Thoughts on a bus trip

[Drew Phipps]

I have neither the time or the patience to teach a class on evidence. In the interests of furthering this discussion, I will briefly discuss.

I can tell you that you are confusing the definition of the word "evidence," with the pre-requisites of its "admissibility" in a proceeding in a court of law. In every case, there is "evidence" which is "admissible" under the applicable rules, and "evidence" which is not.

"Relevant evidence" is something that tends to prove or disprove a fact in issue in a case, i.e., that Oswald was in the downtown Dallas area on 11/22/63. "Material" means the thing to be proven by your evidence is somehow important to the case, as opposed to, say, the price of tea in China on 11/22/63. "Competent" (as you have used the term here) means it's been "authenticated', which under both Federal and Texas law, means simply that someone said, "this thing that you handed me in court is what it seems." The standard then (as I understand it) was whether or not a judge could conclude that a jury might believe that the item was, what its proponent claimed it to be. (Nowadays the standards are even easier, you just need a sponsoring witness.)

Since there wasn't actually a trial, I'm presuming all the tangible evidence seized by Dallas PD, and/or the FBI and/or the SS, had there been a trial, would have been duly "authenticated" by officers/agents of these organizations who wrote either reports, or sworn statements, concerning the recovery of the tangible evidence. (By this last sentence I do not mean to imply that all such testimony would have necessarily been truthful, nor does it mean that the tiny "authentication" hurdle offered by the rules of evidence (then or now) means that the trier of fact will believe that the item in question has, or has not been forged, or otherwise procured by deceit.)

"Chain of custody" for tangible evidence means that law enforcement has made a record of who, when, and how an object was handled from the time it passed into police custody till the time it wound up in court. It has nothing to do with the origins of the item, or whether it is what the government says it is. As I have said repeatedly, much of the evidence, including the bus ticket, gathered in this case, would have been rendered "inadmissible" by the secret transfer en masse to the FBI lab, then back to Dallas, unless the government 'fessed up to the transfer, and then offered a revised chain of custody (of some of the tangible evidence) which included the "Weekend at Hoover's". (BTW, that's an 80's movie reference.)

Arguing that a tangible item is not "admissible evidence" is using the rules requiring relevance, materiality, authentication, and an armful of other issues, but doesn't destroy the characterization of a tangible item as "evidence". When you say "authenticated evidence", none of it has been authenticated in a court of law, so you are left with a choice of a) disregarding everything you've read and seen about the JFK assassination on the basis of this particular technicality, and having nothing left to talk about, or b) you can accept that every tangible item seized by law enforcement would have, in 1963, found a sponsoring witness to hop the tiny hurdle of "authentication" and then move on to the much more interesting substantive questions of stuff like, "Is this for real?"