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13th Juror Podcast
The Defense of Jack Ruby
00:24:09
Everyone saw Jack Ruby pull the trigger. But what was happening inside his mind in the moments before he killed Lee Harvey Oswald? From claims of psychomotor epilepsy to suspicions of larger conspiracies, the defense attempts to explain one of the most shocking moments in American history.
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There are moments in history that come down to a single decision. A fleeting moment, a choice that can't be undone. On November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby made one of those choices. In the basement of Dallas City Hall, Jack fired a single shot into Lee Harvey Oswald as the world watched in real time. It's a moment that's been replayed for decades, slowed down and analyzed frame by frame. The flash of movement, the crack of the gun in the instant Oswald collapsed. We know exactly what happened. But what's less clear is why. It happened. Because while the act itself was captured on film, everything behind it wasn't. What was going through his mind in that moment. Was this something he had planned or something that unfolded in seconds? Was it calculated or was it impulsive in and more importantly, what was driving that decision in the moment he stepped forward? The prosecution told one version of that story, a version rooted in action, in pattern and in choice. But the defense told another. And that's where this case begins to shift. Because to understand what happened in that basement, the defense argued, you have to look beyond the footage and beyond the moment that everyone remembers. They said you have to look not just at what happened, but at what was happening inside of Jack Ruby in the seconds before he did it. The prosecution says this case is simple and that the footage speaks for itself. The defense says the truth is far more complex than it appears. But it's the jurors who have the final say. This is the 13 Juror podcast where we break down real court cases and put you in the juror's seat. Two sides, the same evidence. You decide what to believe. I'm your host, Brandi Churchwell. Today's episode is Texas vs. Jack Ruby, part two. The defense. From the very beginning, the defense argued that this case was far more complicated than it appeared in 1964, there was no formal plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Defendants were limited to pleading simply guilty or not guilty. And insanity had to be introduced later as part of the defense, not at the outset as its own plea. That limitation had a crucial impact on Jack's case because when the trial began, the defense tried to signal immediately what this case was really about, Jack Ruby's mental state. But procedurally, they were constrained. And the limitations didn't stop there. In an unusual move, the prosecution chose not to give an opening statement at all. The defense, however, wanted to, needed to, because their entire case depended on framing Jack not just as the man who pulled the trigger, but as a man whose state of mind had to be understood before that moment could be judged. But because the prosecution waived its opening, the court did not allow the defense to give one either. And that left them in a difficult position, forced to sit through the prosecution's case without the chance to contextualize it, without the opportunity to prepare the jury for what they believed was the real issue at the heart of this trial. All they could do was wait and hope that when their turn came, the jury was still willing to see this case through a different lens, according to the evidence and testimony they presented. This is the Defensys story.
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When the defense finally had the opportunity to begin presenting their case, they didn't start with the shooting. They started with Jack Ruby. To them, this wasn't just about what happened in that basement. It was about who Jack was long before that moment ever happened. And the picture they painted was not simple. Jack Ruby was Born Jacob Rubenstein In 1911 Chicago, he grew up in a large immigrant family, one of 10 children, in a home that witnesses described as unstable. His mother struggled with severe mental health issues and was eventually committed to a psychiatric hospital. His parents marriage was volatile, and at times the children were placed into foster care. The defense argued that instability didn't just shape his childhood. It fractured something deeper. Jack left school at a young age and became involved in the rougher parts of Chicago. He spent time around street life, around crime, and around violence. And one witness, a boxer who knew him during those years, described Jack as someone who lived in those tough environments, someone who had learned to survive in them. But even then, there were signs that something wasn't quite right. There were some instances that from the outside may have originally seemed like strange quirks, fixations that went beyond what most people would consider normal. For example, Jack referred to his dogs as his children, which by itself wasn't entirely odd. But Jack also insisted that dogs others do the same. And when they didn't, if people referred to his dogs as dogs, he became suddenly defensive and agitated. There was one dog that Jack even was known to refer to as his wife, and he would react angrily if others didn't acknowledge the dogs in the same way he did. But it was more than just unusual behavior. As the defense moved forward, witness after witness began to describe the same pattern. A man who was emotional, volatile, unpredictable. Someone who would fly off the handle at the drop of a dime, but then just as quickly seem to return to normal like nothing had happened. Former employees testified that Jack would become irate over seemingly insignificant situations. Yelling, causing a scene, and even becoming physical. Then, just as quickly as it started, the moment would pass. The pattern would come up again and again. An upholsterer who knew Jack described him as emotional, high strung and unstable. He told the jury about an incident where Jack became enraged over a comment about his business, reacting so intensely that it frightened the man into a stunned silence. But again, the same thing happened. The outburst came without warning and then disappeared just as quickly as though nothing had happened at all. Another witness, who had known Jack for years, described a man who was quick to anger. Someone who would get into physical fights over what others might see as minor slights. He estimated he had personally seen Jack involved in as many as 8 to 12 fights over the years, with more incidents he had only heard about. And yet, even in those moments, the pattern held. Jack would explode and then just as quickly return to normal. Again and again, the jury heard the same thing. A man who could seem perfectly fine one moment and then suddenly, snap. Explosive anger, no clear warning. And then just as suddenly, it was gone. At the time, those behaviors may have been written off as personality, a temper, a volatile nature, but the defense argued it was something more. There was something inside of Jack that wasn't quite right. And when the president was assassinated, Jack seemed to become consumed with what had happened.
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Witnesses describe Jack as deeply patriotic, someone who had served his country and cared deeply about it. And when John F. Kennedy was killed, it affected him profoundly. He shut down his clubs for the weekend. He mourned. He had tears in his eyes as he talked to witnesses about the loss of the president. And according to those who saw him, he was not the same. A woman named Karen Bennett, who worked for Jack, told the jury about a phone call she had with him shortly after the assassination. She had called about Jack closing the clubs, concerned because she wouldn't be able to make money during her scheduled shifts. She said Jack became suddenly and intensely angry, accusing her of being disrespectful for even asking about the club while the country was grieving. She said Jack became irate, telling her he had closed for the weekend out of respect for the president and he didn't know if he would ever reopen. And then, just as quickly as it started, it was over. Jack calmed down, and the moment passed. George Senator Jack's roommate, told the jury he had never seen Jack in that condition before, not just upset, but deeply disturbed. He said Jack could not stop talking about the president's family, only intensifying as time passed. In the early Morning hours of Saturday, around 3am, Jack had left the radio station after the 2am news broadcast and gone home. But he didn't go to sleep. He was agitated, restless and still consumed by what had happened. George said that Jack had begun to hyper fixate on an advertisement that had appeared in the paper before the assassination. It was a full page ad with a thick black border around it. And Jack believed that the border around the ad symbolized death and that it was directed at the President. He began connecting it to extremist groups, to the John Birch Society and even to communist influence. In his mind these things were connected and he needed to prove it. So in the middle of the night, Jack woke up George and insisted that they go out. George said Jack called one of his employees to wake him up and have him come along as well. They drove through Dallas photographing a billboard calling for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren, something Jack believed was tied to the same ad. They went to the post office trying to trace the name attached to it, looking for answers. After hours of driving around, Jack wasn't able to find the answers he was looking for. But he didn't stop. The men went to a coffee shop where he continued talking about the ad, about the President and about what had happened. He was grieving, crying and unable to let go. By that point, he hadn't slept and he was still completely enthralled in it, emotionally and mentally. By Sunday morning, just hours before Jack shot Lee Harvey Oswald, George said Jack looked worse than he ever had, pacing the floor back and forth with a spaced out look in his eyes, still talking about the Kennedys and still visibly shaken. Emotion layered on exhaustion, fixation layered on agitation. Until finally something gave. Because later after the shooting, officers would testify that Jack said he wanted to show the world that, quote, Jews have guts. And the defense tied that statement back to everything the jury had just heard. The fixation, the emotional connection, the belief that something larger was happening. According to the defense, all of those witnesses weren't just telling stories, they were laying a foundation. Because according to their experts, what those witnesses described, the sudden outbursts, the rapid shifts and then the return to baseline, wasn't random. It was neurological. And that pattern would become central to how they explained what happened in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. The defense didn't just argue that Jack Ruby acted impulsively. They argued that he was legally insane at the time of the shooting. Under that standard, the question wasn't whether his actions made sense to others. It was whether in that moment he understood what he was doing and that it was wrong. According to the defense, he didn't. Their experts believed Jack was suffering from a condition involving an alteration of consciousness, a disruption in normal brain activity that can cause a temporary break in awareness and control. During those episodes, they said, a person can act in ways that seem irrational, unpredictable, and even completely out of character, then return to normal once the episode passes. To support that, they first brought in a highly accomplished clinical psychologist, someone trained specifically to diagnose mental disorders, who spent hours evaluating Jack at the end of December. Based on those evaluations, he concluded that Jack was suffering from organic brain damage and more specifically showed signs of psychomotor epilepsy, a disorder linked to abnormal electrical activity in the brain and associated with these altered states. The testing, he said, pointed in the same direction. Jack showed signs of confusion, disorganized thinking and impaired language processing, what the doctor described as concrete thinking, which is often associated with neurological issues. Emotionally, he was described as unstable and impulsive, with sudden shifts in mood and anger that appeared to be tied to irrational thought patterns. Additional medical testing, including studies of brain activity and other physical indicators, was introduced to reinforce that conclusion. The defense emphasized that this wasn't just psychological. They argued it was rooted in a physical condition affecting how his brain functioned. But their claim wasn't that Jack was always in that state. It was much narrower than that. They argued that in the moment he shot Lee Harvey Oswald, after days of emotional strain, lack of sleep, and overwhelming stress, his condition triggered a kind of temporary mental break, a fugue like state one where, according to their experts, he did not understand the nature of what he was doing or that what he was doing was wrong. This wasn't a lifetime of insanity. It was a moment. But the entire case would hinge on whether the jury believed that moment was enough to excuse what happened next. By the time closing arguments began, the jury had already heard two very different versions of the same moment. The prosecution kept it simple because to them, it was simple. A man stepped out of the crowd and shot another man at point blank range on live television in front of the world. The defense didn't argue about what happened. They couldn't. The world had already seen that. Instead, they asked the jury to look at everything that came before the shot was fired. The childhood, the instability, the emotional volatility, the exhaustion, the grief, and most importantly, the impact all of that had on Jack's mind. Because to the defense, this case wasn't about whether Jack pulled the trigger. It was about whether, in that moment, he understood what he was doing, they argue, that he didn't. That what happened in that basement was the result of a mental break. A moment where his consciousness was altered and action overtook awareness. They told the jury that if there is doubt about Jack not knowing that what he was doing was wrong, even the smallest doubt, then this isn't murder. The arguments stretched late into the night, past midnight, into the early morning hours. There was a quiet, intense feeling in the courtroom where nearly every seat was taken up by a journalist waiting to find out the ending of a very dark and emotional part of history in the making. The case was handed over to the jury, and after only two hours, they reached a verdict. Jack Ruby was guilty and sentenced to death. But the story of Jack Ruby didn't end with that verdict. Almost immediately, his attorney moved to challenge it, arguing that what had happened in that courtroom wasn't just about guilt or innocence. It was about whether Jack had ever truly been given a fair trial at all. Because by that point, this case had become something bigger than the courtroom. It had been broadcast into living rooms across the country. And the defense argued that no jury sitting in Dallas at the center of it all could realistically separate what they had seen and heard from what they were being asked to decide. Two years later, in 1966, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed. They overturned Jack's conviction and his death sentence not because they believed he didn't commit the act, but because they found that the trial itself had been compromised. The court pointed to the overwhelming pretrial publicity, the constant saturated coverage of both the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the live killing of Lee Harvey Oswald, and concluded that it would have been nearly impossible to seat an impartial jury. They also raised concerns about how certain testimony had been presented, evidence that may have unfairly influenced the jury's perception of Jack's intent and credibility. Taken together, the court found that Jack had not received the kind of fair and neutral proceeding the law requires. So they ordered a new trial. A second chance to present the case, a chance to move it out of Dallas, to bring in a new jury, and to reconsider everything under different circumstances. But that second trial never happened, because before it could begin, Jack Ruby's health began to fail. He was diagnosed with an aggressive and advanced form of lung cancer. By the time the doctors discovered it, it had already spread to his brain and liver. And on January 3, 1967, he died at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where John F. Kennedy had been taken. And with that, the possibility of a retrial ended. Until the very end, Jack maintained that he had acted alone. That what happened in that basement wasn't part of a larger plan but a spontaneous act driven by grief, anger and what he believed had been done to the President. But the questions didn't end with Jack's death. And that's where this story takes another turn. Because in the absence of answers, people start looking for their own. So the question became, was Jack really just a nightclub owner who happened to be in the right place at the right time? Or did he know more than he ever said? In the years that followed, multiple theories emerged. Some centered on the idea that Jack didn't act alone. That his connections in the nightclub world overlapped with individuals tied to organized crime. And that in the early 1960s, with Robert Kennedy aggressively prosecuting mob leaders, those relationships carried weight. From that perspective, Jack wasn't just a bystander who inserted himself into the moment. He was someone who could have been used to control it. Others place the moment in a broader geopolitical context. The Cold War intelligence agencies. The possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald had associations, domestic or foreign, that were never fully explored. In those theories, Jack's actions become less about personal motive and more about consequence cutting off the one person who could have been questioned under oath about any larger involvement. And then there were the theories that focused less on motive and more on access. How a civilian was able to enter the basement of police headquarters during one of the most closely watched prisoner transfers in American history. Whether it was a breakdown in security, familiarity with the building and the people inside it, or something more deliberate. Different theories, different angles, but they all circle the same question. Whether what happened in that basement was as simple as it appeared. None of those theories have ever been proven. And officially, the conclusion has remained the same. The Warren Commission determined that Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy and that Jack acted alone in killing Oswald. Case officially closed. But for many people, it never felt closed. The absence of answers left something unresolved. The questions didn't disappear. They evolved into doubt. At the center of this case is a moment, a single shot captured on camera, seen by the world. It's one of the rare times in history where we don't have to wonder what happened. We can watch it frame by frame. And because of that, it's easy to believe we understand it. But understanding what happened isn't the same as understanding why. Because that's where this case becomes more complicated. Whether that moment was the result of a decision or a brain malfunction is not an easy question to answer. Sure, we can replay the footage and analyze the timing. But we can't step into someone else's mind in the seconds before they act. We can't fully know what they understood or what they didn't. And in this case, that distinction is everything. In the end, no one in this story ever really got their day in court. No trial for Oswald, no final verdict for Jack, and no future for Kennedy, who never got the chance to finish the term he was elected to serve. Three men, three stories, and none of them fully told. Just fragments, moments, and a case that, even decades later, still feels unfinished because justice, at its core, is supposed to bring clarity. But here it left behind questions and the kind of silence that history never quite fills. Thirteenth Juror is an Audio Chuck production hosted by Brandy Churchwell. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. You can follow 13th Juror on Instagram @Thirteenth Juror podcast I think Chuck would have put.
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