DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Ian Kingsbury,
You're not actually suggesting that the CIVILIAN witnesses (Darrell Tomlinson and O.P. Wright) would be required to initial the bullet (CE399, that is), are you?
That's nonsense, of course. No civilian witness ever places their initials on any piece of evidence.
So, according to the CTers who think that EVERY person in the "chain" must place their initials on every piece of evidence connected to a criminal case in order for the chain of possession to be maintained properly, I guess there could never ever be any complete "chain" presented in a court of law, because no witness who ever picks up a bullet or a bullet shell (like Darrell Tomlinson, Virginia Davis, Barbara Davis, and Domingo Benavides) has placed their initials on any of that evidence.
So that fact breaks the chain right there -- right from the very beginning.
IAN KINGSBURY SAID:
You will notice, David, I did not mention any civilians in my post...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, I know you didn't. And that's precisely the point I was trying to get across. Various civilians saw and handled CE399 first (as well as all four bullet shells at the Tippit murder scene). And yet nobody expects those civilian witnesses' markings to appear on any of this ballistics evidence, even though they began the "chain".
IAN KINGSBURY SAID:
...and for a chain to start it needs an anchor point.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And CE399 does have an anchor point. It's Darrell Tomlinson, who said he found a whole bullet on a stretcher at Parkland.
And CE842 (the Connally bullet fragments) has an anchor point too. It's Audrey Bell and the envelope she filled out in her own handwriting at Parkland Hospital on 11/22/63.
And neither one of those "anchors" needed to put his or her initials on the evidence in order for the anchor to be legally accepted in a court of law (quite obviously).
IAN KINGSBURY SAID:
Do you play chess?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Not very often. But I do play a mean game of "Battling The JFK Conspiracy Kooks".
IAN KINGSBURY SAID:
The rifle would be the first piece to be established by the prosecution, because if you cannot prove it belonged to Oswald, the rest of the evidence would be inadmissible pertaining to Oswald.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
This is total nonsense, Ian. The palmprint of Oswald's found on the rifle would positively be enough evidence to link Oswald to that gun.
Plus there's the fact that Oswald was identified by a witness (yes, Brennan) firing a RIFLE out of a window on the same floor where the RIFLE was found. This fact, too, would probably be a good-enough circumstantial connection to get that rifle admitted into evidence at Oswald's trial. Ownership of the weapon would not be required.
Of course, we do have the "ownership" link in this case, too. But it's certainly not an absolute must.
For Pete sake, it's obvious that "ownership" of a murder weapon isn't a must-have requirement at a trial. If it were, all a killer would need to do would be to steal or borrow a gun from somebody else and commit a murder with it, and the killer would be home free.
David Von Pein
May 18, 2010
