2158
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SHELBY COUNTY,
TENNESSEE FOR THE THIRTIETH JUDICIAL
DISTRICT AT MEMPHIS
_______________________________________________
CORETTA SCOTT KING, et al,
Plaintiffs,
Vs. Case No. 97242
LOYD JOWERS, et al,
Defendants.
_______________________________________________
PROCEEDINGS
December 8th, 1999
VOLUME XIV
_______________________________________________
Before the Honorable James E. Swearengen,
Division 4, judge presiding.
_______________________________________________
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI,
RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
COURT REPORTERS
Suite 2200, One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
(901) 529-1999
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(901) 529-1999
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- APPEARANCES -
For the Plaintiff: DR. WILLIAM PEPPER
Attorney at Law
New York City, New York
For the Defendant:
MR. LEWIS GARRISON
Attorney at Law
Memphis, Tennessee
Court Reported by:
MR. BRIAN F. DOMINSKI
Certificate of Merit
Registered Professional
Reporter
Daniel, Dillinger,
Dominski, Richberger &
Weatherford
22nd Floor
One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
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PROCEEDINGS
(9:50 A.M.)
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: Good morning, ladies
and gentlemen. We've got two more
depositions that we're going to -- no. As I
promised you, we're going into the arguments
of counsel, and then you'll get your
instructions.
As I indicated to you earlier, the
plaintiff would give his summary first. The
defendant then would give his version, and
then the plaintiff is allowed an opportunity
to respond to the defendant's arguments.
Mr. Pepper, you may proceed.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you, Your
Honor. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me right at the out set thank you for
your attention throughout these proceedings,
long and sometimes tedious though they may
have been. We're very grateful for your
sitting here and listening to the variety of
evidence that you have heard.
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Your Honor will charge you on the
various aspects of evidence that you heard.
You know you've heard a great deal of
testimony here. You also have available to
you a great number of exhibits that are
attached to the testimony that you have
heard.
We urge you to at any point require
these exhibits to be brought to you so that
you can read them and consider them at
length. All the testimony, the various
levels of credibility that you describe, his
Honor will charge you with that, but it is
really down to you at the end of the day as
to how much you believe the various people
who sat in that chair there and who told you
things.
The media is very quick and prompt
to say and yell out that such and such is
hearsay, second-hand accounts, third-hand
accounts. But the media is unable to tell
you, of course, what the law is with respect
to hearsay evidence.
They think because something is
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hearsay, a person is saying what another
person has said, that it is not to be
regarded, it is to be dismissed. In actual
fact, ladies and gentlemen, if a witness is
giving you hearsay but the hearsay statement
is from a person who is speaking against his
own interest, saying something that could put
him in jail in the case of the defendant
here, could have him indicted, then that is
to be taken very seriously. It is admissible
because of that exception. There are a range
of other exceptions why you can consider
hearsay.
Now, it is my job, my role here this
morning, to summarize the plaintiffs' case.
It is a case that is divided really into nine
sections. In the course of presenting that
case to you, we've taken witnesses out of
order simply because they have come from
various parts of the country and the world.
We've had problems with schedules. So at one
time you would hear a witness talking to you
about a rifle, a murder weapon in evidence,
then another time you would hear a witness
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talking about a crime scene, and we had
already gone over that.
So it is difficult for you sometimes
perhaps to put all those pieces together in
an orderly fashion. That's really what I
have to do. I have to try to do that. I
have to set it out so that you can see how
this case folds together.
I'm going to try to work with you on
that this morning and try to help you
understand it as best I can. Plaintiffs'
case began with a section that dealt with the
background, the background of all of this,
why you are here, why Martin King was
assassinated, why he came to Memphis before
he was assassinated. So it dealt with the
background.
Then we moved with a second area
concerned which was local conspiracy we
called it, what was happening here in
Memphis, what events were going on that
constituted conspiracy, legally civil
conspiracy under the law. Because that's
really what we are asking you to find is that
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there was a conspiracy here.
Thirdly, we dealt with the crime
scene. What was this crime scene all about.
Where was the crime scene? What happened
there?
Fourthly, we went into the rifle.
This is the murder weapon. We discussed the
murder weapon and asked you to consider all
the evidence with respect to the murder
weapon. We move next to a shadowy figure
called Raul. Who is this man who was
claimed to have been James Earl Ray's
controller and the role that he played in
this case?
Then we move beyond that to what we
have called a broader conspiracy beyond
Memphis that reached into the higher levels
of the government of the United States and
some of its agents and officials. We moved
through that with you.
We went beyond that, then, into
really what amounts to a cover up. What was
the cover-up activity and why was it
important and why have these events been
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shielded from public view so that only you,
you twelve, fourteen, here day after day, and
his Honor, alone perhaps in this broad land,
have heard this evidence.
How could that be, a case as
important as this? How could that be? But
it has been the case. Then we considered the
defendant's admissions, the defendant -- the
named defendant in this case, his actual
admissions, against his own interest and what
is in evidence with respect to that.
We moved lastly really to the area
of damages. And there was a fair amount of
testimony on damages from the members of the
family with respect to what they were looking
for and what their perspective was in terms
of any kind of remuneration for the loss that
they have suffered.
So that's the outline. Now let's
look at each of those sections, if we can.
First the background. Martin King, as you
know, for many years was a Baptist preacher
in the southern part of this country, and he
was thrust into leadership of the civil
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rights movement at a historic moment in the
civil rights movement and social change
movement in this part of the country. That's
where he was. That's where he has been
locked in time, locked in a media image,
locked as an icon in the brains of the people
of this country.
But Martin King had moved well
beyond that. When he was awarded the Noble
Peace Prize he became in the mid-1960's an
international figure, a person of serious
stature whose voice, his opinions, on other
issues than just the plight of black people
in the South became very significant
world-wide. He commanded world-wide
attention as few had before him. As a
successor, if you will, to Mahatmas Gandi in
terms of the movement for social change
through civil disobedience. So that's where
he was moving.
Then in 1967, April 4, 1967, one
year to the day before he was killed, he
delivered the momentous speech at Riverside
Church in New York where he opposed the war.
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Now, he thought carefully about this war. He
had been inclined to oppose it for quite a
long period of time. Prior to that, two,
three years prior to that he had uneasy
feelings.
I remember vividly, I was a
journalist in Vietnam, when I came back he
asked to meet with me, and when I opened my
files to him, which were devastating in terms
of the effects upon the civilian population
of that country, he unashamedly wept.
I knew at that point really that the
die was cast. This was in February of 1967.
He was definitely going to oppose that war
with every strength, every fiber in his body.
And he did so. He opposed it. And from the
date of the Riverside speech to the date he
was killed, he never wavered in that
opposition.
Now, what does that mean? Is he an
enemy of the State? The State regarded him
as an enemy because he opposed it. But what
does it really mean, his opposition? I put
it to you that his opposition to that war had
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little to do with ideology, with capitalism,
with democracy. It had to do with money. It
had to do with huge amounts of money that
that war was generating to large
multinational corporations that were based in
the United States, corporations that were
based in the United States.
When Martin King opposed the war,
when he rallied people to oppose the war, he
was threatening the bottom lines of some of
the largest defense contractors in this
country. This was about money. When he
threatened to bring that war to a close
through massive popular opposition, he was
threatening the bottom lines of some of the
largest construction companies, one of which
was in the State of Texas, that patronized
the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and had the
major construction contracts at Cam Ran Bay
in Vietnam. This is what Martin King was
challenging. He was challenging the weapons
industry, the hardware, the armament
industries, that all would lose as a result
of the end of the war.
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Forget about democracy, forget about
any ideology. This opposition to Martin
King, this growing enmity to him, was based
on money and the loss of money. The second
aspect of his work that also dealt with money
that caused a great deal of consternation in
the circles of power in this land had to do
with his commitment to take a massive group
of people to Washington and there to encamp
them in the shadow of the Washington memorial
for as long as it took. For as long as it
took, they would make daily trips to the
halls of Congress and they would try to
compel the Congress to act, as they had
previously acted in terms of civil rights
legislation, now to act in terms of social
legislation.
Now, he begin to talk about a
redistribution of wealth, in this the
wealthiest country in the world that had such
a large group of poor people, of people
living then and now, by the way, in poverty.
That problem had to be addressed. And it
wasn't a black-and-white problem. This was a
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problem that dealt with Hispanics, and it
dealt with poor whites as well. That is what
he was taking on. That's what he was
challenging.
The powers in this land believed he
would not be successful. Why did they
believe that? They believed that because
they knew that the decision-making processes
in the United States had by that point in
time, and today it is much worse in my view,
but by that point in time had so consolidated
power that they were the representatives, the
foot soldiers, of the economic -- the very
economic interests who were going to suffer
as a result of these times of changes. So
the very powerful lobbying forces that put
their people in the halls of Congress and
indeed in the White House itself and
controlled them, paid and bought them and
controlled them, were certainly not going to
agree to the type of social legislation that
Martin King and his mass of humanity were
going to require.
So there was a fear. What happens
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when they are frustrated? What happens when
they don't get any satisfaction? What would
happen? They feared, the military feared,
that there would be a violent rebellion in
the nation's capital. And they didn't have
the troops that could contain half a million
angry poor alienated Americans. They didn't
have the troops. Westmorland wanted another
two hundred thousand in Vietnam. They didn't
have them to give to him. They didn't have
them.
They were afraid that mob would
overrun the capital. They were afraid that
what Mr. Jefferson had urged many, many
times, that the body politic can only be
cleansed by a revolution every twenty years.
They were afraid that Mr. Jefferson would be
listened to and that that revolution would
take place.
Because of that, those factors,
Martin King was not going to be allowed, not
going to be allowed to bring that group of
people to Washington. So that's the reason
for the hostility. He saw Memphis as part
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and parcel of the overall problem, as a
microcosm. He saw the plight of the garbage
workers here as being symptomatic of the
pervasive sickness of American society.
So he said if we turn our backs on
these ones, how can we go on behalf of the
broad national interests? These ones need us
now, let's start the Poor People's Campaign
here, which is what he did.
So he came to Memphis and he was
here on the 17th and 18th of March and he
spoke and he returned again on the 28th of
March and the march turned nasty.
Indications are there that there were
provocateurs, that it was broken up
deliberately, that he was discredited because
of that, and he had to then return.
And so he did plan to come back.
There was opposition within his own
organization. But he said, no, we're going
to do this and we're going to lead a peaceful
march and this is the way we're going to
launch this campaign, and so he came back to
Memphis. After the 28th he came back on the
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3rd of April.
Now we move to the local conspiracy
that related to the death of Martin Luther
King. You've heard evidence of a very
reputable forty-year-in-business store owner
sit up there and tell you that he always
bought -- every Thursday he went to Frank
Liberto's warehouse, that was his last stop
before he went back to Somerville, and on
that Thursday, April 4, he heard the owner of
that place take the telephone and scream into
it, "Shoot the son-of-a-bitch when he comes
on the balcony," amongst other things. That
is the first indication of the involvement of
a Mr. Frank Liberto, which information was
given to the police and the FBI and forgotten
about.
Then you've heard two other
independent witnesses testify at different
ends of the trial, one called as a witness by
the defense, Mrs. Lavada Addison, who had
this conversation with Mr. Liberto in her
cafe when Liberto leaned over the table at a
time when the Select Committee hearings were
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on, apparently something came on the
television, and whispered to Mrs. Addison,
"I arranged to have Martin Luther King
killed." She jumped back and was shocked by
this. So.
Liberto puts himself in it against
his own interest, mind you. He has said
that. You are entitled to believe that.
Then comes Mrs. Lavada Addison's son
Nathan, who confronts Liberto, and Liberto
again confirms the same thing to him. So we
see now Mr. Frank Liberto's involvement in
this whole scenario.
Then we have from the defendant
himself in sessions that are before you and
you've heard testimony from Ambassador Young
and Mr. King about how he was approached and
he was asked to assist or become involved in
this assassination again by Mr. Liberto and
how he was told that he would be visited by a
man called Raul, he would first receive some
money, be visited by a man called Raul, he
would pass the money to Raul, he would
receive a gun, that he was be asked to
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participate in this endeavor and he should
not worry because there would be no police
around, the police would not be there.
We've heard him say that in fact he
did these things and that he received the gun
after the shooting. He said he received the
gun right at his back door. That's as far as
he went in his admissions. Of course, he
also said he didn't know what was going on.
Neither Ambassador Young nor Mr. King
believed him in that respect, that he didn't
know what was going on.
Now, why would anyone say this? Is
this something new? No. You heard testimony
from witnesses who indicated that Mr. Jowers
had said this to them years ago, as much as
twenty years ago he had said this, he had
said that he knew how Martin Luther King was
killed. He had indicated to them that he
didn't do it but he knew how it was done, and
in one case he actually told the same story
way back then that he is telling now.
So this is not some afterthought
from Mr. Jowers to try to make a movie or
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become -- have notoriety or something like
that. This is a consistent story that has
been around for a long time, and other
witnesses from previous times have confirmed
it.
So other indications of the local
conspiracy, what are they? You've heard
about the removal of Detective Redditt, who
was a police officer on surveillance duty on
the afternoon. He was removed within an hour
of the killing and told there was a threat on
his life and he was sent home to arrive at
his home at the time of the assassination,
never to hear about this threat again. This
was a phony threat. I think it became quite
clear. They didn't trust him because when
been a community relations officer that had
been secunded into intelligence and at the
last minute had to pull him off, he might
have seen something, done something that was
untrustworthy. He was pulled off. The other
officer remained making notes of what he
saw.
There were two black firemen, the
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only two black firemen in the fire station,
they were removed. They were given orders
the night before not to report for duty but
to go to another fire station in each case
where they were surplussed to requirements.
Why were they removed? Why were those two
black firemen removed, the only two black
firemen, and the night before?
You heard the Jerry Williams,
Captain Williams, testified that he had
always formed an elite black homicide group
of detectives as a bodyguard for Dr. King.
The last visit, he was not asked to form that
bodyguard. This was the only time he was not
asked to form that bodyguard, and he didn't
know why he was not asked to form that
bodyguard. And that troubled him.
You heard that the police were at
one point around the Lorraine Motel and then
they were removed, or they just disappeared.
They disappeared within a half hour,
forty-five minutes of the killing. Why did
they disappear? Where did they go?
You saw evidence that the Invaders,
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a local community-organizing group that had
been willing to work with Dr. King toward the
end and were there for the purpose of helping
him produce a peaceful march, at ten minutes
to six, eleven minutes before the actual
shooting, they left the motel. They were
ordered to leave the motel. They were told
their bills were no longer going to be paid
and they had to leave the hotel. So they
emptied out. They might have reacted
violently and caused some sort of
conflagration at the hotel, but they didn't.
They just left.
You heard about the removal of the
emergency tact forces. This is the emergency
tact forces, in this case it was Tact 10,
which was usually a group of four or five
police cars with officers from the sheriff's
department, police officers. They were
around the Lorraine Motel until the afternoon
before the killing. The afternoon of the 3rd
they were ordered to be pulled back to the
fire station on the periphery. When
Inspector Evans was asked who gave him the
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instructions to pull them back, he said it
was a request from Dr. King's group. But
when he was asked who, you may recall, he
said, oh, yes, I think it was Reverend Kyles
that gave me that instruction. But the tact
forces were pulled back.
The defendant on the day of the
killing ordered a witness whom you heard who
was working at a waitress for him, ordered
Bobbie Balfour not to take any food upstairs
to Grace Stephens, who was ill, and who had
been receiving food on a daily basis, but
that day, because the second floor of the
rooming house was being used as a staging
ground, no one was allowed up there, and he
told her not to go up there. So she didn't
go. So she didn't go.
Then you heard Olivia Catling, who
had never been spoken to by anyone, Olivia
Catling took the stand and told about a man
coming from an alley that was connected to a
building that was attached to the rooming
house. She saw this man coming through that
alley shortly after the killing, some minutes
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after the killing, and getting into a 1965
Green Chevrolet that was parked on Huling and
then speeding away north on Mulberry Street
right in front of the police, burning rubber
as he went, with no interference whatsoever
from them.
All of these things, all of these
events, I submit to you profoundly are strong
evidence of the existence of a conspiracy
just at the local level, not even mentioning
the fact that the defendant has also
indicated that planning sessions took place
in his grill prior to the assassination.
So I think it is important to see
that total picture of evidence you have.
There should be no doubt that all of these
things are indicative overwhelmingly of
conspiracy.
Now, are we conspiracy buffs because
we find all of this evidence insurmountable?
I think not. But you have heard it. The
masses of Americans have not. And the media
has never put it to them and I submit to you
probably never will. That's why your
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presence is so important.
The crime scene, what about this
crime scene? We submit that the crime scene,
of course, was the back area of the rooming
house. It was terribly overgrown with
bushes. The bushes were thick and they were
difficult to penetrate and that they provided
an excellent sniper's lair. That's where the
crime took place.
Any number of witnesses and evidence
in the record indicates that a person or
persons was seen in those bushes at the time
of the shooting. These are different
accounts that we put into the record,
separate and apart.
There is other evidence, again,
separate independent evidence, that a person
was seen jumping from the wall, jumping over
the wall and running up Mulberry Street. As
a result of this, we've concluded some while
ago and have tried to provide enough impetus
for you to conclude that the shot came from
these bushes and not from the bathroom
window.
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The bathroom window and the rooming
house bathroom has been officially the scene
of this crime forever. The State had
evidence long ago that that was not the case,
that the dent in the window sill was not made
by the rifle, even though they maintained
that was the case. The bathroom was seen
open.
The State's main witness was drunk
at the time. He was intoxicated. He
couldn't identify anybody. Captain Tommy
Stephens said he couldn't identify anyone,
much less stand up. Yet it was the affidavit
of Charles Stephens that brought James Earl
Ray back to this country back from England.
That was the basis of the proof that brought
him back.
Do you know what confidence the
State had in their own chief witness? They
didn't even call him at the time of the
guilty plea hearing. He didn't even testify
at that point.
Now, the murder weapon itself, Judge
Joe Brown heard testimony and evidence in
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this case for about four years. He paid
particular attention to the weapon, and he
has had a lifetime of experience and
developed knowledge about weapons and about
rifles in particular. We qualified the judge
as an expert. He came before you and he sat
there.
Anyone who heard Judge Brown's
testimony with respect to that weapon should
have no -- and weapons in general should have
no doubt whatsoever that he is in fact an
expert. The media will point to his lack of
technical training, courses having been taken
with respect to learning about rifles. The
other areas for developing expertise happens
to be experience and self knowledge and
development, which is what Judge Brown has.
Judge Brown sat in that chair and
gave you sample technical scientific reasons
why that weapon in evidence is not the murder
weapon very clearly. He said, first of all,
the scope was never sighted in. Because it
was never sighted in, if you use that scope,
to quote him, you couldn't hit the broadside
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of a barn with that weapon, remember that
expression, because it was firing to the left
and below the target, because it was never
sighted in.
He also said the scope couldn't have
been altered by having been dropped in a
bundle. You can't alter a scope to that
extent, its accuracy, by doing that.
He said also that the death slug did
not have the same metallurgical composition
as existed in the lead of the other evidence
bullets that were found in that bundle the
State has always said it was one of a number
of bullets the defendant had and you should
see them as a package, if you will. Judge
Brown said, no, the death slug was different
in metallurgical composition than the bullets
that were there.
Beyond this, there is evidence that
you've heard that this clearly couldn't have
been the murder weapon because the defendant
told a taxi driver, James McCraw, to get rid
of the murder weapon, and he did so. McCraw,
being a close friend of Jowers, a confident
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of Jowers, took the actual murder weapon and
threw it off the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge. So
it is laying at the bottom of the Mississippi
River for over thirty-one years. The real
murder weapon is at the bottom of that
river.
Now, Bill Hamblin, no reason to lie,
he said McCraw would only tell him this when
he got drunk and he told him this over
fifteen years. This is not something McCraw
made up one day. It is over a period of
fifteen years. I remind you that he told
this same story.
Judge Arthur Haynes testified that
he was, of course, James Earl Ray's first
lawyer along with his father, and he
testified that in the course of their early
on-the-scene investigation, they talked to
Guy Canipe, who owned the amusement shop in
front of which was found the bundle which
contained, amongst other things, the rifle.
He said Canipe told them very early on,
before anyone else apparently had done any
kind of tampering with him, told him very
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early on that that bundle was dropped some
minutes before the actual shooting. Imagine
that, that the bundle, the murder weapon, the
rifle in evidence, was dropped minutes before
the actual shooting.
Now we come to Raul, this shadowy
figure who the defendant has mentioned and
who James Earl Ray has talked about right
from the beginning as someone who controlled
him. You have a number of independent
people, not even knowing each other, who have
identified this man from a spread of
photographs that they have seen. And they
range from an English merchant seaman, who we
had to depose by telephone at some length,
who ran into this same Raul at the same bar
James did, up at the Neptune in Montreal.
They range from him to the Grabows, Royce
Wilburn, to the defendant himself who
identified Raul from a spread of photographs
before Ambassador Young and Mr. King, and, of
course, James Earl Ray, who also identified
him.
If that is not enough, if that is
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not enough, we have the British film
producer, Jack Saltman, going to the door of
Raul's house, showing a photograph and
having his daughter admit that that is the
photograph of her father, her words to the
effect that anyone can get that picture or
that photograph of my father. It is from
Immigration & Naturalization. She identified
her own father as the person in that
photograph.
Under subpoena and reluctantly a
Portuguese journalist took the stand. She
had conducted an interview with a member of
the family. The member of that family had
told her that this was a horror, a nightmare
for them and for the family, but the one
comfort they had was that the government was
helping them, that the government had sent
people to their home approximately three
times or so, and that the government was
monitoring their telephone calls and the
government was providing them with guidance.
The government was trying to give them
comfort and advice.
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Can you imagine if anything like
that happened to -- if any charges were laid
against any of us in those circumstances, do
you think the government would come around
and see us, help us, monitor our phones?
That act alone indicates the importance and
the significance of this man, Raul. So it
is essential that that be put clearly in the
context.
Now, as I understand it, the defense
had invited Raul to appear here. He is
outside this jurisdiction, so a subpoena
would be futile. But he was asked to appear
here. In earlier proceedings there were
attempts to depose him, and he resisted
them. So he has not attempted to come
forward at all and tell his side of this
story or to defend himself.
As we move into the next area, we're
concerned now about a broader conspiracy, a
broader conspiracy. That is two-pronged,
ladies and gentlemen. On the one hand, the
broader conspiracy goes beyond a shooter in
the bushes who gets away with killing Martin
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King. It goes from him to a Mr. Jowers, who
is involved in facilitating, and it goes back
to Mr. Liberto, whom you've heard was clearly
a part of it, but it goes beyond Mr. Liberto
in terms of the Mob side, because you've
heard from witness Nathan Whitlock how he
used to push a fruit cart in New Orleans with
Mr. Carlos Marcello and that he then has this
relationship and this awareness of Marcello
and Marcello activities. Carlos Marcello has
been the Mob kingpin, was the Mob leader in
this part of the country, for a long, long
time.
So any contract, any Mob contract,
on Martin Luther King's life, would come from
Marcello through Liberto into the local
infrastructure that Marcello had here in
Memphis.
Marcello himself was involved in gun
running. Part of the evidence in terms of
the military involvement is contained in a
lengthy article that we put into evidence
that appears in March of 1993 in the
Commercial Appeal by Steve Tomkins, and that
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article indicated that there was a
high-ranking general who had been charged and
imprisoned for aiding and abetting the
trading in stolen weapons. That deal meant
what he was involved in was the theft of guns
from arsenals, armories and camps, like Camp
Shelby in Mississippi, the theft of weapons
from those places that went to -- were
trucked to a Marcello property in New
Orleans, and from the Marcello property in
New Orleans were shipped around the coast
into Houston, Texas, where they were taken
off. And that is where Raul and his crowd
came into the receipt of those weapons before
they went into Latin and South America.
So that's one prong of the broader
conspiracy, the Mob. But, you see, already
there is a relationship between organized
crime and the military in the receipt of
those weapons and in the ongoing sale of
them.
Then we move directly into the
government of the United States, their agents
themselves. We've learned that the 111th
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Military Intelligence Group based at Fort
McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia, were here.
They were in Memphis. They had Martin King
under surveillance. That was open -- quote,
open surveillance, eye-to-eye surveillance.
They had him under surveillance.
Eli Arkin of the Memphis Police
Department Intelligence Bureau, Intelligence
Division, said they were in his office. He
has admitted they were in his office. They
were here.
There was another section here that
was involved in covert surveillance of Martin
King. "Covert" means bugging, wiretapping,
that type of activity. That was done at the
Rivermont when he was here on the 17th or
18th. You heard a witness say he was one of
three people who were effectively a
surveillance team. They had Martin King's
suite bugged, every room of it bugged,
including the balcony. If he wanted to speak
privately and went out on the balcony, they
would pick it up by relay from the roof.
That covert -- that type of covert
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surveillance was carried out by another
agency, usually the Army Security Agency. So
there we have those two agencies involved
very clearly here.
Then there were photographers.
Remember those photographers that Captain
Weeden talked about. They were on the roof
of the fire station. He put them there. Who
were they? They were a psychological
operations team, and they were there and they
photographed everything throughout that day.
That means, ladies and gentlemen,
that there is a film of everything that
happened, photographs of everything that
happened buried somewhere. We tried long and
hard to unearth it unsuccessfully, but it is
there and it is hidden, as it was hidden from
this jury it is hidden from the American
people. Maybe the media one day will let you
know that it exists. But it is there. They
took those photographs. They were what is
known as a psychological operations team, and
we know who the two members of that team
were.
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So there is this very strong
presence now, which is primarily
surveillance, it is intelligence gathering,
it is visual and it is audio and it is going
on and Martin King and his group are the
subject of it.
But then there is another group that
is more sinister. They are not more sinister
because of what they did, because they didn't
really do anything, but we know they had a
presence. And that was a special eight-man
sniper unit that was here in Memphis. They
were all part of the 20th Special Forces
Group. They were here and they were assigned
and they were trained for an operation, for a
mission, in Memphis. You heard testimony by
a man who himself was a national security
council operative who was very involved in
Iran-Contra activities, who had been a
long-standing operative, if you will, of the
government of the United States and whose
best friend was a member of that sniper
team. There was no reason in the world for
his best friend other than in a moment of
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whatever, anguish or burden, desire to
relieve himself, to talk about this, this
mission that he was on which he was assigned
to in Memphis which was aborted, but he was
assigned to it.
With a Q and A approach you heard
documents of working papers that were used to
get information from other -- from another
source who lives south of the border and who
fled the country in the 1970's out of fear
who was also a part of that unit. So they
were there, and there are three separate
sources that confirm the presence. But they
did not -- it was not necessary for them to
do anything. The mission was aborted because
the Mob contract was successful in killing
Martin Luther King and framing James Earl
Ray.
Remember, one of the things that
Liberto also told the defendant, Loyd Jowers,
was that there was a setup man, there was a
patsy, lined up to take the blame. There was
another area of comfort that the defendant
could have.
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Now we move to the cover-up aspect
of this case. This in many ways is the most
sad in a representative democracy to have to
have this kind of cover-up be successful for
so long. It is a shame. It is a tragedy. I
think it goes right to the essence of
democracy and the right of the people to
know.
The cover-up activities in this
case, ladies and gentlemen, range from murder
to press manipulation and distortion, with
bribery in between. Murder, unfortunately in
our view, and from the evidence that you have
heard here, credible sources, is that a taxi
driver who pulled into the Lorraine Motel
maybe six minutes before the killing or so,
shortly before the killing, a Yellow Cab taxi
driver who pulled into that drive and who was
standing at the rear of his car loading the
trunk of the car with the baggage, the
luggage, of someone that was leaving,
unfortunately for him, immediately after the
shooting he saw the shooting and then turned
to look at the other side of the road and saw
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a man come down out of the bushes and run up
the street and get into a waiting Memphis
Police Department traffic car which sped
away.
When he reported this to his
dispatcher, he thought the police had the
assassin because he was in a police car going
away. Well, this man, as you've heard, was
questioned by the police a couple of times
that week. He was to give a statement the
next day.
He didn't give a statement, did he?
No, his body was found off the
Memphis-Arkansas Bridge supposedly thrown out
of a speeding car. Now, when we tried to
find death certificates for this man, we
couldn't, either in Arkansas or in
Tennessee. There is no death record at all.
We found his phone number with that of his
wife listed in 1967, 1966 and 1967, Betty and
Paul Butler. This is all in evidence. The
Polk Directory pages are there for you to
look at. In 1968 it is Betty, brackets,
widow, WID, of Paul, Betty widow, 1968 and
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1969 she a widow. Paul Butler was her
deceased husband. He was, for him, in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
That is in some ways the worst of
it. Because is there anything really worse
than losing your life when you've been in the
wrong place at the wrong time?
The next aspect of cover-up is the
tampering, drastic alteration, of the crime
scene. What happened there? You've heard
what happened. Seven o'clock in the morning
Inspector Sam Evans called Maynard Stiles,
who was a public works administrator, and
asked him to get a work crew out there and to
cut down those bushes. They cut the bushes
down.
Now, normally what one does with a
crime scene, at least for quite a period of
time, is to rope it off and keep people out
of it and investigate it as it is. You don't
go and destroy the crime scene. You don't
know what is there. You go and you deal with
it the way it was at the time of the crime.
No, it was cut right to the ground,
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cut right to the ground. And however long it
took them to do it, they did a good job,
because it was not possible for a sniper to
be in that area once it was cut to the ground
because he could obviously be very visible.
So the image of a flat, barren area is what
was relayed, and that reinforced the whole
bathroom window.
There was no house-to-house
investigation, ladies and gentlemen. Do you
remember Judge Brown on the stand saying that
this was the most deficient investigation,
criminal investigation, he had ever seen as a
criminal court judge? He is talking about
all of these kinds of things. Imagine, no
house-to-house investigation.
What that means is that no policeman
going and knocking on the door of all of the
local residents and asking them did they see
anything, did they hear anything, because
surely if they had, they would have knocked
on Olivia Catling's door, wouldn't they? She
just lived down the street on Mulberry. She
would have told them what she saw. But they
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didn't. They didn't do that, did they? No,
they didn't do that, not at all. Why?
Why did they suppress two alibi
statements, a statement from Ray Hendricks
and William Reed, who left Jim's Grill, oh,
thirty-five minutes past the hour of five,
forty minutes past the hour of five, right
around there, maybe even -- well, right
around that time. It would be difficult to
pin exact times down.
They left Jim's Grill, saw James
Earl Ray's Mustang parked in front of Jim's
Grill, started to walk up the street and a
couple of minutes later when they went up a
couple of blocks and were about to cross
Vance, one pulled the other back when the
same white Mustang they thought came right
around the corner driving away, as James Earl
Ray had said he done.
He always said he left the scene of
the crime around to that time to try to go
have a spare tire repaired. Here are two
alibi witnesses with statements given to the
FBI in their 302's kept from the defense,
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withheld from the guilty plea jury,
suppressed.
What else was suppressed? What was
suppressed was the fact that they had a
scientific report from the FBI that the dent
in the window sill could not sufficiently be
tied to the rifle. They had that. They had
that almost a year prior to the actual guilty
plea hearing. And yet they went before the
guilty plea jury and said that scientific
evidence would establish that the murder
weapon made that dent. Obstruction of
justice, suppression? That and worse.
What about the death slug that could
not be matched? You know, the media and the
State have turned the burden in this case of
matching the bullet to the rifle the other
way around. They are saying because you
can't exclude it, it may be the murder
weapon. That's not the way it works. In any
other case that's not the way it works.
This is not a good rifle in evidence
when you cannot match the death slug to it.
And it was a death slug capable of being
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matched. You have evidence that that bullet
was capable of being matched if it could.
There were enough striations, enough
independent markings that they could match it
if they could.
So the guilty plea hearing heard
none of this. I talked to members of the
guilty plea jury years later. They heard
none of this. This was all kept quiet. They
certainly would have had questions about Mr.
Ray's plea if they had.
They certainly didn't know that his
lawyer had agreed in writing to pay $500 if
he would plead guilty and not cause any
problems and that $500 could be used to hire
another lawyer who could help overturn the
plea. They certainly were not told that.
They certainly were not told those
kinds of pressures that descended on him at
the last minute to cop this plea, which I'm
afraid people do all the time in desperation,
particularly when they are in isolation the
way he was.
What about Captain Weeden? My
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goodness. Captain of the fire station, never
interviewed by local police authorities. The
man who ran that installation, who was there
at the time, never interviewed by the
authorities. Forgetting about knocking on
people's doors. Here is official, he is a
senior executive officer of the fire
station. They didn't talk to him. They
didn't interview him. They didn't ask him
what was going on there that afternoon. Were
they afraid that he would have told them
about the photographers on the roof? Because
if he had, then they wouldn't have been
unnoticed, would they? It wouldn't have been
unnoticed that there were photographs of what
went on, and they would have then had to
request those photographs. So if you don't
talk to Captain Weeden, you don't have to
know about them. If you don't know about it,
you don't ask for it.
You heard Bill Schaap on the stand
for a long time talking about media
distortion and the use of media for
propaganda. He gave you the history of how it
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has developed particularly over the 20th
century America but, of course, it is a
long-standing activity throughout history in
older nations than this.
But Schaap took you painstakingly
through that history down to the present time
when he dealt with the way the media handled
Martin Luther King, how they handled his
opposition to the war in Vietnam, how he was
attacked because of that opposition to the
war.
Then he moved on. There were
similar, comparable attacks on the King
family since they decided they wanted the
truth out in this case and they decided that
James Earl Ray was entitled to a trial,
similar media treatment happened to them that
happened to Martin, similar loss of
contributions and money for the work that
happened to Martin back in those days. The
same thing.
Bill Schaap led you through that.
There were a couple of instances where he
referred to the huge network of ownership and
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control of media entities all over the world
by the Central Intelligence Agency. It is a
matter of public record. It has appeared in
Congressional hearings, Senate hearings,
which most people don't read, don't know
anything about, and, of course, the media
only covers in sparse fashion, because it is
contrary to their interests to show that
great numbers of newspapers, radio stations,
television stations, may in fact be actually
owned by the Central Intelligence Agency in
this country as well as elsewhere.
He talked about the numbers of
actual agents who work for media companies,
who are placed in positions in network
television company positions, in newspaper
company positions, on newspaper editorial
board positions.
If you see the history of how
national security cases are covered and this
is one, you will be amazed that some of the
most liberal columnists, writers, respected
journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners, who have
all the liberal credentials, when it comes to
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this kind of case, they all of a sudden are
totally with the government because national
security cases are a different ball game.
Ambassador Young ran into one at one
point in an airport, and he said to him, how
can you do this, Tony, about this case, you
have great credentials in every other way,
what is it about this case? His response
was, you'll be happy to know my wife agrees
with you. But that was it. That was the end
of the response.
The point is on these cases there is
a special type of treatment that is given.
It is important to understand that across the
board. That explains a lot of what we're
talking about. Examples: Column 1, New York
Times, November, the article is here, Alton,
Illinois, bank robbery, Wendell Rose, Jr.,
the Times wrote this whole piece, fabricated,
whole cloth, that the Ray brothers robbed the
bank in Illinois and that's where James got
his money and therefore there is no Raul.
The problem was that the article
said that the Times had conducted a special
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investigation that paralleled that of the
House Select Committee and that of the FBI,
and all three investigations indicated this
was the case. Case closed, this is where Ray
got his money.
The problem is they never talked to
the chief of police in Alton, Illinois. They
never talked to the president of the bank in
Alton, Illinois. There was no
investigation. And when those people were
talked to by myself or by Jerry Ray, who went
down there to turn himself in -- you think I
did this, I'm prepared to turn myself in --
the guy said, go away, you've never been a
suspect. Isn't that amazing, out of whole
cloth. But it appears, and that's the
mindset that the people have.
You heard Earl Caldwell say he was
sent to Memphis by his national editor, New
York Times national editor, Claude Sitton at
the time, and told to go to Memphis and his
words were "nail Dr. King." Nail Dr. King.
That is what he said he was told was his
mission here in Memphis as a New York Times
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reporter. I can go on. But these are
examples of what happens with the media.
Now, Bill Schaap told you the impact
of that out of thirty-one years is very
devastating, is very hard to hear this for
thirty-one years and have somebody come along
and say, no, you've been told the wrong thing
and here are a whole set of facts that are
uncontrovertible and this is why you've been
old the wrong thing.
The reaction is still, oh, yes,
that's interesting, but the next day we still
believe, because it is almost implanted
neurologically. That's the problem that this
kind of distortion, media propaganda abuse,
just raises.
Mr. Jowers here, the defendant, was
a victim of that. They gave him -- ABC gave
him a lie detector test and they told him at
the end of that lie detector test that he had
failed, why was he doing this, was he looking
for money, he had failed this lie detector
test.
You heard from a cab driver, who has
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nothing to gain by this, take the stand and
say, yeah, he drove those ABC people to the
airport, took them to the airport, and he
heard their conversation. His ears perked up
when he heard Jowers' name because he heard
them, the guy in the front, the examiner,
said, I couldn't get him to waver, I couldn't
get him to waver. They were commenting on
how much he remembered in so much detail and
why he remembered so much detail.
There is no question about him
failing this test. They couldn't get the
defendant to lie. And yet that program was
broadcast, was put out to masses of people in
this country to believe to this day that the
defendant lied, that he lied.
Now, you heard -- we're still on
cover-up. I'm sorry. You heard about two
efforts to bribe James Earl Ray. I don't
know of any others, but you have heard of two
in particular, one from a lawyer, Jack
Kershaw, who told you about a meeting at the
Nelson Book Publishing Company and he was
offered a sum of money if Ray would admit
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that he did it. He was offered this money by
William Bradford Huey, who was a writer, if
Ray would confess that he did it and did it
alone and he would give him this money and
give him a pardon and he would go on and have
a nice life.
Mr. Kershaw went over to the prison,
as you heard, asked Mr. Ray if you want to
take up this wonderful offer. Ray, of
course, said, no, and sent him packing. Some
while later a telephone -- on a telephone
conversation Huey made the same offer to
Jerry Ray. His problem then was that that
conversation was recorded. Jerry Ray
testified and you have a transcript of that
recording, he was offered now $220,000, they
greatly increased the sum of money, $220,000,
also a pardon. And the best story, of
course, that they wanted, that Huey wanted,
was the story why I killed Martin Luther
King.
So they were offering him money, a
pardon if he would tell that story. It
didn't work. James, of course, was not
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interested in anything of the sort. James
had always only wanted, from three days after
his conviction, he had always wanted a
trial. That is what he wanted.
Then there were a number of attempts
to kill James Earl Ray. These attempts
vary. One time he escaped from Brushy
Mountain in 1977, he escaped from Brushy
Mountain with six others. No sooner did his
feet hit the ground and they were up in the
woods there -- if you know that area of
Petros, Tennessee, it is pretty rural in some
areas and rocky and hilly -- he was up in the
woods, and no sooner did he go get up in the
woods but there was an FBI SWAT team out of
the Knoxville office on the scene.
Who asked for them? It is a State
escape, State prisoner. The State is
handling it. No, here comes in the SWAT
team. They have snipers with sniper rifles.
What are they going to do with those sniper
rifles?
Lewis Stokes was chairman of the
Select Committee on Assassinations. He calls
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Ray Blanton, who is a governor of the State
at the time. Reverend Fauntroy was a part of
to that conversation and said he was the one
who encouraged Stokes to call, but he was
there. Stokes calls Blanton and says that
you better get over to Brushy Mountain. If
you don't, I'm going to lose my most famous
witness and your most famous prisoner because
the FBI is going to kill him. Blanton goes
over in a helicopter and chases the FBI
away.
They didn't what to go at first. He
told them he would put them in the same sell
James Earl Ray came out of if they didn't.
He saved James Earl Ray's life. He was
caught and brought back by local authorities,
which is the way it should have been.
The second attempt was in April of
1978. You heard April Ferguson, public
defender counsel, tell you how that worked.
She went out, interviewed a prisoner who had
called their office when April and Mark Lane
were representing James back at that time.
He was offered a contract. He was asked to
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put out a contract on James Earl Ray, and he
decided not to do it.
One, he thought he was being set up
because the person who called him left a
number and he had to call him back. When he
called had him back, he was calling him back
at an Executive Suites hotel that he knew,
the prisoner knew, was being used by the
local US Attorney's Office and the FBI where
they interviewed informants and where they
did the briefings. That's where the phone
call came from.
He thought he was being set up. The
phone call came to him from a fellow called
Arthur Wayne Baldwin, who was a Mob figure in
Memphis but who also was involved as a
federal informant and was used by the
government.
So he gave the statement of how this
contract was put out by Baldwin on James Earl
Ray's life, and Ms. Ferguson testified as to
her affidavit.
Defendant's prior admissions, the
next section of plaintiffs' case, you've
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heard a good deal of it, how the defendant
has admitted how he was approached by
Mr. Liberto and how he was told that he would
receive a package, which he did, and money
and eventually a rifle to hold, and he told
about planning sessions in his cafe, and he
told about taking a rifle from the shooter,
taking the rifle from the shooter, one that
was still smoking, he said, taking it from
his back door.
He named the shooter as a Memphis
Police Department lieutenant, Earl Clark, who
is deceased, who was a sharpshooter who he
said was a hunting companion of his, a friend
of his, and a friend of Liberto's as well and
who never had any contact with him again
after this day.
Now, Mrs. Clark, the first wife, who
testified, gave her husband an alibi. It is
only fair that you consider what Ms. Clark
said. When I first interviewed here in
1992 -- she referred to that interview. In
fact, her son was there. He was not
twenty-two. He was born later. He was about
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sixteen. Her daughter was born in 1970. It
was the son who was present. She told
essentially the same story at that point in
time.
There are serious questions with
that story, and they have to do with whether
or not in fact Lieutenant Clark had a radio
at all at that point in time and whether or
not in fact Dent Cleaners was open later than
six p.m. on that day. Because by her
accounts she got there sometime between
six-thirty and six-forty to pick up his
uniform. But, in any event, you have to
consider all of that.
Lastly, in respect of the
defendant's situation, we had placed a
woman -- aspects of a woman's testimony into
the record so that you can review it, and she
was a waitress who had been a lover of the
defendant during that previous year.
She very reluctantly in 1992 gave a
statement that had really to be worked out of
her. She didn't want to tell this story even
then because she was afraid that her former
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lover and boss, Mr. Jowers, was the killer.
He was the only one she saw, she said, out
there, and she was afraid that he was the
killer. Plaintiffs do not believe that to be
the case at this point in time.
She described him running, face
white as a sheet, looking like a wild man
with all mud on his knees, as though he had
been kneeling in that brush area. She has
been to some extent discredited because there
have been -- people have descended upon her
for various reasons. She was a -- a
statement of hers was taken repudiating a lot
of things she said, but she subsequently said
in another sworn statement that she didn't
even read what the state officials told her
to sign.
So in a case like this, this is a
difficult area for you to assess for
yourselves in terms of what you read and what
you have heard here.
The last area of the plaintiffs'
case has to do with damages. We've addressed
that. Members of the family have addressed
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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that in terms of the spirit in which the
family has approached these proceedings from
the beginning.
Yes, we want a verdict of liability,
a verdict of a finding of conspiracy, but the
family is not interested to benefit
financially from these proceedings. There
has to be damages in civil litigation of this
sort. It is a wrongful death action. So the
request is that there be an award of one
hundred dollars to offset funeral expenses at
the time. And that one hundred dollars the
family has decided to contribute, along with
other contributions, to a welfare fund of the
sanitation workers in this city, because that
is the reason that Dr. King came here in the
first place.
Now, what I'd like to do is to
briefly take you through a visual summary, it
will be much quicker than my verbal summary,
but to take you through a visual picture of
the summary of what you have just heard in
terms of the major aspects of the plaintiffs'
case.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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THE COURT: Does anybody need a
break?
A JUROR: Yes.
THE COURT: You do? All right.
Just five minutes.
(Jury out.)
(Short recess.)
THE COURT: All right, Sheriff.
Bring the jury back out, please.
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: All right,
Mr. Pepper. You may resume.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you, Your
Honor. We have a depiction of the overall
seen of the assassination at about five
forty-three, the time we've pinpointed, on
the afternoon of the assassination. Here in
this depiction we have two people on the
firehouse roof, we show two people in the
brush area at this time, a number of
witnesses down below the balcony right in
there.
THE COURT: Mr. Pepper, excuse
me. Can you see that?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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A JUROR: Yes.
MR. PEPPER: Am I in your way?
THE COURT: You may stand over
here, Mr. Pepper.
MR. PEPPER: There is also a
car, a Chevrolet car, parked here on Huling,
and two Mustangs on South Main Street.
You will remember Charles Hurley
testified that he drove up behind this
Mustang when he was picking his wife up. It
had Arkansas plates. This Mustang is
believed to have been James Earl Ray's.
Now, when we move ahead, we're still
at five forty-three, but it is between five
forty-three and five forty-four, Hendricks
and Reed, who have been in Jim's Grill here,
have come out and have since walked up this
street. About this time this first Mustang
has pulled off. Everything else remains the
same. You have the photographers on the
roof, you have the two figures in the brush,
who we believe to be Earl Clark and Loyd
Jowers, and you have witnesses below the
balcony over here.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Now we're at five-fifty. The
evidence reveals that this first Mustang is
gone. The second Mustang still remains.
Photographers still remain clicking away on
the roof. The figures in the brush still
remain. The Invaders have started to leave
the hotel. They are coming down the stairs
and they are leaving at five-fifty. They
were noticed leaving. Billy Kyles, Reverend
Kyles, is right there knocking on Martin
King's door as the evidence indicates at ten
minutes to six. The witnesses are still down
below.
At five fifty-five, the Invaders are
now off the premises, they've gone. Reverend
Kyles has come away from the door and is on
the balcony to the right of the door. The
witnesses are still below. Photographers are
still in their perch photographing. The
Chevrolet is still parked where was. And now
a Memphis Police Department traffic car has
pulled up to this intersection right here at
Mulberry and Huling. In addition to that,
about this time a rifle and an evidence
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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bundle has been dropped by this figure right
here in Canipe's.
Next. Still at five fifty-five,
between five fifty-five and five fifty-six,
the Yellow taxicab has pulled into the
Lorraine driveway and is loading a
passenger. The man who has dropped the rifle
has now approached this second Mustang with
the Arkansas plates here. The figures in the
bushes are still there. The Chevrolet is
there and the taxi driver himself is standing
toward the rear of his car next. About five
fifty-six, in that area, Martin King appears
on the balcony and begins to talk to a number
of the people below who we've been calling as
witnesses. The taxi driver is still there
unloading a passenger's luggage, and the
photographers are there. The rifle remains,
but now the second Mustang moves off. The
traffic car remains in position and the
Chevrolet remains where was.
Okay. Six-oh-one p.m., April 4th,
1968, Martin Luther King has been felled by a
single shot. Everything else remains the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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same. The taxi driver is facing the brush
area. The photographers are still on the
roof of the fire station. The rifle in
evidence remains in Canipe's doorway. The
Chevrolet remains on Huling. The Memphis
traffic car remains at the intersection of
Mulberry and Huling. The figures in the
bushes at this point remain there.
Next. Instantly, between six-oh-one
and six-oh-two, immediately after the shot,
one of the two figures, and we maintain it is
the defendant, is moving toward his building
carrying the murder weapon. The other figure
in the bush, in the bushes, is going down --
appears to be at this point not going down
but appears to be alone around the edge of
the wall. The photographers are there. The
taxi driver is still there looking at the
brush area, and journalist Earl Caldwell,
having heard the shot, has come out of his
room.
It is difficult to do this with
computers. You may recall Caldwell was in
his shorts standing there looking at the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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bushes seeing this figure in the bushes. The
traffic car remains there. Kyles remains off
to the right of the fallen Martin King
instantly after the shot. The witnesses are
there, some of whom turn toward the bushes
looking up in that direction.
Next. Also between six-oh-one and
six-two, because that's what it takes,
Mr. Jowers has entered his establishment.
The shooter has gone down over the wall and
has run toward that Memphis traffic vehicle,
car vehicle, right there. This is all
happening between six-oh-one and
six-oh-two. That's the period of time in
which this was carried out.
The taxi driver has seen the shooter
jump from the wall and run to here and get
into that traffic car. The photographers
must have photographed it. There they are.
The rifle remains. Mr. Jowers has entered
his establishment at that point in time.
Okay. Around six-oh-five, under
great pressure from his passenger, the taxi
driver actually drives away, left the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Lorraine parking lot. The shooter, having
gotten into that traffic car, is also gone,
disappeared. That traffic car sped up
Huling, west on Huling. It is gone.
Mr. Jowers is inside his establishment, the
witnesses remain in place where they were.
Mr. Caldwell has gone back into his room to
put on his trousers.
Next. We're at about six-oh-eight.
At this point in time barricades in the form
of police cars have been established at
either end of Mulberry, thus blocking any
entrance to the street. We're at
six-oh-seven. I'm a minute ahead of myself.
We're at about six-oh-seven.
Everything else remains pretty much
the same except Journalist Caldwell has come
out of his room again and would eventually
make his way up to the balcony. Dr. King is
still down, witnesses are in place,
photographers are in place, the rifle remains
where it is, and Reverend Kyles is still on
the balcony.
Also at six-oh-seven or thereabouts
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Olivia Catling has arrived at the corner of
Mulberry and Huling. She has three children
with her. Two are hers and one is a neighbor
child. She has come to that corner just
about this time, having heard the shot from
inside her house. Everything else remains
pretty much in place with the photographers,
the witnesses and Journalist Caldwell coming
out and the rifle still at Canipe's.
Okay. About six-oh-nine we have a
man appearing in the alley. This is the
first time he has appeared. He has
apparently come from connected buildings to
the rooming house and he is now seen in the
alley. Everything else remains the same.
The barricades are in place. Mrs. Catling is
there.
Next. He moves between this time,
within a minute, very quickly to this car
seen by Mrs. Catling and the children.
Next. He gets in the car and rips
off east on Huling, making a sharp turn going
north on Mulberry right in front of this
police barricade and proceeds unimpeded north
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2225
on Mulberry away from the scene.
Now, at that point in time Mrs.
Catling notices a fireman who is standing in
front of the wall, and he is talking to
policemen, yelling at policemen, that the
shot came from the clump of bushes up there.
They apparently are not listening to him.
Those are the -- that's the visual
depiction of the critical events that we
wanted to put forward.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
sometimes that is helpful to amplify the
verbal narrative. Sometimes it confuses more
than it helps. But I think we've tried to
draw this and depict it as precisely as we
can within the constraints of the actual
evidence that has been presented to you.
Let me close by saying to you that
long after people forget what has been said
in this courtroom, all the words that you've
heard from witnesses and lawyers, and long
after they have forgotten about accounts that
they have read about this case, they are
going to remember what was done here. They
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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are going to remember what action you took,
what decision you came to.
You have got to understand the
monumental importance of your decision. You
are going to -- they are going to forget
everything I said, everything defense counsel
has said, everything the witnesses have
said. They are going to remember one thing,
the ruling of this jury, the verdict of this
jury because you have heard evidence that has
never before been put on in a court of law.
Some of it would have been put on in
Mr. Ray's trial, if he had ever been granted
a trial. He wasn't. It wasn't heard. Judge
Brown was on the verge of granting that
trial, on the eve, in our view, so close to
granting that trial, and then he was removed
by the Court of Appeals in this state from
the case, summarily removed. Without any
argument, any oral argument, they made that
decision. So Mr. Ray never had the trial.
He was in his dying months when he might have
gotten that trial. The Court of Appeals
finished that possibility.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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Only you have heard this. The
people in the United States of America have
not heard this. The masses of people in this
country or the world have not heard this.
They've heard snippets, they've heard edited
clips on various documentaries and programs,
but no one has heard the detailed evidence
that you have here.
That is why your decision at this
point in time is the most significant
decision that will have been taken in
thirty-one years in terms of this case.
Please don't underestimate the importance of
it.
In our view, what has happened in
this case, the injustice that has happened in
this case, and it may be symptomatic of other
cases, we don't know -- we haven't gotten
into that, we've just focused on this
case -- but what has happened here in our
view is representative of the failure that
symbolizes to me the failure of
representative democracy in this country.
Isn't it amazing that one could say
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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that over a simple murder case. But when you
look at the wealth of evidence that has come
forward and you understand how this case has
been conducted and you understand how it has
been covered up, and when you see how
unresponsive elected officials and government
has been and how complicit they have been,
you can come to no other choice.
Governmental agencies caused Martin Luther
King to be assassinated. They used other
foot soldiers. They caused this whole thing
to happen. And they then proceeded with the
powerful means at their disposal to cover
this case up.
This is a conspiracy that
involved -- and that's a nasty word. People
insult people in this country who use the
word "conspiracy." Nowhere else in the
world, as Bill Schaap told you, is it viewed
that way. In Italy and France conspiracy is
taken for granted because they have lived
with it so much longer. Remember that there
were thirty-nine daggers going into Caesar.
You know, these things do not happen
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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as a rule without the involvement of other
people and in this case, this type of murder,
without the involvement of seriously
prominent individuals in government. So it
is in my view a failure of democracy and this
Republic that it has not been able to bring
this forward.
What we're asking you to do at this
point in time is send a message. We're
asking you to send a message, not just right
a wrong. That's important, that you right a
wrong and that you allow justice to prevail
once and for all. Let it prevail.
Let justice and truth prevail, elst
the heavens's fall. No matter what, let it
prevail. Let it come forward. We're asking
you to let that happen.
But in addition to that, we're
asking you to send a message, send a message
to all of those in power, all of those who
manipulate justice in this country that you
cannot get away with this. Or if you can get
away with it, you can only get away with it
for so long.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Ultimately truth-crushed earth will
rise again, and it has risen in this
courtroom, ladies and gentlemen. Send that
message. You, you twelve, represent the
American people. You are their
representatives with respect to justice in
this case. They cannot be here. The media
will keep the truth from them forever. You
represent the people of this land. You must
speak for them.
In all of my years I've had
confidence in one institution anywhere in the
Anglo-American world, and it is a jury. It
is twelve people independently hearing
evidence and ruling. That's you. You have
this duty to yourselves, this obligation to
your fellow citizens, and you have an
opportunity to act in a most significant way
that perhaps you can ever imagine, because
your verdict of conspiracy in this case, your
verdict of liability for the defendant and
his other co-conspirators, means history is
rewritten, means textbooks have to be
rewritten, means the actual result of this
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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case and the truth of this case now must come
forward formally.
This message also will be sent to
the Attorney General of the United States,
whose team are investigating in a limited
way, they say, this case. But you have heard
much more, so that is why this message is so
important. Please send it.
On behalf of the family of Martin
Luther King, Jr., on behalf of the people of
the United States, I ask you to find for the
plaintiff and find that conspiracy existed
and that those conspirators involved not only
the defendant here but we're dealing in
conspiracy with agents of the City of Memphis
and the governments of the State of Tennessee
and the United States of America.
We ask you to find that conspiracy
existed and once and for all give this
plaintiff family justice and let's cleanse
this city and this nation of the ignorance
that has pervaded this case for so long. Let
the truth reign in this courtroom once and
for all.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2232
Thank you very much.
THE COURT: Mr. Garrison.
MR. GARRISON: Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen. I promise you one
thing, I won't take that long. Let me say
this first of all: I've been practicing law
here starting forty years this past August,
and I think this is the most important case
to me that I've ever been associated with.
I've tried cases in this courtroom and all
over this courthouse, and I think this case
is the most important case I've ever been
associated with. I say that because it is
important to the King family, it is important
to the American way of life, important to
quality and important to history now.
Over the past few years I've met
with Ms. Coretta King and Mr. Dexter King and
the family, and they are a very lovable
family. They have gone through more than any
family should have to go through and simply
because of the color of their skin, because
Dr. King simply was seeking equality and
equal rights. And if our Constitution means
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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anything, it means that is for everybody.
Now, Dr. Pepper has pursued this
case for years. He is like a bulldog on your
trousers. You just can't shake him loose,
you can't shake him off. If it wasn't for
him, we wouldn't be here today. He and I
have many areas of agreement, but we have
many areas of disagreement. I want to point
those out you to now.
First of all, let me say this: I
told you at the beginning that anything that
Mr. Jowers had to do with this was very, very
minute and small. I think the proof fairly
shows that.
Here is a man who had a greasy-spoon
restaurant, a beer joint, to put it bluntly,
that was there in a place where he had been
dealing with a Mr. Liberto, and perhaps those
things weren't the way they should be, but he
is not on trial for that. He simply said
that I had handled money for Mr. Liberto
previously and that here again he asked me to
handle some money.
He said he was going to send a box
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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to him. I didn't know what it was. He said
that the money came in and the box came in
and that he said someone would pick up the
box and you be at the back door at six
o'clock and something would be handed to
you. He says I didn't know anything.
Now, he met with Mr. Dexter King and
Ambassador Young freely and voluntarily at
his own expense, his own time. He told them
what limited information he had about this.
He was very honest with them and very sincere
in telling them what he knew about this case,
which was very limited.
He told Dexter King, which Mr. King
admitted here, that he said I didn't know
anything about this as far as it being Dr.
King that would be the target of
assassination, I had no knowledge of that.
He said, I apologize to you for
anything that I may have done that would
cause the death of your father, but I had no
idea, no knowledge, it was just simply
something I was doing and had been doing
previously, it wasn't any different from the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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other things.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is
ironic to note here that there is only one
person that has placed any blame on
Mr. Jowers as far as being there doing
anything. That's Ms. Spates. You've heard
her testimony. You've heard an affidavit
read to you that she gave to the prosecutors
of the City of Memphis, their investigators.
She first tried to say that
Mr. Jowers was there and she saw him and all
this thing about him being white and so forth
and so on, but she came back and in an
exhibit here that you have a right to see
said I wasn't even there, I was at work that
day, I didn't see anything, because I didn't
see Mr. Jowers with a gun, I never saw
anything, I was at work that day.
Which version do you believe? This
is a sworn statement, a sworn statement under
oath she gave to the prosecutors. It is
saying I wasn't even there. So which version
do you believe of Ms. Spates?
She first tried to say she had been
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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offered some money by Mr. Jowers and even by
me. Yet the first thing I asked her in her
testimony is -- I had never seen the lady but
twice in my life -- Ms. Spates, isn't it true
you have never been offered any money, we
never even talked about any money? She said,
that's exactly right.
She goes on to say, I was never
offered any money. So you have Ms. Spates,
who is the only person that said anything
about Mr. Jowers' involvement in this, and
which version do you believe? Do you believe
that she told the truth one time or the other
time? Both of them were under oath.
Now, as far as Mr. McCraw, I knew
Mr. McCraw, represented him for years. The
thing about Mr. McCraw is that as Mr. Hamblin
said, you couldn't believe a thing he said.
That's his best friend, he got on the stand
and said you couldn't believe a word he
said.
Mr. Jowers played a very, very
insignificant and minor role in this if he
played anything at all. He stated because of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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who he has come forth and said, that he has
lost his wife, everything he has and his
health. So he played a very insignificant,
very small role, if anything in this thing.
It was much bigger than Mr. Jowers, who owned
a little greasy-spoon restaurant there and
happened to be at the location that he was.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I guess
the area of disagreement between Dr. Pepper
and myself for the most part is this: It is
Mr. James Earl Ray's part in this case.
Let's look at this. You know, you have Mr.
Ray here, who was a convict who spent
ninety-nine and nine-tenths of his life in
prison, who would do anything for money.
He'd rob, take a gun, steal, do anything for
money. He enjoyed his notoriety as the most
famous prisoner this state has ever known.
He enjoyed that. That was a big thing with
him.
Here he was let out of prison in a
bread truck. If you saw the poster here
that's an exhibit, fifty dollars reward. Big
reward for him, wasn't it, for a man. He
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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came and talked Dr. King. Don't you think it
is ironic he was in Atlanta, Chicago, Los
Angeles, Memphis, Tennessee, when Dr. King
was there, Selma, Alabama, little town of
Selma when Dr. King was there?
Don't you think it is ironic that
there was a map that they found when he was
in Atlanta where he circled Dr. King's home,
his church, his place of business? I asked
him on the deposition -- I know the
deposition was long and burdensome to you,
but I want you to hear what he said. He has
told a thousand and one stories. This was
his last one. This is number one thousand
and one. As far as I know, it is the last
time he ever told his story and testified.
It is ironic that he had a map of
Atlanta with these three markings. He had
never been to Memphis, never been to
Birmingham, never been to New Orleans, no
maps. But a map of Atlanta was found in his
car which admitted had the circle around Dr.
King's home, his place of business and Dr.
King's church.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Now, the State of Tennessee says
that James Earl Ray acted and acted alone. I
think there is some validity to that. I
don't agree with everything they say, but I
think there is some validity to it. Mr. Ray,
when I asked him how did you know that Dr.
King had been assassinated, he said, I heard
it on the news. I had just gone through a
whole series of questions where he said, I
never listened to the news. I said, didn't
you know they had riots in Memphis, didn't
you know there was someone killed there? He
said, I never listened to the news. Five
minutes after Dr. King was killed, yeah, I
heard it on the news. I think Mr. Ray's
testimony speaks for itself.
He goes in and buys a gun he says
from somebody named Raul that asked him to
do this, but he gets a gun that Raul says --
first of all, Raul didn't tell him to get a
scope. He got that on his own. He didn't
tell him to get a scope on a rifle. He goes
in and says, I want another gun, this is not
the right gun, Raul told me to do this, but
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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he never showed the gun to Raul. Was there
really a Raul? Maybe there was. Isn't it
ironic that for months no one ever saw him
with Mr. Ray, no one, no one.
Now, when you take all the testimony
here from Mr. Ray and all the scenarios and
the things that happened, it makes you
wonder, did Mr. Ray do this? Dr. Francisco
says, I was taken up to the window there
where the shot was supposed to have come from
and I saw the path of the bullet. In my
opinion, it came from that window sill. This
is a medical examiner saying that.
Ladies and gentlemen, last year the
Attorney General's Office here concluded a
five-year investigation, five years, and this
is a report of theirs. Don't decide this
case without reading this report. It is an
exhibit. You can read it. Don't decide the
case without seeing this. It wouldn't be
fair to anyone if you didn't. They concluded
that there is no proof here that anyone acted
in this case except Mr. Ray that was
material.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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Now, you know, you wonder sometimes
why people tell things, and you've got to
think about, well, is that -- what are the
circumstances? Because in March of 1969,
here again is an exhibit which you need to
read before deciding this case, Mr. Ray was
asked by Judge Battle, "Are you pleading
guilty to murder in the first degree in this
case because you killed Dr. Martin Luther
King under such circumstances that would make
you legally guilty of murder in the first
degree under the law as explained to you by
your lawyers? Answer, yes."
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think
under the circumstances, if you remember
former Congressman Fountroy here said -- I
asked him, why did the committee conclude
that Mr. Ray was the assassin? What was his
answer? He said because he kept changing his
story. Do you remember that? That's the
testimony he gave here, a gentleman who was
in charge of the congressional committee.
This went on for weeks and weeks and
weeks. They spent money, untold sums of
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money to investigate this case. They
concluded that Mr. Ray was the one who pulled
the trigger, was the one who did the
assassination.
Now, let me say this: After
spending several years with this case and
talking to many, many witnesses, listening to
this trial and taking many depositions, you
can't help but wonder about things. You've
got to wonder from this standpoint: Would
the restaurant owner of a greasy-spoon
restaurant and a lone assassin, could they
pull away officers from the scene of an
assassination? Could they change rooms?
Could they put someone up on top of the fire
station? A convict and a greasy-spoon
restaurant owner, could they do that?
You know, when this trial started,
there are two people mentioned in this guilty
plea who are still living. I talked to them
and issued subpoenas for them to be here who
are prosecutors to explain you to ladies and
gentlemen as to why there wasn't more done to
investigate this case. Mr. Ray tried several
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times, seven, eight, nine times, to get a
trial the Court of Appeals, the Supreme
Court, never granted it. He was turned down
that many times.
Why didn't they test the gun? I
don't know. It doesn't make sense to me.
You know, that would have ended this case if
they had tested the gun. There is DNA --
they can use means now to test these guns.
They could find out if they wanted to. Why
wasn't that done? I don't understand.
I've never understood as to why the
prosecutors and the Attorney General, if they
really wanted to end this case and solve it,
why didn't they test the gun. That would
have told us whether or not Mr. Ray -- that
was the gun that did it with his fingerprints
on it or was it another gun. It was never
done. They fought it and fought it and
fought it.
I talked to two prosecutors who
agreed to be here to testify, who had
subpoenas to be here. The day before
yesterday, without you knowing, the Court of
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Appeals said, no, you can't bring them in.
They turned us down again. That's the same
thing we've had over and over and over.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is
ironic in this case that when the extradition
proceedings were started against Mr. Ray,
that it was to try to extradite him for
conspiracy to murder. That was the first
thing the United States government tried to
extradite Mr. Ray for, was conspiracy to
murder.
You know, when you stop and
rationalize this case and think, there has to
be more to it than a greasy-spoon restaurant
owner and an escaped convict. They could not
have arranged these things. They could not
have done those things.
Mr. Arkin testified here that one
hour before the assassination, or a couple
hours, there was a man that came in from
Washington, sent in here from Washington
saying Mr. Redditt has had a threat on his
life and you've got to go get him. Could a
greasy-spoon operator and escaped convict
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arrange for that? You know that's not the
case. And I do, too. Anyone who can think
knows better than that.
Mr. Arkin also said there were
officers from the United States government in
his office. Why were they here? What were
they doing here? They were sent here by the
United States government.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, we've had
problems with race in Memphis, and I'm sorry
to say that I must talk about it to some
extent. It has been said by a person who was
very knowledgeable that we have the most
serious racial divisions in Memphis of any
city in this nation, and that's bad, that's
terrible. We've got to live together and
learn to live together and to know that we
are all brothers and sisters. It shouldn't
be this way. It shouldn't be that we should
have this type racism and the type problems
we have.
In this case you have the
opportunity to speak. You'll speak in your
verdict in case that will either say one of
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two things: That we know that there was a
conspiracy here, we know that they didn't
intend for Dr. King to go to Washington to
march, and we know that the United States
government, the FBI and the Memphis Police
Department and other government agencies
along with Mr. Liberto and Mr. Earl Clark and
Mr. James Earl Ray were involved in this
case, and that's the type verdict that I
would ask you to consider.
You told me at the beginning you
weren't afraid to let the chips fall where
they may. I gather from that that you are
not afraid of the United States government,
you are not afraid of the Memphis Police
Department. If they are liable, you are
going to say they are. Am I correct? Isn't
that what we agreed to?
I think the testimony here that
you've heard and the proof that you've heard
indicates clearly there is more than just
Mr. Jowers involved. He was a small-time
greasy-spoon cafe operator who played a very
small insignificant part in this case, if
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anything.
If you will study over the reports
I've provided for you and the exhibits, think
about all the testimony that has been given
here and what really happened, ladies and
gentlemen, your verdict would have to be that
the United States government, the FBI, the
Memphis Police Department and others were
involved in this conspiracy to murder Dr.
King.
It is a shameful, terrible thing
that happened here in Memphis. I'm sorry and
apologize to Mr. King that it did, but think
about it. It is a very serious matter.
You'll never have a more serious opportunity
to sit on a jury than this where the issues
are more serious than this.
Whatever you say will be recorded in
history, and this will be it. We expect this
case to end after this. It has been going on
for years, but we think it is going to end
with your decision in this case.
Please give it serious consideration
and please think about a judgment against
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others besides Mr. Jowers. He played a very
small part, you know he did, in this case.
Think about the other part that Mr. Ray
played, Mr. Liberto played. You've got
testimony here from a witness that is
uncontradicted saying that Mr. Liberto told
me he had Martin Luther King assassinated.
Go over it. Think about it. Read over it.
There is only one thing to do,
that's to say that we, the jury, find that
the United States government, FBI, State of
Tennessee, Mr. Liberto, Mr. James Earl Ray,
they were all involved in a conspiracy to
murder Dr. Martin Luther King. That's the
only decision you can make.
Thank you.
MR. PEPPER: I didn't realize I
was going to have to try Mr. James Earl Ray's
guilt or innocence in this courtroom, but
counsel has raised it, so I should address
some of the issues.
Mr. Ray had a habit of marking
maps. I have in my possession maps that he
marked when he was in Texas, Montreal and
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Atlanta, and what he did was it helped him to
locate what he did and where he was going.
The Atlanta map is nowhere related to Dr.
King's residence.
It is three oblong circles that
covered general areas, one where he was
living on Peachtree. He did this. He did
this up in Montreal at the Neptune Bar, did
this in Texas when he was going down to
Mexico and Laredo. It was a habit that James
had. The maps are part of his practice, if
you will.
James never stalked Martin Luther
King. James was moved from place to place on
instructions. He was told to go somewhere
and he would go. He was given to some money,
told to come to New Orleans and he would be
given money.
James Earl Ray was in Los Angeles
and was told to go to New Orleans. When
Martin Luther King came to Los Angeles, James
Earl Ray left. He was there first and he
left. He didn't stay in Los Angeles. That
was the time he left for Atlanta when Martin
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came there in March.
He was in Atlanta when Martin King
was there part of the time, but Dr. King was
in and out of Atlanta a great deal of the
time. So he would have to be there some of
the time. He was not in Selma when Martin
King was in Selma. That is a myth. He
didn't stalk Dr. King. There was no reason
to stalk him.
He wasn't in New York when he was in
New York. He wasn't in Florida when he was
in Florida. He wasn't in Chicago when Martin
King was in Chicago. He worked in Wanetka,
Illinois, for a period of time.
He wasn't in prison ninety-nine
percent of his time. Before James Earl Ray
went into the Army, he held down jobs. When
came out, he held down jobs. When he got
fired, that's when he started to get in
trouble. He went and hung out in bars
occasionally and somebody would suggest a
good idea about how to get some money. So
James fell into it. He was, rightly as
Mr. Garrison says, was a penny-ante crook.
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That's really what it came down to.
He knew nothing about firearms. The
man who sold him the rifle, Donald Woods,
said he never saw a person who new less about
firearms than James Earl Ray. Never saw a
person who knew less about firearms.
He used to carry a pistol. When he
would stick up a store, he would carry a
pistol, and he had five bullets in the
pistol. I asked him, James, why would you
have five bullets in the pistol, why not
six? He always kept the firing pin chamber
empty.
He was embarrassed to tell me.
Finally I got it out of him. One time
literally he shot himself in the foot. It
was an accident and the gun went off. He
decided if he kept the firing pin chamber
empty, that wouldn't happen. He only had
five bullets. When he was arrested at
Heathrow in London, that gun he was carrying
had only five bullets.
He was somebody who was capable of
being used for a crime like this. He was
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someone who was gullible in a lot of ways.
He was someone who needed money. He was on
the run when he was concerned and he was
someone that could be used. And he was used,
and being used, he was told only what he
needed to know. Because that's the way those
things operate. Once he came under the
control of this fellow, he would be told
where to go, what to do, only what he needed
to know.
He bought the wrong gun. He bought
a 243 Winchester. Raul said, no, he wanted
a 30-06. He pointed it out to him in a
brochure and he went back and got it. The
very fact that he bought a gun and then went
around and immediately exchanged it indicates
that somebody is involved, somebody is
controlling him or telling him to do
something. So he did that.
Yes, he heard about the
assassination on the radio, heard it on the
car radio. He came back around to go to park
the car on South Main Street the way Raul
instructed him. At the time he came back
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around, the police were all over the place.
He is an escaped convict. He is not thinking
of Martin Luther King or anything else. He
is thinking of being an escaped convict and
being stopped. So he takes off. That's
exactly what he did. He took off.
And he did hear about this on the
radio. The more he drove, the more he
listened to the radio, the more he realized
he was in serious trouble.
One of the problems James Earl Ray
faced and lawyers for him faced was the fact
that he was a classic con. If he believed
someone was trying to help him, he wouldn't
tell, he wouldn't name that person, wouldn't
tell you who the person was. By my view, he
mistakenly believed he was being helped,
particularly when he was in Canada. But he
would never tell us who was assisting him
because he thought these were people who were
legitimately trying to help him and he was
not going to rat on them.
When he was captured after one
prison escape and he was asked continually to
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explain how he got out, how he managed to get
away, he refused to tell them. When I pushed
him on it, how did it happen, he said, well,
the guard was asleep, the guard fell asleep.
I said, why didn't you tell me that? He
said, no, no, I might need him again another
day. Even in that case he wouldn't tell.
So Ray was that kind of character.
I looked at him from 1978 to 1988, only began
to represent him in 1988. Ten years after I
started on this case I consented to represent
James Earl Ray when I became totally
convinced after ten years of looking at the
evidence that he had no knowing involvement.
He pled guilty because that was the
thing to do. Mr. Garrison read to you the
response to the judge. What he left out was
the fact that Ray said, yes, legally guilty,
legally guilty. He was legally because he
was copping a plea, so he was legally
guilty. He never confessed. The media has
always said he confessed, the confessed
killer. He never confessed.
He always insisted that he didn't do
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it, always wanted a trial. When he fired the
Haynes, Foreman came in. December 18th
Foreman came on this case, formally into
Memphis for the first time for a hearing.
Two p.m. that afternoon Foreman's local
counsel was in meeting with the prosecutor.
Two p.m., December 18th, we have the minutes
of the meeting, the local attorney was
meeting with the prosecutor, Canale, to start
plea-bargaining negotiations. Imagine that,
without any knowledge of Ray at all.
On February 21 he was writing to his
brother that I expect a trial to start
perhaps in April. That late they had been
stitching him up all that time beforehand.
Finally Foreman comes down on him and says
that you've got to plead guilty, they are
going to fry your ass, they convicted you in
the paper, they are going to send your father
back where he was a parole violator forty
years ago, they are going to harass the rest
of your family and, besides, Foreman said,
I'm not in good health and I can't give you
your best defense.
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That was the thing that James said
always, he had to get rid of that lawyer and
didn't think the judge would change him, so
he said to him to plead, which he did on
March 10th, and then I'll get a new trial.
The motion was denied on March 13th, and he
tried ever since.
He filed motions. The judge died.
Judge Battle died with his head on James Earl
Ray's application for a new trial, died in
his chambers with his head on those papers at
the end of March. James was denied that
trial.
When a sitting judge dies, normally
such a case when a motion is pending, it is
granted. There were two motions pending
before that judge. One was granted. One was
not. James Earl Ray remained in prison.
I mean, I didn't intend to belabor
Mr. Ray's innocence, but I believe firmly he
is innocent, he was an unknowing patsy in
this case and he was used.
As far as Ms. Spates' testimony, I
did refer to it earlier. The statement that
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you heard read under oath in her deposition
were paragraphs specifically from an
affidavit that she had given subsequently to
her interview by the TBI and the Attorney
General's Office here. And from what she
told me, that was a horrifically-pressured
interview that they gave her, was distorted,
inaccurate, untruthful, and that's why she
gave that other story. And she reluctantly
put Mr. Jowers right in the middle of it.
Now, having said all of that,
Mr. Garrison is quite right, you can read the
Attorney General's report. Take a look at
it. Remember one thing when you take a look
at it. The man who headed that investigation
sat there. He was one of the witnesses
Mr. Garrison called that we were able to
examine before the Court of Appeals said you
are not going to talk to any of those
people.
Mr. Glankler sat in that chair. I
just gave him a sampling of names, gave him
twenty-three names. Do you recall that? I
asked him if he interviewed these people in
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his investigation, these witnesses with vital
evidence that you've heard, twenty-three.
Do you know how many he actually
interviewed? I recall I think it was two.
That's the investigation the Attorney
General's Office did. That just speaks for
itself, in my view. So I would look at the
report in that kind of context.
As to the House Select Committee
investigation, Representative Fountroy is
very uncomfortable with the results of that
investigation, very unhappy, has been for a
number of years. He has indicated that they
didn't have enough time, they could have
perhaps done better if they had more time.
At other times he said the staff he thinks
misled them. Fountroy was never happy with
the results of that investigation. And I
think he has made that quite clear.
Raul, the evidence on Raul speaks
for itself. Mr. Jowers himself has
identified Raul. Mr. Jowers identified
Raul from the spread of photographs that I
showed him when Dexter King and I met. He
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knows who Raul was. He identified him as
the man who came into the restaurant who
Liberto sent in.
Now, one thing Mr. Garrison and I do
agree on -- we agree on a lot of things,
actually, but one thing in particular is that
Mr. Jowers is a small part of this whole
thing. He owned this cafe, and he did have a
debt, an obligation, to Mr. Liberto, and he
was prevailed upon to become involved in this
assassination. He didn't go out looking for
it. He was prevailed upon to be involved.
I'm not really certain about how
much money he got for his involvement. I
think he got a substantial amount of money.
I think that is what the stove money was all
about. But I'm not certain of that. We will
never know that, I suppose.
Mr. Jowers has unburdened himself to
the King family. He has -- it is late in his
life. And for whatever reason, he has come
forward and he has, as Mr. Garrison has told
you, voluntarily told elements of the story.
We believe that that is what he has done.
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He has just told elements of the
story protecting himself to the extent that
he can because he is worried about being
ultimately indicted. We think foolishly so
because we don't think there is any interest
in that, but that is his fear.
What, however, we don't believe is
that Mr. Jowers was unknowingly involved.
We've put into evidence the Prime Time Live
interview with Sam Donaldson, and in that
interview and in the transcript of that it is
very clear -- he tells different nuances of
the story, but it is very clear that he knew
what was going on, he knew what was
happening.
Both Ambassador Young and Dexter
King have said the one thing they didn't
believe about him is when he said he didn't
know. You can understand why he would say
that, because he is talking to the son of
Martin Luther King, Jr., the son of the
victim is sitting right in front of him. How
does he -- with eyes together how does he
say, I knew, I was a part of this, I was a
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knowing part of it? So he said, I don't
know. We just don't believe that.
And we believe the evidence of Bill
Hamblin, who said McCraw told him what
happened to that rifle, but he told him when
he was drunk over a period of fifteen years
each time. It might be very right that
McCraw would lie when he was sober. But when
he was drunk, Hamblin said, you may recall,
he was straight, he told him the truth, and
he told him the same detail again and again
and again. If he had been sober and he would
tell him one story and then another, then you
would say there was some prevarication, maybe
it was not true, but Hamblin said it was the
same story again and again and again but only
would discuss it when he was intoxicated.
On the basis of all of that, we
believe that Mr. Hamblin is telling the
truth, that that murder weapon is at the
bottom of the Mississippi River where it was
thrown by Mr. McCraw.
So that is basically it, ladies and
gentlemen. I think that you have to keep in
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mind that no matter how small the part
Mr. Jowers played in this whole sorry
episode, he nonetheless played a part and is
a conspirator. He is guilty, libel in this
court. He is libel in this court of
conspiracy because he was involved.
Irrespective of James Earl Ray, and
I believe in respect of James' memory -- he
is not here to defend himself, but I had to
give you information about him -- but
irrespective of that, even if you found that
James was involved and up to his neck, that
does not absolve Mr. Loyd Jowers, neither
does it absolve the governments and the
government agents who have been involved in
this case.
So a verdict of an existence of
conspiracy, as Mr. Garrison said, quite
rightly, does mean that there is a
conspiracy, and it involves all of the
elements that you have seen here today, and
the award of damages, nominal though it is,
is to be -- is also to be a part of your
verdict.
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Thank you very much. Once again,
please, we're asking you to send this message
from this courtroom across the land. Though
they will not know the details of what you
have heard probably ever, unless researchers
want to come in and read all of this, they
will not be able at least to suppress the
mighty Whirlitzer sound of your verdict.
That's the message that we ask you
to send from this courtroom to the rest of
this country and indeed the world who are
concerned about the assassination of Martin
Luther King and his loss to civilized
mankind.
Thank you.
THE COURT: All right. Ladies
and gentlemen, in this case the plaintiffs,
Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, III,
Bernice King, Dexter Scott King and Yolonda
King have sued Loyd Jowers and other unknown
conspirators alleging that the defendant
Jowers was a participant in a conspiracy to
do harm, and that as a result of that
conspiracy that harm was done to Dr. Martin
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Luther King, that is, that he was killed in
the process.
To that, the Defendant Loyd Jowers,
has pleaded not guilty or said he is not
guilty of the things alleged. In the
alternative, Mr. Jowers has also alleged that
if he was involved, it was a very minute or
small part of the conspiracy and that in
addition to his conduct, that there was also
additional participants, namely James Earl
Ray, the Government of the United States of
America, the Government of the State of
Tennessee, City of Memphis, the Memphis
Police Department, the Government of Shelby
County, Tennessee, and that his was only a
minor part, and he also alleges that there
was participation on the part of Frank
Liberto and Earl Clark.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'll give
you my instructions, which you should
consider when you are deliberating. You are
to decide this case only from the evidence
which was presented at this trial. The
evidence consists of the sworn testimony of
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the witnesses who have testified, both in
person and by deposition, the exhibits that
were received and marked as evidence, any
facts to which all the lawyers have agreed
are stipulated and any other matters that I
have instructed you to consider.
There are two kinds of evidence:
Direct and circumstantial. Direct evidence
is direct proof of a fact such as testimony
of a witness about what the witness
personally observed. Circumstantial evidence
is indirect evidence that gives you clues
about what happened.
Circumstantial evidence is proof of
a factor a group of facts that causes you to
conclude that another fact exists. It is for
you to decide whether a fact has been proved
by circumstantial evidence.
If you base your decision upon
circumstantial evidence, you must be
convinced that the conclusion you reach is
more probable than any other explanation.
For example, if a witness testifies
that a witness saw it raining outside, that
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would be direct evidence that it was
raining. If a witness testifies that the
witness saw someone enter the room wearing a
raincoat covered with drops of water carrying
a wet umbrella, that would be circumstantial
evidence from which you could conclude that
it was raining.
You are to consider both direct and
circumstantial evidence. The law permits you
to give equal weight to both, but it is for
you to decide how much weight to give any
evidence in making your decision.
You must consider all of the
evidence in light of reason, experience and
common sense. Although you must consider all
of the evidence, you are not required to
accept all of the evidence as true or
accurate.
You should not decide an issue by
the simple process of counting the number of
witnesses who have testified on either side.
You must consider all of the evidence in the
case. You may decide that the testimony of a
few witnesses on one side is more convincing
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than the testimony of more witnesses on the
other side.
Certain testimony has been presented
by deposition. A deposition is testimony
taken under oath before the trial and
preserved in writing or on videotape. You
are to consider that testimony as if it had
been given in court. You are the sole and
exclusive judges of the credibility or
believability of the witnesses who have
testified in this case.
You must decide which witnesses you
believe and how important you think their
testimony is. You are not required to accept
or reject everything a witness says. You are
free to believe all, none or part of any
testimony.
In deciding which testimony you
believe, you should rely on your common sense
and every-day experience. There is no fixed
set of rules to use in deciding whether you
believe a witness, but it may help you to
think about the following questions: Was the
witness able to see, hear or be aware of the
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things about which the witness testified?
How well was the witness able to recall and
describe these things? How long was the
witness watching or listening? Was the
witness distracted in any way?
Did the witness have a good memory?
How did the witness look and act while
testifying? Was the witness making an honest
effort to tell the truth or did the witness
evade questions? Did the witness have any
interest in the outcome of the case? Did the
witness have any motive, bias or prejudice
that would influence the witness' testimony?
How reasonable was the witness'
testimony when you considered all of the
evidence in the case? Was the witness'
testimony contradicted by what the witness
has said or done at another time or the
testimony of other witnesses or by other
evidence? Has there been evidence regarding
the witness' intelligence, respectability or
reputation for truthfulness? Has the
witness' testimony been influenced by any
promise, threat or suggestion and did the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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witness admit that any part of the witness'
testimony was not true.
There may be discrepancies or
differences within a witness' testimony or
between the testimony of different
witnesses. This does not necessarily mean
that a witness should be disbelieved.
Sometimes when two people observe an
event, they will see or hear it differently.
Sometimes a witness may have a lapse of
memory. Witnesses may testify honestly but
simply may be wrong about what they thought
they saw or remembered.
You should consider whether a
discrepancy relates to an important fact or
only to an unimportant detail. Usually
witnesses are permitted to testify as --
usually witnesses are not permitted to
testify as to opinions or to conclusions.
However, a witness who has scientific,
technical or other specialized knowledge,
skill, experience, training or education may
be permitted to give testimony in the form of
opinions. Those witnesses are often referred
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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to as expert witnesses.
You may remember that Judge Joe
Brown came in and was qualified as an expert
in firearms. You should determine the weight
that should be given to an expert opinion.
You should consider the education,
qualification and experience of the witness
and the credibility of the witness and the
facts relied upon by the witness to support
the opinion and the reasoning used by the
witness to arrive at the opinion.
You should consider each expert
opinion and give it the weight, if any, that
you think it deserves. You are not required
to accept the opinion of any expert.
The defendant in this case, Loyd
Jowers, is accused of conspiracy. Conspiracy
is an agreement to perform an illegal act.
In order to establish an action for civil
conspiracy, there must be a combination
between two or more persons to accomplish by
concert an unlawful purpose or to accomplish
a purpose not in itself unlawful by unlawful
means.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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In connection with concerted action,
it is not essential that each conspirator had
knowledge of all the details of the
conspiracy, but there must be an overt act.
When this act occurs, it is not necessary
that the party is aware of the nature of the
harm to be done or the person against whom
the harm will be done. It is not a defense
that someone else may have played a greater
part than another.
Neither is it your responsibility to
identify other co-conspirators if you find
that they do exist. It is no defense that
someone else might have played a role or
possibly a greater role than Loyd Jowers.
Also remember the question is not
whether Loyd Jowers conspired with James Earl
Ray. The question is did Jowers conspire
with anyone in a scheme that brought harm to
Dr. Martin Luther King.
In this case suit has been brought
for damages alleging that an illegal act
occurred causing the death of Dr. Martin
Luther King. In this action the plaintiff
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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has the burden of establishing by a
preponderance of evidence all of the facts
necessary to prove the following issue: That
is, that Loyd Jowers conspired with others
who are not parties to this action to commit
an act which resulted in the harm to Dr.
Martin Luther King.
The term "preponderance of the
evidence" means that amount of evidence that
causes you to conclude that an allegation is
probably true. To prove an allegation by a
preponderance of evidence, a party must
convince you that the allegation is more
likely true than not true.
If the evidence on a particular
issue is equally balanced, that issue has not
been proved by a preponderance of the
evidence and the party has the burden of
proving that issue -- the party that has the
burden of proving that issue has failed.
You must consider all of the
evidence on each issue. A stipulation is an
agreement. If the parties have stipulated
that certain matters of fact are true, they
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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are bound by this -- if they so stipulate,
they are bound by this agreement, and in your
consideration of the evidence, you are to
treat these facts as proved.
The parties have stipulated that
should you find that they are entitled to
recover in this case, that the dollar amount
should not exceed one hundred dollars.
Members of the jury, now that you
have heard all of the evidence and the
arguments of the lawyers, it is my duty to
instruct you on the law that applies in this
case. It is your duty to find the facts from
all of the evidence in the case.
After you determine the facts, you
must apply the law that has been given to you
whether you agree with it or not. You must
not be influenced by any personal likes or
dislikes, prejudice or sympathy. You must
decide the case solely on the evidence before
you and according to the law that is given to
you.
All of the instructions are equally
important. The order in which these
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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instructions are given has no significance.
You must follow all of the instructions and
not single out some and ignore the others.
In reaching your verdict, you may
consider only the evidence that was
admitted. Remember that any questions or
objections, statements or arguments by the
attorneys during the trial are not evidence.
If the attorneys have stipulated or agreed to
any fact, however, you will regard that fact
as having been proved.
The testimony that you've been
instructed to disregard is not evidence and
must not be considered. If evidence has been
received only for a limited purpose, you must
follow the limited instructions you were
given.
Although you must only consider the
evidence in this case in reaching your
verdict, you are not required to set aside
your common knowledge. You are permitted to
weigh the evidence in light of your common
sense, observations and experiences.
The Court has given you various
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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rules of law to help guide you to a just and
lawful verdict. Whether some of these
instructions will apply will depend upon what
you decide are the facts.
The Court's instructions on any
subject, including the instructions on
damages, must not be taken by you to indicate
the Court's opinion or the facts that you
should find or the verdict you should
return.
You have taken notes during the
trial. Once you retire to the jury room, you
may refer to your notes, but only to refresh
your own memory of the witness' testimony.
You are free to discuss the
testimony of the witnesses with your fellow
jurors, but each of you must rely on your own
individual memory as to what a witness did or
did not say.
In discussing the testimony, you may
not read your notes to fellow jurors or
otherwise tell them what you have written.
You should never use your notes to persuade
or influence other jurors. Your notes are
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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not evidence. Your notes should carry no
more weight than the unrecorded recollection
of another juror.
Your attitude and conduct at the
beginning of your deliberations are very
important. It is rarely productive for a
juror to immediately announce a determination
to hold firm for a certain verdict before any
deliberations or discussions take place.
Taking that position might make it
difficult for you to consider the opinions of
other fellow jurors or change your mind even
if you later decide that you might be wrong.
Please remember that you are not
advocates for one party or another. You are
the judges of the facts in this case. Each
of you should deliberate and vote on each
issue to be decided. Before you return your
verdict, however, each of you must agree on
the verdict to be reached so that each of you
will be able to state truthfully that the
verdict is yours.
The verdict you return to the Court
must represent the considered judgment of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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each juror. In order to return a verdict, it
is necessary that each juror agree that your
verdict must be unanimous.
It is your duty to consult with one
another and to reach an agreement if you can
do so without violence to individual
judgment.
Each of you must decide the case for
yourself, but do so only after an impartial
consideration of the evidence with your
fellow jurors.
In the course of your deliberations,
do not hesitate to reexamine your own views
and to change your opinion if you are
convinced that it is not correct. But do not
surrender your honest conviction as to the
weight or effect of the evidence solely
because of the opinion of your fellow jurors
or for the purpose of returning a verdict.
If a question arises during
deliberations and you need further
instructions, please print the question on a
sheet of paper, knock on the door of the jury
room and give the question to my court
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2278
deputy. I'll read the question and I may
call you back into the court to try to help
you. Please understand that I may only
answer questions about the law and I cannot
answer questions about the evidence.
For your benefit, I have prepared a
jury verdict sheet. Let me remind you that
although certainly the life of Dr. Martin
Luther King would certainly be more than a
hundred dollars, you are not called upon to
assess a real value in this case. The
parties are only seeking nominal damages.
So that if you find at all for the
plaintiffs, again I'll remind you that you
cannot award any more than what they are
asking for.
Now, in the Circuit Court, it is a
court of unlimited jurisdiction, and there is
no limit to the amount that can be recovered,
millions, whatever, but you can in any case
only award the amount that is being asked or
less. You can never give more than the party
has asked for. So remember that there is a
one hundred dollar limit on the request in
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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this case.
The jury verdict reads as follows:
Did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy
to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King? And
there is a space for you to answer yes or
no.
I have an additional question: Do
you also find -- assuming that your answer to
the first one is yes, and I'm not suggesting
an answer to that one, but should -- if you
find that the first one is no, then that's
the end of your deliberations. But if your
answer to the first question is yes, then the
question is asked, do you also find that
others, including governmental agencies, were
parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the
defendant? Again, there are places for you
to answer yes or no.
And a third question is put to you:
What is the total amount of damages to be
awarded to the plaintiffs Coretta Scott King,
Martin Luther King, III, Bernice King, Dexter
Scott King and Yolonda King? There is a
blank here where if you would find for them,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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again I'll remind you that the total amount
should not exceed four hundred dollars.
Anything further?
MR. GARRISON: I have nothing
further, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, ladies
and gentlemen. You will now retire and
select one of you to be the presiding juror
for your deliberations.
As soon as all of you have agreed
upon a verdict, you will sign the verdict
form and return with it to this courtroom.
You may deliberate only when all of
you are present in the jury room. And you
may not resume your deliberations after any
break until all of you have returned to the
jury room, that is to say, you can never
discuss the case in splintered groups but
only when you are -- when all of you are
together and deliberateing.
The other thing that I must do at
this time, regretfully, is to take the
alternates. The alternates will not be
allowed to deliberate with you. We normally
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2281
excuse them at this time. But I am going
to -- I'm requesting that you remain here but
do not speak to the -- do not discuss the
case during the deliberations, but I want you
to remain until the final verdict has been
returned. There is still the possibility
that you -- we hope that it doesn't happen,
but there is always the possibility you might
have to enter into the deliberation. So we
ask you to please stay but do not discuss the
case with anyone. Do you understand?
All right. Anything further?
MR. GARRISON: Can we approach
the bench just a moment?
(Bench conference outside the
presence of the court reporter.)
THE COURT: All right. Would
the alternates come up here.
(The two alternate jurors approached
the bench for a conference outside the
presence of the court reporter.)
THE COURT: All right. Ladies
and gentlemen, during the course of the trial
there were certain exhibits that were
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2282
presented. These exhibits will be available
to you if you find that they would help you
in your deliberations, all but the deposition
testimony. We will not allow the depositions
to go back, but any of the other exhibits you
may have.
All right. You may now retire.
(Jury out.)
(The jury began its
deliberations at 12:32 p.m.)
THE COURT: All right. We have
absolutely no idea what the jury is going to
did or how long it is going to take them to
do. I don't know whether or not they are
going to want to take a break before they get
into their serious deliberations. I'm going
to ask you all to stay close. If you must go
someplace, let he the deputy or someone know
where were can reach you.
(The Court stood in recess until
3:02 p.m.)
THE COURT: I understand the
jury has reached a verdict. I'm going to
bring them out. They've indicated that they
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
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want a picture of themselves. So I'm
authorizing this gentleman to take one
picture. He is going to make sure there are
no additional copies. I'll have copies made
of them and send them to the jurors.
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: All right, ladies
and gentlemen. I understand you reached a
verdict. Is that correct?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: May I have that
verdict.
(Verdict form passed to the
Court.)
THE COURT: I have authorized
this gentleman here to take one picture of
you which I'm going to have developed and
make copies and send to you as I promised.
Okay. All right, ladies and
gentlemen. Let me ask you, do all of you
agree with this verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: In answer to the
question did Loyd Jowers participate in a
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2284
conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther
King, your answer is yes. Do you also find
that others, including governmental agencies,
were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by
the defendant? Your answer to that one is
also yes. And the total amount of damages
you find for the plaintiffs entitled to is
one hundred dollars. Is that your verdict?
THE JURY: Yes (In unison).
THE COURT: All right. I want
to thank you ladies and gentlemen for your
participation. It lasted a lot longer than
we had originally predicted. In spite of
that, you hung in there and you took your
notes and you were alert all during the
trial. And we appreciate it. We want you to
note that our courts cannot function if we
don't have jurors who accept their
responsibility such as you have.
I hope it has been a pleasant
experience for you and that when you go back
home you'll tend tell your friends and
neighbors when they get that letter saying
they've been summoned for jury duty, don't
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2285
try to think of up those little old lies,
just come on down and it is not so bad after
all.
I know how much you regret the fact
that you won't be able to come back for the
next ten years. I don't know, I may or may
not recognize you if I see you on the street
some day, but if you would see me and
recognize me, I sure would appreciate you
coming up and reminding me of your service
here.
To remind you of your service, we
have some certificates that we have prepared
for you. They look real good in a frame.
Not only will they remind you of your service
here, but they will remind you also of that
wonderful judge who presided over this. We
do thank you very much on behalf of everyone
who has participated in this trial.
You were directed not to discuss the
case when you were first sworn. Now that
your verdict has been reached, I'm going to
relieve you of that oath, meaning that you
may or may not discuss it. It is up to you.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2286
No one can force you to. And if you discuss
it, it will only be because you decide that
you wanted to.
I guess that's about all except that
I want to come around there and personally
shake your hand. You are what I would call
Trojans.
Having said that, as soon as I get
around there and get a chance to shake your
hands, you'll be dismissed.
(Judge Swearengen left the bench
to shake the jurors hands.)
THE COURT: Those of you who
would like to retain your notes, you may do
so if you want to.
I guess that's about it. So
consider yourselves dismissed and we thank
you again.
Ladies and gentlemen, Court is
adjourned.
(The proceedings were concluded
at 3:10 p.m. on December 8th, 1999.)
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2287
COURT REPORTERS' CERTIFICATE
STATE OF TENNESSEE:
COUNTY OF SHELBY:
We, BRIAN F. DOMINSKI, MARGIE
DAUSTER, SARA ROGAN, KRISTEN PETERSON and
SHERYL WEATHERFORD, Reporters and Notaries
Public, Shelby County, Tennessee, CERTIFY:
1. The foregoing proceedings were
taken before us at the time and place stated
in the foregoing styled cause with the
appearances as noted;
2. Being Court Reporters, we then
reported the proceedings in Stenotype to the
best of our skill and ability, and the
foregoing pages contain a full, true and
correct transcript of our said Stenotype
notes then and there taken;
3. We am not in the employ of and
are not related to any of the parties or
their counsel, and we have no interest in the
matter involved.
WITNESS OUR SIGNATURES, this, the
____ day of ___________, 2000.
___________________________
BRIAN F. DOMINSKI
Certificate of Merit
Holder; Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
2288
___________________________
MARGIE ROUTHEAUX
Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
___________________________
SARA ROGAN
Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
___________________________
KRISTIN PETERSON
Court Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
___________________________
SHERYL G. WEATHERFORD
Registered
Professional Reporter,
Notary Public for
the State of Tennessee at
Large ***
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999