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Jack Ruby Trial: 1964

A Police Buff, Most Jurors Saw The Shooting, Psychomotor Epilepsy, Eeg Tracings, Suggestions For Further Reading



Defendant: Jack Leon Ruby
Crime Charged: Murder
Chief Defense Lawyers: Melvin Mouron Belli, Phil Burleson, Robert B. Denson, Elmer Gertz, Tom Howard, William Kuntsler, and Joe Tonahill
Chief Prosecutors: William F. Alexander, Jim Bowie, Henry Menasco Wade, Jr., and Frank Watts
Judge: Joe Brantley Brown
Place: Dallas, Texas
Dates of Trial: March 4-14, 1964
Verdict: Guilty



SIGNIFICANCE: The significance of the Jack Ruby trial is simple and obvious: this was the trial of the man who killed the man who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

At 12:30 P.M. on Friday, November 22, 1963, nightclub manager Jack Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News turning in his advertising copy for the weekend editions. Word of gunshots in nearby Dealey Plaza burst into the room. Stunned, Ruby and newspeople there tuned into their television sets to learn of the shooting of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Ruby instantly raced to Parkland Hospital's emergency room. There he and a handful of reporters heard acting White House Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff announce that the president had died.

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Law Library - American Law and Legal InformationNotable Trials and Court Cases - 1963 to 1972