The People V. Lee Harvey Oswald - Hardcover

In a brilliantly conceived but workmanlike courtroom drama built around the testimonies of more than 175 actual witnesses to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, having survived Jack Ruby's attempt to assassinate him, goes on trial in late 1964 for the murder of the president and is acquitted. Brown, a historian and former special agent of the Justice Department, makes a strong case that Oswald was the patsy for a professional conspiracy. Oswald's fictive defense attorney, youthful Edward Barnes, the Minnesota kid, riddles holes in the flimsy case mounted by highstrung, 50ish Texas prosecuting attorney Raymond Matthews, who sees the trial as his ticket to fame. In Brown's persuasive argument, there is overwhelming evidence that Oswald did not pull the trigger on any rifle aimed over Dealey Plaza, and that the Dallas police, federal officials and pathologists suppressed or destroyed key evidence. Regrettably, Brown does not explore the conspiracy angle beyond suggesting that the CIA, the Mafia, oil companies and the military all had strong motives to eliminate Kennedy, and the narrative, which may engage history and legal buffs, proceeds at the tedious pace of most actual trials. An epilogue skewers the Warren Commission's lone-assassin scenario and its apologists.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.