How Jack Ruby got away with murder in the shooting of JFK’s assassin [Opinion]

One of the most powerful images in American history is the execution of President John F. Kennedy’s accused assassin on national television before an estimated 80 million Americans. Jack Ruby — viewed by some as a willing participant in a conspiracy to murder JFK on Nov. 22, 1963 and by others as a Dallas nightclub owner distraught over the killing of his beloved president — has captured the imagination of historians and researchers alike. Not left to the imagination, however, is that Ruby will go down in history as an innocent man.

Next month marks the 55th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald and, two days later, the accused assassin’s death at the hands of Ruby. Just four months later, and after less than two hours of deliberation, a Dallas County jury found Ruby guilty of murder and sentenced him to die in the electric chair. For those who believed that Ruby was ordered to silence Oswald, a self-proclaimed “patsy,” as part of a conspiracy, Ruby’s death sentence was another plot point to keep the world from ever knowing who murdered the 35th president.

But the critical coda to the murders of Kennedy and Oswald is that Ruby did not keep his date with the executioner. Fifty-two years ago this week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s last resort for all criminal cases, reversed Ruby’s murder conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial because of the trial judge’s egregious legal errors. Because Ruby died before he could be retried, in the eyes of the law, he will always be an innocent man.

How did it come to pass that the Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously found that Ruby’s trial, one of the most sensational of the 20th Century, was fatally flawed?

First, a toxic mixture of an incompetent defense lawyer and a trial judge with a disregard for Ruby’s constitutional right to a fair trial with a reliable result.

Second, three judges who recognized they were being asked to review something more than merely Ruby’s conviction for murdering Oswald; they were being called upon to sit in judgment of the quality of Texas justice.

Any chance Ruby might have had for a level playing field was quickly lost when his request for a change of venue was denied, forcing him to stand trial for his life in a courthouse one hundred yards from where Oswald had allegedly murdered President Kennedy. But Ruby’s fate was surely sealed when he hired San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, spurning legendary Houston lawyer Percy Foreman, who had opined, “Any half-assed Texas lawyer could have gotten [Ruby] a suspended sentence.”

Belli was best known for his prowess as a personal injury lawyer, his penchant for self promotion and his long-standing ties with organized crime figures who allegedly hired him to keep Ruby from testifying. If true, Belli followed the mob’s orders crafting a starkly inept defense that Ruby suffered from psycho-motor epilepsy and was insane when he shot Oswald. Had Belli argued the only sound strategy, pleading Ruby guilty and arguing he acted out of his desire to kill the scoundrel who had murdered his beloved president, murder without malice, (manslaughter as it is known today), the punishment range was only of 2 to 5 years with probation an option.

The odds of Ruby avoiding his date with death were daunting. The CCA in 1966 was the nation’s most conservative appellate court, reversing only 3 percent of the cases it heard. But Ruby had finally seen the light, firing Belli and hiring an A-list appellate cadre, including Austin lawyer Sam Houston Clinton who was elected to the CCA in 1978 (and hired me as his first law clerk). On Oct. 5, 1966 , the CCA tossed Ruby’s conviction and death sentence because the trial judge had clearly erred in admitting Ruby’s incriminatory statement while in police custody evincing his premeditation to kill Oswald. The three judges also found that Judge Joe B. Brown Sr.’s refusal to move the trial from the poisoned atmosphere of Dallas County compelled a new trial. But Ruby’s win was short-lived. Days after winning his appeal, he was diagnosed with cancer and on Jan. 3, 1967, before his retrial in Wichita Falls could take place, Ruby took the presumption of innocence with him to his grave.

The CCA would undergo myriad changes over the next half-century. It would shed its conservative mantle, enduring a spate of bad publicity for a series of high profile reversals in the ’80s and early ’90s for what the public viewed as legal technicalities. By 1998, the court was all Republican and had taken a hard turn to the right; no Democrat has won election to the CCA since 1992. In the past 25 years, the CCA has experienced nadirs and zeniths, while remaining the most powerful court most Texans have never heard of. But for one defining moment more than a half-century ago, when it took Jack Ruby out of the shadow of the electric chair, the Court of Criminal Appeals made sure that Texas justice was more than a just a cruel oxymoron.

Wice is a criminal defense attorney and legal analyst for KPRC-TV and MSNBC.

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