Jack Ruby : A Review and Reassessment - Part 1
By Max Arvo
Jack Ruby’s first lawyer after he shot Oswald was Tom Howard. Howard was present at City Hall before, during and after the shooting. He filed a writ of habeas corpus, seeking Ruby’s release on bond, with his law partner Colley Sullivan; their law offices were directly across the street. They filed before it was confirmed that Oswald was dead; as such, Ruby had not yet been charged with murder.
Howard called Judge Joe B. Brown to request the writ. Howard described the call in his memoir about the trial:
[Howard] telephoned me at home and told me about the shooting. It was the first I had heard about it.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
Tom, who was an old friend, wanted me to issue a writ of habeas corpus, since Oswald was not then dead. Ruby was being held on a charge of assault to murder and was eligible for release on bond.
“Let’s wait and see what happens to Oswald,” I told him. [1]
Brown suggests here that Howard did not file the writ because he had told Howard to wait until Oswald’s condition became clear. That is demonstrably not true, because the court records confirm that it was filed. Regardless, Brown contradicts himself on this very point a few pages later, when he writes that “Ruby’s first attorney, Tom Howard, had asked for a writ of habeas corpus as early as December 27, 1963.”
Besides contradicting himself on whether the writ was filed, Brown also provides an incorrect date. In the previous paragraph, Brown wrote that “nobody wanted Ruby to get out on bond, least of all the defense.” Once again - even based purely on what Brown had written earlier in the same book - that was not true. These may be small details, but they are, I think, instructive and representative of all the proceedings related to Ruby. The record is hazy, incomplete, and contradictory; much of that derives from the contradictory testimony of many participants, who often also provided accounts which were demonstrably untrue.
Howard then initiated the insanity defense for Ruby, very shortly after the shooting. On the 25th, Howard told the press that “I think he was probably temporarily out of his mind. … If he was in the same state at the time of the shooting as when I saw him, I think he is emotionally disturbed.” [2] This seems to have been based on nothing but Howard’s own thoughts; it was certainly not based on any psychiatric examination or evidence.
The prosecution, under District Attorney Henry Wade, managed to get Dr. John T. Holbrook to examine Ruby on the 25th. Holbrook testified during the trial that he saw Ruby “around noon” and that he stayed with Ruby “about two hours.” During that examination, he administered “a routine psychiatric examination” and a “mental status examination.” He told counsel that Ruby had a “good recall of recent events,” that he had ruled out “any type of schizophrenia,” “involuntary melancholia,” as well as “all functional mental psychoses.” He also ruled out epilepsy. It seems that Howard did not have access to Holbrook’s conclusions when he launched the insanity defense; regardless, an insanity defense was just about the only option Howard had available, given that Ruby had shot Oswald on live TV. The only question was how that defense would be presented.
The legal criteria for insanity in Texas at that time were based on the McNaghten rules. Devised in 1843, they were by 1963 already widely disliked due to their outdated foundation. Regardless, they were the criteria Ruby’s defense had to meet if they were to prove him legally insane. The McNaghten rules required that the defendant, at the time of the crime, either did not know “the nature and quality of the act” due to a “disease of the mind” or, if they did know of the act, that they did not know that it “was wrong.” [3] As Ruby did know of his crime, and because they had already presented Ruby as having been only ‘temporarily’ insane, the defense therefore had to prove that, at the time of the Oswald shooting, Ruby’s temporary insanity prevented him from knowing the difference between right and wrong.
This was why the prosecution, who had called Holbrook as a witness, asked him if he had “an opinion as to whether he knew the difference between right and wrong and understood the nature and consequence of his act.” Holbrook simply replied “yes, sir.” [4] This confirmed that the first psychiatrist to examine Ruby, the day after the shooting, and then again on December 4th and January 27th-29th, detected no mental illness or disorder of any kind, including epilepsy, and that he believed Ruby was clinically and legally sane when he shot Oswald.
The defense therefore had an almost impossible challenge. Judge Brown wrote later that “in justice to Melvin Belli, it should be said that he didn’t have a chance.” [5] Howard’s attempt when he was defense lead seems to have been a loose, non-specific attempt to prove insanity. Once Melvin Belli was leading the defense, their strategy revolved around the very specific and obscure diagnosis - now obsolete - of ‘psychomotor epilepsy’.
Most accounts of Ruby’s defense seem to assume that Howard was Ruby’s first defense lead from shortly after the shooting on 24th November to sometime around mid-December, when flamboyant California lawyer Melvin Belli, whose expertise was primarily in civil cases and specifically tort law, arrived in Dallas and took the lead until Ruby’s conviction on March 14th 1964. He proposed a strange and confusing insanity defense based on a diagnosis of ‘psychomotor epilepsy,’ bored and bewildered the jurors with dense psychiatric testimony and a procession of nationally esteemed psychiatrists, lost the case as emphatically as possible, at which point he seemingly let his ego finally get the better of him, and he unleashed a vicious public tirade against Dallas and its citizens, resulting in the Ruby family firing him a day or two after the conviction. The perception, then and now, seems to be that Belli - this most image-obsessed, self-absorbed, egotistical, fame-hungry of lawyers - muscled his way into the ‘trial of the century’, waltzing in from his California world of wealth and celebrity, at which point it became clear he was in over his head, failed Ruby and embarrassed himself.
While some of that may well be true, I believe the evidence clearly demonstrates that Belli was committed to the trial as defense lead by the end of the day on 27th November, three days after the shooting. Belli says as much in his account of the trial, Dallas Justice, even though, when he first arrived in Dallas at the start of December, he told the press he hadn’t yet decided whether he would take the case. [6] In truth, he had signed on weeks earlier.
Earl Ruby called his brother Jack the day after the shooting, on the 25th. Earl told the Warren Commission that Jack
mentioned somebody wanted some information on his life or something, a life story or something, something to that effect, and he said to contact Mike Shore in California, in Los Angeles, who is a friend of ours, and he was a pretty well known publicity man. [7]
Earl then said that he had known Shore “since high school days in Chicago” and had subsequently done “some business with him.” Shore was also a long-time friend of Jack; he was one of the numerous individuals Jack called in the weeks leading up to the assassination. In 1963, between October 25th and October 31st, he called Shore four times and, on October 30th, he sent Shore “a special delivery letter.” Prior to that, he called Shore twice on August 2nd. [8]
Earl said that he called Shore “just a day or two” after Jack shot Oswald (i.e., on the 25th or 26th). Earl described his conversation with Shore:
I mentioned that Jack had said that people were interested in a story on Jack and Jack had said to contact him, ask his advice. And so he [Shore] says, “Gee, that is a coincidence,” he says, “because I’ve got somebody sitting right here in my office that would be the perfect man to do a story on Jack if one is going to be done.” And he says, “His name is Billy Woodfield.” His real name is William Woodfield. So he says, “I think you ought to come out here,” the conversation got to that, “so we can talk it over.” So I flew out there a day or two later. [9]
Earl is quite vague regarding the exact dates of any of these events, but, given that Belli told Earl on the 27th that he would lead the Ruby defense, and that Jack told Earl to call Shore on the 25th, it seems almost certain that Earl flew to California on the 26th, having called Jack and Shore on the 25th.
Earl said that Woodfield and Shore met him at the airport and that the “first thing they ask is ‘have you got a lawyer?’” He says he is “not sure yet,” at which time they immediately start talking about Belli, telling Earl “how great he was.” They then told him that “By coincidence he is in town. He is in L.A.” [10]
I’ll restate these details for clarity’s sake. In this part of his Warren Commission testimony, Earl has just told a story in which he was only ever meeting Woodfield and Shore to explore selling the rights to Jack’s story, in order to raise much-needed funds for his defense. The question of legal representation had never been discussed. He had also stated that he’d told Woodfield and Shore that they did not have a lawyer yet, and that he had never heard of Melvin Belli.
Having said all this, Earl then - just a few sentences later - is asked if Shore “had mentioned Belli” during their phone call, to which Earl replies “we must have talked about him on the phone.” He thereby contradicts himself - they had been discussing legal representation from the start, and he did know of Belli.
It therefore seems clear that, despite Earl’s obfuscations, Earl went to LA to meet with Shore and Woodfield, and that all three of them were working to find a lead defense counsel for Jack, with Belli already in mind. Earl also told the commission that “they probably did” ask Belli to come to LA; he thereby again contradicts himself, mere sentences apart, by first saying that they had said Belli was in LA “by coincidence” and then saying that he thought it “probably” wasn’t a coincidence at all. [11]
Earl told the commission that he then met with Belli that evening and they discussed plans for Jack’s story and Belli joining the case. Belli discussed “what he thinks we ought to do, and psychiatrists we might need, and different things that, he mentioned he would bring in Tonahill. He worked with Tonahill before.” [12] Belli tells exactly the same story in Dallas Justice, writing that, following his meeting with Earl on the evening of the 27th, he signed up to the case:
And so, even before I had recovered from the shock of that awful weekend that had stunned all Americans, I was involved in the Jack Ruby case, the final formal postscript to the tragic series of events that began when a sniper’s bullets killed the President of the United States. [13]
According to Belli, it was always going to be him. He wrote a few pages later:
As far as I can find out, I was the only one seriously considered, and it turned out I was Jack’s own choice. He had lived in San Francisco for a time, and he knew of my experience with medical cases. [14]
In summary, Melvin Belli had committed to lead the Ruby defense by the end of the day on 27th November. He discussed which psychiatrists they could use with Earl, and also insisted that his old friend and colleague Joe Tonahill join the case with him. Belli and Tonahill were longtime friends of Hubert Winston Smith, who was already in Texas.
As I’ll discuss shortly, the three of them seem to have quickly got to work crafting the defense they would present once the trial began. I believe I can also prove that that defense was almost entirely crafted by Hubert Winston Smith, who was advising Belli throughout. By the end of the day on the 29th, MKULTRA psychiatrist Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West had also inserted himself into the Ruby case, along with the American Psychiatric Association, and several other prominent psychiatrists and lawyers.
Smith and Tonahill had known West since at least as far back as February 1959, when they all participated in that year’s Law-Science course, organized by Smith under the auspices of his Law-Science Academy. Other attendees at that course in New Orleans included Stewart Wolf, another MKULTRA psychiatrist and mentor of West; Alton Ochsner, the influential highly conservative and rabidly anti-communist New Orleans-based physician, with numerous intelligence connections; and Harold Rosen, one of the most influential postwar psychiatrists, a foundational figure in the flourishing field of hypnosis, and verifiably connected to the CIA.
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Footnotes
[1] Dallas and the Jack Ruby Trial: Memoir of Judge Joe B. Brown, Sr., Joe B. Brown, location 318 of 4047, ebook edition.
[2] ‘Self Appointed Avenger Kills Assassin Suspect’, The Sacramento Bee, November 25th 1963, p. 1 and 4.
[3] ‘M’Naghten Rules - defense of insanity’ Exchange Chambers’, August 1 2022, https://www.exchangechambers.co.uk/ian-harris-mnaghten-rules/
[4] Jack Ruby Trial Transcript Vol. 6, March 11 1964, p. 106. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=217788#relPageId=106&search=holbrook
[5] Dallas and the Jack Ruby Trial, Brown, location 970 of 4047, ebook edition.
[6] ‘Melvin Belli May Join In Ruby Defense’, UPI, The Sacramento Bee, 10th December 1963, page 12.
[7] Earl Ruby, Warren Commission Testimony, p. 96.
[8] HSCA Volume 9, Chronologies, p.1079-1101. https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol9/pdf/HSCA_Vol9_5G_Chronologies.pdf
[9] Ibid. On p.111, Earl says that “only a day or so” had elapsed between his talk with Shore and traveling to California, seeming to confirm that he did in fact fly out there on the 26th.
[10] Ibid., p.111.
[11] Ibid., p.112.
[12] Ibid., p.119.
[13] Ibid. p.9.
[14] Dallas Justice, Belli, p.8.
