Nope. 

Now imagine if this wasn't so. Imagine that fingerprint evidence and DNA evidence linking someone to a crime scene could be excluded if the defendant found someone to lie for him and say he wasn't there. Not good. 

Now, as far as the "deficiencies" with the back wound photo...I think the HSCA FPP was greatly exaggerating these deficiencies to get their friends on the Clark Panel off the hook. 

Every single part of the autopsy photos chain of custody is wrong.

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

And you just made that up. Obviously. 

That’s funny from a fella who fetishizes fabrication.

HSCA

<quote on emphasis added>

Not all the critics of the Warren Commission have been content to point out the obvious deficiencies of the autopsy photographs as scientific evidence. Some have questioned their very authenticity.  These theorists suggest that the body shown in at least some of the photographs is not President Kennedy, but another decedent deliberatelymutilated to simulate a pattern of wounds supportive of the Warren Commissions' interpretation of their nature and significance.  As outlandish as such a macabre proposition might appear, it is one that, had the case gone to trial,might have been effectively raised by an astute defense anxious to block the introduction of the photographs as evidence. In any event, the onus of establishing the authenticity of these photographs would have rested with the prosecution.

 (quote off)