OSWALD TRIAL

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30365, 14 February 1964, Page 16

OSWALD TRIAL

Venue Still Argued (N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) DALLAS (Texas), February 13. . A Dallas judge was accused in Court of being part of a high-level plot to deprive Jack Ruby, the killer of President Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, of a fair murder trial. Ruby, 52, shot and killed Oswald before a national television audience on November 24, two days after Oswald was charged with the assassination of President Kennedy. Ruby’s defence lawyer, Mr Melvin Belli, told the District Court that a public relations firm helping Judge Joe B. Brown, was part of the plot. The accusation came in the third day of a hearing of . the defence’s efforts to have Ruby’s trial moved to another city because of What Mr Belli called: “A conspiracy of the oligarchy that . exists in Dallas.” A series of defence witnesses including the president of the Dallas County Criminal Bar Association ' (Mr Stanley Marcus),. testified of their doubt that Ruby could be tried fairly in Dallas. The defence contention is that Dallas leaders want more than anything to improve the city’s image in die eyes of the world and that they think Ruby must be convicted for this to be achieved. Mother’s Opinion In Washington yesterday, Mrs Marguerite Oswald said she told an inquiry commission she believes her son was a United States intelligence agent who was “Set up to take the blame” for President Kennedy’s assassination. She said she believes her son was innocent.

The 56-yeair-old mother of Lee HarVey Oswald finished three days of testimony to a Presidential Investigating Commission. Then she held an impromptu news conference in which she acknowledged—despite her belief in Inis innocence—that: “I realise that as a human being he could be guilty.” But she said She possesses “pertinent evidence” leading her to believe the assassin is still at large. Chief Justice Earl Warren told reporters after the hearing, however, that Mrs Oswald offered no evidence to support her belief that the 24-year-old former marine was a secret agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.