On November 24, 1963. When the police were going to transport Oswald from the City Lockup to the County Jail, they moved him through a long hallway where reporters were waiting to ask Oswald questions. It was there that Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald. Before leaving, Oswald asked for a sweater. The five minute delay in getting a sweater, allowed enough time for Ruby to arrive and kill Oswald. What if Oswald had done without the sweater. Ruby would have missed him. I assume the security at the County Jail and Courthouse during the trial would have been better. The prosecution would not have made a plea deal with the murderer of the president. He would have gone to trial and been found guilty. It was an open and shut case.
Prosecution Argument # 1 Oswald brought a gun to work.
Oswald normally stayed in a rented room form Monday evening to Friday morning. A coworker gave him a ride to and from the home of Ruth Paine, where his wife and children were staying, Friday afternoon and Monday morning. The coworker would testify that Oswald asked for a special ride back to Mrs Paine’s on Thursday November 21, 1963 and on the morning of Friday November 22, 1963, Oswald carried to work a long package that he said was a curtain rod. The jury would hear that after the assassination, no one saw him with the curtain rod. So he was not going back to his room to install it. The prosecution could also show a picture of the curtain rod that was already in Oswald’s room. The jury would also hear from an expert who could tell them that Oswald’s rifle could be disassembled and carried in a bag. More importantly, the jury would also hear that the police found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, a rifle with Oswald’s fingerprints and that had been purchased by someone using an alias that Oswald used. They would also hear that police found a large paper bag with Oswald’s fingerprints. There would be testimony from the officers who went to Mrs Paine's house. Mariana told them that her husband owned a rifle. She took them to the garage to show them it. One of the officers lifted the blanket where the rifle was stored and it was empty.
Prosecution Argument # 2 Oswald was seen on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, The work crew that was fixing the floor of the sixth floor would testify that at noon November 22, 1963, they left to eat lunch and watch the president on the first floor. They saw Oswald remain on the sixth floor.
Prosecution Argument # 3 Oswald shot Kennedy
A witness looked up from the sidewalk and saw Oswald shooting at the president from a window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He gave a description of Oswald to two police officers. Oswald’s description went over Dallas Police radio at 12:45, fifteen minutes after the assassination. Five other witnesses saw a rifle pointing out the window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Three earwitnesses on the fifth floor of Texas School Book Depository heard the shooting. Two witnesses saw Oswald with his rifle in the window of the sixth floor of Texas School Book Depository before the assassination. They mistook him for a Secret Service agent.
Prosecution Argument # 4 Oswald left work. He had no reason to leave other than to escape.
Prosecution Argument #5 Oswald killed a police officer.
Five witnesses would tell the jury that they saw Oswald kill Officer J D Tippet. Four others would testify that they saw Oswald flee the scene of the crime with a pistol in his hand. I said that Oswald killing Kennedy is an open and shut case. The evidence he killed Tippit is stronger. Tippit’s death shows that Oswald knew he was the most wanted criminal on the face of the Earth and that he was panicked.
Prosecution Argument # 6 Oswald hid from the police.
The jury would hear from a manager of a shore store who, when the police were coming down the street, saw Oswald hide from them in the lobby of his shore store. The store was 15 feet from the street. He would tell how after the police left, Oswald went across the street and went inside a movie theater without buying a ticket.
Prosecution Argument # 7 Oswald wanted to kill another police officer.
Witnesses would describe that when the first police officer approached him, Oswald hit the officer in the nose and reached for his pistol.
Prosecution Argument # 8 The doctors who performed the autopsy determined that the President had been killed by two bullets from behind. Which would back up that Oswald killed the President.
The autopsy has been criticized because none of the doctors were forensic pathologists. Their findings have been backed up by three expert panels. The first by one selected by Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1968, then by the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 and finally by the House Select Committee on Assassination in 1978. So the prosecution could have found experts to back up the autopsy. I don’t think criticism of the autopsy could have distracted from the prosecution case. When I served on a jury, one of our instructions said that reasonable doubt could not come from speculation or imagination. We were also told to use our common sense. The evidence against Oswald is very strong. Obviously the non forensic pathologists got it right. It is not like they were unqualified.
Post conviction: The evidence against Oswald is so strong that it destroys the idea that he was a patsy. It also pretty obvious he did it on his own. So there is less support for conspiracies. Oswald probably gets the death penalty, But I don’t think he would have been executed. His trail probably does not happen until 1965. There would have been change of venue arguments. There would have been appeals. There are pre trail publicity issues. The diminished ranks of conspiracy theorists file frivolous appeals. Certainly the appeals last more than two years. Starting in 1967, litigation stopped all executions. Oswald is spared from his death sentences in 1972, when the Supreme Court overturns all existing death sentences in it’s Furman vs Georgia decision, He could still be alive at the age of 76 probably in some mental ward of the Texas prison system.
One interesting and plausible scenario
After he was arrested Oswald said he wanted John Abt, the Chief Counsel of the US Communist Party to represent him. Abt, who spent that weekend at his cabin in the woods of Connecticut, ( Notice that the Chief Counsel of the US Communist Party was paid well enough to live in New York City and afford a cabin.) could not be reached until Monday November 25,1963, after Oswald was dead. He said he would have been too busy to represent Oswald. I am sure Gus Hall and Nikita Khrushchev and later Leonid Brezhnev would not want the American Communist Party’s top lawyer to represent the man who killed the President. Oswald was therefore not going to get his lawyer of choice. One possible substitute for Abt might have been Mark Lane. He is best known as a lying Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theorist. He was a lawyer by trade. He represented James Earl Ray before the House Assassination Committee. He told the committee that he had witnesses that saw Ray at a gas station blocks away from the scene of the crime at the time of King’s murder. One of these witness testified before the committee that he was not in Memphis the day of the assassination. Another one of his witnesses ( Ray’s neighbor in the rooming house ) She said she saw someone who did not resemble Ray leaving the scene of the crime in hurry. In doing so, she was contradicting her earlier statements to the Memphis Police and the FBI after the King Assassination. She had said that she was bedridden and did not get out of bed. Lane was reprimanded by the committee. So if Lane, while representing Oswald, called fraudulent and unreliable witnesses, Oswald could have appealed his sentence on the grounds incompetent defense council. So Oswald would have gotten a new trail, circa 1969, That would have started a new round of appeals. Also if he gets death sentence, there is a new round of litigation. So surely, in this scenario, he would have made it to 1972 and have his death sentence overturned.