In January of 1964 I was selected to serve as an Assistant Counsel to the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, commonly known as the Warren Commission. In that capacity I worked with 25 other lawyers and staff to handle the day-to-day work of the investigation into the death of the President. That investigation resulted in the interviewing of 552 witnesses, the presentation of 3,100 exhibits and the 888-page report that was released on September 24, 1964. My assignment was to to investigate the activities and actions of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby.
As I result, it was with great anticipation that I read Dan Abrams’ and David Fisher’s new book, Kennedy’s Avenger – Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby.
The trial of Jack Ruby is important in understanding the events of November 1963 and has been overlooked by many historians. I was pleased to find that the authors’ central theme, as the name implies, is that Ruby was an avenger, not a co-conspirator — an important distinction.
The authors correctly analyze the complexity of Ruby’s personality, his bizarre lifestyle and the happenstance that brought him to the Dallas police station on the fateful morning of November 24, 1963. The fact that he left his beloved dog in the car at the time of the shooting and that he waited in line to send a telegram just minutes before shooting Oswald are enough to show that a conspiracy was impossible.
When Ruby was originally charged, he was represented by a local Dallas criminal lawyer who had a good track record in defending murder cases but was not a famous name. His theory was to plead Ruby to a murder charge that lacked the element of malice, which would have saved Ruby from the death penalty. He then planned to show that Ruby acted in the heat of passion and garner the sympathy of the community – which pollsters at the time showed was heavily on Ruby’s side. But Ruby’s brother and sister wanted a big name and hired famous personal injury lawyer Melvin Belli – at a cost of $75,000, which would be about $650,000 in today’s money.
As presiding Judge Joe Brown would later write, “Melvin Belli may have been the king of torts, but when it came to trying a criminal case in Texas, he was hardly royalty.” Belli was clearly the wrong man for the job. The decision by the Ruby family to engage his services changed history and doomed Ruby’s fate.
Belli was seen by Texans as a city slicker who mixed with Dallas prosecutors like oil and water. He propounded a bizarre defense of temporary insanity based on an epileptic condition — a defense that had never been successfully used. It was a crucial decision and in retrospect the wrong decision.
As the book progresses, the reader begins to have sympathy for Ruby, a once proud and flamboyant man who was forced to sit through a trial that dissected his mind in open court. The trial dragged on for 14 days as the temperature in the court room reached the 90s. There was no air conditioning. The jurors were sequestered and those picked early on had been sitting for two weeks before for the trial even started.
The presiding judge, Joe Brown — never known as a great legal scholar — hired a public relations person to represent him during the trial and, like Belli, planned to write a book about the trial. His activities during the trial did much to aggravate the already heated tempers of both sides. Closing arguments started at 8pm on the final day of the trial. The case concluded at 1am, the jurors having listened to testimony the whole day.
Ruby was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. An appeals courts later threw out the conviction and a new trial was ordered. But Ruby died before a new trial could be had. Technically he died an innocent man.
The story of the trial of Jack Ruby is an important part of America’s jurisprudence. In an age before courts properly supervised the media, it demonstrates how press coverage can sway a community and how bad lawyering and bad judging affects the quality of justice.
Abrams and Fisher do an excellent job of showing the roots of many of the conspiracy theories that continue to abound. But they do not take the reader down the rabbit hole.
It was a pleasure to find authors who seek to inform the American public of the facts rather then myth. This is a book that I would recommend to any student of the Kennedy assassination and any law student would like to follow the day-to-day proceedings of a murder trial. It is concise yet readable and helps to further substantiate the findings of the Warren Commission -— that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and that no conspiracy existed then or now.
Burt W. Griffin is a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Law School. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio; director of the Cleveland Legal Aid Society and was a judge on the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court for 30 years. His forthcoming book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be published in 2022.
3 Responses to “BOOK REVIEW: “Kennedy’s Avenger,” reviewed by Judge Burt W. Griffin (ret.)”
Mel Maurer
Thanks for this review. How good is to have a book based on fact and not speculations for profit.
Rebecca Tonahill
My father Joe Tonahill worked With Belli representing Jack Ruby. I attended the trial.
Howard Charles Yourow, S.J.D.
I enjoyed BWG’s review, supra, and look forward to reading both >> Kennedy’s Avenger << as well as the judge's own volume.