Nation: For the Defense

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Jack Ruby's lawyers last week laid out the strategy for getting him off scot-free from the most widely viewed killing in world history. It was only a bail hearing in Dallas' criminal court, but in its course the lawyers clearly showed their intent to prove that Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald while temporarily insane from the shock of President Kennedy's assassination. If Chief Counsel Melvin Belli can prove that—and prove as well that Ruby is now recovered—it is possible that, under Texas law, Ruby could be a free man.

The bulk of the testimony at the bail hearing came from defense witnesses who have examined Ruby since his imprisonment. Chief among them were Yale Psychologist Roy Schafer and New York Psychiatrist Walter Bromberg. According to Schafer, Ruby has an IQ of 109—meaning that he tests higher in intelligence than 73% of the population. But he also suffers from brain damage that results in a kind of epilepsy which produces blackouts and loss of self-control. "There were frequent occasions of mild confusion," said Schafer, describing the 9½-hour series of tests that he gave Ruby. "His speech was loose. Some statements were almost incoherent. His perception of some test items was grossly distorted. Some of the ideas he entertained were peculiar and inappropriate, with elements of absurdity he was not aware of. He has an inability to think hypothetically. Often there is only one answer for him that can be right. He had difficulty in using abstractions, even the abstract words of everyday life such as 'tool' and 'food'."

Big Guy. Psychiatrist Bromberg interviewed members of Ruby's family as well as Ruby, constructed a vivid picture of a fellow baffled since childhood.

Ruby's parents were separated when he was twelve. His father was a "heavy drinker"; his mother was committed to a mental hospital. In brawls, he twice received severe head injuries, once from a pistol handle. He lost the tip of his left index finger after somebody bit it to the bone. "He thinks he's tough," said Bromberg. "He is a fighter—geared to attack all his life." But he is also subject to "basic emotional instability so severe that occasionally he breaks out crying for no apparent reason."

Bromberg noted that though Ruby telephoned his sister after Kennedy was killed and said, "I will have to leave Dallas—Dallas is ruined," he cheered up considerably by hanging around police headquarters after Oswald's capture. He felt "like a big guy, being in with the police." Ruby's feeling toward Kennedy, explained Bromberg, approached "a love that passed beyond a rational appreciation of a great man, coming out of his unconscious." His killing of Oswald "was in response to an irresistible impulse. His knowledge of right and wrong was obliterated at the time of the crime."