Word: belli
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...Belli and Tonahill put on a parade of witnesses, all of whose testimony aimed to prove that Ruby was a sick little man given to emotional crises and mental blackouts...
...Then Belli brought in his star doctor, Manfred Guttmacher, 65, of Baltimore, a psychiatrist for 32 years and a veteran witness in court cases. Belli immediately asked him the key question: Was Ruby sane when he killed Oswald? Guttmacher did not hesitate in his answer: "I don't think he was capable of distinguishing right from wrong or realizing the consequences of his act at the time of the shooting...
...Belli was elated with Guttmacher's testimony, decided that other defense witnesses would be anticlimactic. The next morning he told Judge Brown: "The defense rests, Your Honor...
...surrebuttal, Belli summoned from Chicago Dr. Frederic A. Gibbs, a pioneer in electroencephalography. After a midnight flight to Dallas, Gibbs took the stand, said in precise and authoritarian manner: "I determined that Jack Ruby had a particular, very rare type of epilepsy, a type that afflicts .5% of epilepsy cases, a very distinctive epileptic pattern...
...already framed his charge to the jury, explaining what choice of verdicts they had under Texas law. Court was recessed while defense and prosecution attorneys studied the charge. Before long, the defense was screaming about it. Tonahill told newsmen, "It's an instructed verdict of guilty." Cried Belli: "It's unsanitary, un-American and un-Texan." They tried for hours to get Brown to change it, lodged 137 separate exceptions to the charge. Unyielding, Brown left it about the same, finally got around to reading it to the jury after dinner that night...