03/05/2020
Many of my friends are unaware that when I was attending SMU Law School, I also worked in the law office of Phil Burleson , Attorney at Law, as his law clerk, and I had the opprotunity to write three of the briefs on appeal to the Fifth District Court of Appeals on the case of Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the assaign of President John F. Kennedy. I had to read all 28 unabridged volumes of the Warren Commission Reports and 9,000 pages of testimony. I just saw the old film "Parkland" on Kenndey's assignation, which mentioned Sorrels, a Secret Service agent, and Sargent Dean who was in charge of the Dallas Police basement and did such a terific job keeping people out ( Ruby just strolled in with a gun and shot Oswald on TV) I remember seeing the shootingin the fraternity house while I was in an undergraduate fraternity at SMU. Sgt Dean and Sorrels testified at trial that they took Jack Ruby to the 5th floor of the Dallas Municipal Building, and interviewed him in his shorts , 5 minutes after the shooting,, where he allegedly verbally admitted to thinking about killing Oswald 3 days before. It was not admissible under the Texas confession rules, since it was not in writing, nor was he warned of his rights, nor was it in writing and witnessed as required by law, however Judge Joe B. Brown, who presided over the Ruby trial allowed it in as "res gestae", as being "a spontaneous utterance" as an exception to the hearsay Evidence Rule. The exception allows spontaneous statements made immediately after a traumatic event in evidence as being true , since " it is the transaction speaking through them not them speaking about the transaction", i. e. give a guy 30 minutes and maybe he will think up a different story. The only problem was that Channel 4, KRLD TV had them both on videotape 20 minutes after the shooting and WBAP ,Channel 5, had them on videotape for another 10 minutes after that, ergo, they just lied. That was the reversal point and Jack Ruby's appeal was granted and the case was sent back for a retrial. Before that happened, Jack Ruby died of a brain tumor and so technically died an innocent man. All of this came back to me recently when I went for the first time in all these years to the Museum at the Records Building and saw Ruby's hat on display and the fanous photo of him shooting Oswald. Just a little part of history that I had a small part in living.
