Rush to Judgment

Rush to Judgment
Author Mark Lane
Country United Kingdom
Subject Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Publisher The Bodley Head
Publication date
 August 1966
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 478 pp
OCLC 4215197
LC Class E842.9 .L3 1966a

Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission's Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald is a 1966 book by American lawyer Mark Lane. It is about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and takes issue with the conclusions of the Warren Commission, suggesting there was a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.[1][2] The book's introduction is by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History (Oxford).

Although it was preceded by a few self-published or small press books, Rush to Judgment was the first mass-marketed hardcover book to confront the findings of the Warren Commission.[3]

Sid Moody accused Lane of selectively quoting witness to support his conclusions: [4]

The title of the book was taken from Lord Chancellor Thomas Erskine's defense of James Hadfield who had attempted to assassinate King George III in 1800.

Documentary

In 1967, a documentary film based on Lane's book, Rush to Judgment, about the John F. Kennedy assassination, was directed by Emile de Antonio and hosted by Lane.[5][6] It is a black and white film, 122 minutes long. It has been shown on BBC TV as part of the much longer (300 minutes) film entitled The Death of Kennedy. Included are several video clips showing how Dealey Plaza existed in 1963 and 1966, clips of Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, Jack Ruby, and his defense attorney Melvin Belli.

Some of the assassination witnesses who present their observations on-camera include Abraham Zapruder, James Tague, Charles Brehm, Mary Moorman, Jean Hill, Lee Bowers, Sam Holland, James Simmons, Richard Dodd, Jessie Price, Orville Nix, Patrick Dean, Napoleon Daniels, Nancy Hamilton, Joseph Johnson, Roy Jones, and Cecil McWatters.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Essay: Autopsy on the Warren Commission". Time Magazine. September 16, 1966.
  2. ↑ James N. Giglio (April 1992). "Oliver Stone's JFK in Historical Perspective". American Historical Association.
  3. ↑ Hoover, Bob (November 2, 2013). "The Next Page: The JFK assassination conspiracy circus". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Retrieved August 14, 2014.
  4. ↑ Moody, Sid (November 22, 1988). "Was there a conspiracy to kill Kennedy?". The Telegraph 120 (202) (Nashua, New Hampshire). AP. p. 22. Retrieved September 13, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Rush to Judgment". IMDb.
  6. ↑ Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer blog, 21 April 2011, From the Film Vaults: Rush to Judgment (includes full film embedded from archive.org)