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(More customer reviews)The quote I used in the title of this review came from the lips of Mrs. Ruth Paine in 1986, and can be heard on this DVD. Mrs. Paine was one of the very few people in the world who knew Mr. and Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald fairly well just prior to November 22, 1963, which was the Friday when Lee Oswald took a gun to work and assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
In July of 1986, Mrs. Paine was one of several people who travelled from America to London in order to participate in a TV "docu-trial" ("ON TRIAL: LEE HARVEY OSWALD"), a simulated courtroom trial produced by "London Weekend Television".
The mock trial was 21 hours long, but approximately 75% of that filmed footage was left on the cutting-room floor, with the 21 hours' worth of trial material being trimmed down to a little more than 5 hours for its original two-part "Showtime" cable-TV broadcast on November 21 and 22, 1986.
This 2-Disc DVD edition of "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald" contains the entire uncut docu-trial as it was originally aired in November 1986 by the Showtime network in the United States (5+ hours of programming).
However, some portions of the original Showtime broadcast featuring host Edwin Newman and other commentators (such as Jack Anderson, Ramsey Clark, and Alan Dershowitz) have not been included on this DVD.
Very brief interview snippets with the two lead attorneys involved in the trial (Vincent Bugliosi and Gerry Spence) that were aired on TV in '86 have also been removed for this DVD presentation. But all of the in-the-courtroom footage from the original '86 Showtime broadcast appears to be intact and included in this MPI Home Video version.
Footnote regarding running time --- Each of the two DVDs in this set has an incorrect (too short) running time shown on it. Based on the printed information on the discs, the total run time is only 4 hours and 8 minutes. But the total time for both DVDs is actually 5 hours and 7 minutes, which almost certainly represents the whole program as it first aired on Showtime (minus some of the wraparound segments with Edwin Newman, et al).*
* = At least one subsequent airing of this docu-trial on a different U.S. network (in 1988), however, does contain additional courtroom footage that is not included in this Showtime/MPI version.
But it's not entirely surprising that alternate versions of this lengthy program were produced, featuring different editing, given the fact that more than three-fourths of the filmed trial was edited out in the first place (including the entire testimony of at least one witness, Jack Tatum).
Another packaging error can be found on the back cover of this MPI DVD, where we find this absurdly-overstated blurb -- "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald recalls all of the surviving witnesses...".
But quite obviously, as of July 1986 (when the Oswald TV trial took place), more than just the 21 people who took the witness stand at this mock trial were still among the living (as far as assassination-related witnesses are concerned).
No witnesses were subpoenaed, however. The people who took the witness stand at the mock trial did so voluntarily. They were not being forced to appear. So, that fact certainly must have limited the length of the witness lists for both the defense and the prosecution to a large degree.
"On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald" has the feel of a real trial (although, of course, it isn't, since the defendant in the case, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself shot and killed by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby just two days after President Kennedy was murdered)....with a real judge sitting on the bench in the London courtroom, 12 real Dallas jurors sitting in the jury box, 21 real sworn-in witnesses (connected in various ways to the JFK and/or J.D. Tippit murder cases) taking the witness stand to testify on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense, and two prominent U.S. trial attorneys presenting their cases in front of the jury -- Vincent T. Bugliosi for the prosecution (representing the "U.S. Government") and Gerry Spence representing the deceased defendant, Lee Oswald.
Mr. Bugliosi, in 2005, said it was his belief that the 1986 television docu-trial was "the closest thing to a trial that Lee Harvey Oswald ever had or will have". And after having watched that trial many times since '86, I have to fully concur with Vince's assessment as well.
This simulated trial was the springboard that led Bugliosi to write his mammoth and all-encompassing book on the JFK assassination, "Reclaiming History", which took Vince more than 20 years to research and write. The book was finally published in May 2007.
As mentioned previously, Ruth Paine was among the 21 witnesses who testified at the TV docu-trial, and Paine's testimony is among the most riveting and enlightening during the five-hour program. Even after 23 years, the raw emotion of that day back in 1963 still resonates deeply within her. Ruth's testimony is worth the price of this DVD set alone.
Another standout section of "On Trial" comes during the latter portion of the program, when noted conspiracy theorist and House Select Committee on Assassinations [HSCA] member Dr. Cyril H. Wecht takes the witness stand to face off against Vince Bugliosi.
The sparks begin to fly when Bugliosi wants Dr. Wecht to explain what happened to the intact bullet that exited President Kennedy's throat, heading downward and forward, directly toward Governor John Connally in the limousine.
Although Wecht agrees with Bugliosi that the bullet did, indeed, go completely through JFK's body without deviating from its original flight path, Cyril also contends that the bullet did not strike Governor Connally at all. Instead, evidently it vanished into thin air without a trace. (Talk about a "magic bullet".)
Other witnesses who put in an appearance include (among a few others): Charles Brehm, Buell Wesley Frazier, Dallas police officer Marrion Baker (who actually stopped Oswald and spoke to him inside the Texas School Book Depository within minutes of JFK's assassination), Harold Norman, Johnny Brewer, Nelson Delgado, Edwin Lopez, Seth Kantor, Ted Callaway, Eugene Boone (the deputy sheriff who first discovered Oswald's rifle on the sixth floor of the Depository), William Newman, Dr. Vincent Guinn, Dr. Charles Petty, and FBI agent James Hosty (who was aware of Oswald's presence in Dallas weeks prior to 11/22/63).
A full DVD chapter/witness list is provided later in this review.
Vince Bugliosi puts on a strong prosecutor's case against Oswald in "On Trial", relying heavily, of course, on the wide array of physical and circumstantial evidence that easily shows Oswald to be guilty of not only killing President Kennedy, but also of murdering a second man on November 22, 1963 -- Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, who was shot four times by Oswald on 10th Street in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff, approximately 45 minutes after Kennedy was slain right in front of Oswald's workplace on Elm Street.
Gerry Spence, on the other hand, relies mainly on guesswork, unsupportable theories, and "what if" scenarios in his attempted (and anemic) defense of his "client", Lee H. Oswald.
Mr. Spence is a good showman, though, I must say that. He's fun to watch in the courtroom. And so is Bugliosi, I might add. But Spence's choice of witnesses to try and buttress his case for conspiracy was rather weak, to say the least, with only 7 witnesses called to the stand (per the final 5-hour version of the trial seen on Showtime anyway), with one of those seven being the laughable Tom Tilson.
Mr. Tilson, who was a Dallas police officer in 1963, tells the jury a crazy tale about how Jack Ruby killed President Kennedy, with Tilson witnessing Ruby's getaway just after the assassination.
Not all of Tilson's testimony was shown on TV, however. Here's the text of a portion of Mr. Tilson's testimony that didn't make the final television cut (and it's a howl too). The following paragraph comes directly from Vincent Bugliosi's outstanding and comprehensive book on the assassination, "Reclaiming History":
"I asked Tilson why, if he believed the man he pursued was Ruby, didn't he give Dallas homicide Ruby's name when he called them with his information? Unbelievably, Tilson answered, 'Well, I couldn't. Somebody might go get Jack Ruby and he might not have been guilty.' (Translation: Never pursue any suspect to a crime because there's always a chance the suspect might not be guilty.)" -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Page 879 of "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" (W.W. Norton & Company)(c.2007)
~LOL break~
In the end, thankfully, the real evidence against the defendant is able to conquer the fanciful "what ifs" in the minds of the jurors, and after six hours of deliberations, Lee Harvey Oswald was declared "Guilty" at the conclusion of the mock trial.
Three of those jurors, however, weren't convinced that there was no "conspiracy" to murder the President; but all twelve of them were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Oswald did, in fact, kill John Kennedy.
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Here are a few random excerpts that can be found in "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald":
"The evidence that will be presented at this trial will show that there is no substance to the persistent charge by these critics that Lee Harvey Oswald was just a patsy, set up to take the fall by some elaborate conspiracy. We expect the evidence -- ALL of the evidence -- to show that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was...Read more›
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Among the most heinous criminal acts ever committed on American soil is the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. When accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was himself shot to death two days later while in police custody, Americans were denied hard answers to a brutal and bewildering mystery. ON TRIAL: LEE HARVEY OSWALD recalls all of the surviving witnesses to determine the guilt or innocence of the man believed to have murdered JFK. First broadcast by the Showtime cable network in 1986 to mark the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, ON TRIAL: LEE HARVEY OSWALD is a daring, one-of-a-kind experiment with the goal to heal a nation.November 22nd, 2008 marks the 45th anniversary of JFK s assassination.Features prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi and defending attorney Gerry Spence, two of the most publicly revered legal minds of the 20th century.
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