KENNEDY'S AVENGER

Why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald?

Abrams, chief legal analyst for ABC News, and journalist Fisher team up for their latest investigation, this time focused on the trial of Ruby, accused of killing JFK assassin Oswald. With the shooting broadly televised, Ruby’s defense lawyers—headed by “square-jawed, silver-maned, impeccably groomed Californian Melvin Belli, arguably the most famous lawyer in the country”—hoped to spare Ruby from the death penalty by conjuring an innovative defense. Ruby, Belli asserted, suffered from a rare mental illness—psychomotor variant epilepsy—that resulted in a fugue state, during which he had no control over what he was doing. The authors offer an animated, overwhelmingly detailed examination of the trial, from the family’s decision to hire a high-powered “superstar” lawyer, whose $50,000 fee, the family believed, could be raised by selling Ruby’s story; to the verdict, when jurors unanimously found Ruby guilty and sentenced him to death. Jury selection was predictably contentious. Of 900 people called to serve, 500 showed up, and after 14 days of lawyerly wrangling, a jury consisting of eight men and four women, all White Protestants, was finally seated. Abrams and Fisher mine transcripts and news coverage to dramatize the trial as it unfolded, including witness testimony, lawyers’ objections, the judge’s rulings, and Belli’s repeated calls for a mistrial. Medical experts for the defense and the prosecution offered contradictory theories about Ruby’s mind. The verdict “was simply the end of the beginning”; Belli won an appeal, citing more than 200 errors by the judge. An increasingly paranoid Ruby testified before the Warren Commission about his motivation, denying a prior connection to Oswald. Suffering from cancer, he died in prison, awaiting a new trial. Did Oswald act alone? Did Ruby? Hints of a conspiracy, left unquestioned by the authors, feed into what they contend “a majority of Americans” suspect.

A bright spotlight on well-worn ground.