James Carothers Garrison (born Earling Carothers Garrison <20 November 1921 - October 21, 1992) was District Prosecutor Orleans Parish, Louisiana, from 1962 to 1973. A member of the Democratic Party , he is famous for his investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She is played by Kevin Costner at Oliver Stone JFK .
Video Jim Garrison
Early life and career
Earling Carothers Garrison was born in Denison, Iowa. She was the first and only son of Earl R. Garrison and Jane Anne Robinson who divorced when she was two years old. His family moved to New Orleans in his childhood, where he was raised by his divorced mother. He served in the US Army during World War II, having joined the year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, he obtained a law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1949. He then worked at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for two years. During the Korean War era, Garrison joined the National Guard and even appealed for active duty; he was later released from duty, remaining in Guard when it became clear that he suffered from shock because many of his bombing missions were flown during World War II. Leading an Army physician to conclude that Garrison had "severe and disabling psychoneurosis" which "disrupted his social and professional adjustments to some extent, he was considered completely paralyzed from the point of view of military duty and incapable of civil adaptation." But when his records were reviewed further by the US Army Surgeon General, he "found him physically eligible for federal recognition in the national army."
Maps Jim Garrison
District Attorney
Garrison works for New Orleans law firms, Deutsch, Kerrigan & amp; Stiles from 1954 to 1958, when he became assistant district attorney. Garrison became a flamboyant, colorful, and famous figure in New Orleans, but initially unsuccessful in his efforts for public office, losing the 1959 election to a criminal court judge. In 1961 he ran for district attorney, winning against incumbent Richard Dowling with 6,000 votes in five primary Democrats. Despite the lack of great political support, his performances in televised debates and last minute television advertisements are credited with his victory.
Once in office, Garrison crack down on prostitution and abuse Bourbon Street bars and strip joints. He charged Dowling and one of his assistants for criminal aberration, but the accusation was rejected for lack of evidence. Garrison did not appeal. The garrison received national attention for a series of raids in the French Quarter, sometimes staged at night. The headline of the newspaper in 1962 praised Garrison's efforts, "Evil of the Police Trusted Quarterly Trust, DA - Garrison Back, Vice oath Drive to Continue - 14 Arrested, 12 others arrested at Deputy Raids." Garrison's critics often point out that many of the arrests made by his office do not produce conviction, implying that he is in the habit of making arrests without evidence. However, DA's assistant William Alford said that the indictment would be more frequent than not being reduced or dropped if a relative of a person was indicted for Garrison's ear. Alford says Garrison has a "golden heart."
After a conflict with a local criminal judge on his budget, he accused them of blackmailing and conspiring against him. Eight judges accused him of criminal defamation, and Garrison was convicted in January 1963. In 1964, the US Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict and overthrew the state law as unconstitutional. At the same time, Garrison sued Judge Bernard Cocke on criminal charges and, in two trials demanded by Garrison himself, Cocke was released.
Garrison accused nine police with brutality, but dropped the charges two weeks later. At a press conference he accused the country's parole board of accepting bribes, but could not get the charges. Critical to the state legislature, Garrison was unanimously condemned by him for "deliberately defaming all members".
In 1965, running for re-election Justice Malcolm O'Hara, Garrison won with 60 percent of the vote.
Investigating Kennedy's murder
Like New Orleans D.A., Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in late 1966, after receiving some tips from Jack Martin that a man named David Ferrie might have been involved in the murder. The final result of Garrison's investigation was the arrest and trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in 1969, with Shaw unanimously being released less than an hour after the case went to the jury.
Garrison was able to call Zapruder's movie from Life magazine. Thus, members of the American community - the judges of the case - are shown the film for the first time. Until the trial, the film was rarely seen, and pirated copies were made by murder investigators working with Garrison, which led to wider film distribution. In 2015, daughter of investigative leader Garris released a copy of her film, along with her personal documents of investigation.
Garrison's key witness against Clay Shaw is Perry Russo, a 25-year-old insurance salesman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the trial, Russo testified that he attended a party at the apartment of anti-Castro activist David Ferrie. At the party, Russo said that Lee Harvey Oswald (whom Russo said was introduced to him as "Leon Oswald"), David Ferrie, and "Clem Bertrand" (whom Russo identified in the courtroom as Clay Shaw) had discussed the assassination of President Kennedy. Conversations include plans for "firefight triangulation" and alibis for the participants.
The Russo version of events has been questioned by some historians and researchers, such as Patricia Lambert, after it is known that some of his testimonies may be caused by hypnotism, and by pentothal sodium drugs (sometimes called "truth serums"). Early versions of Russo's testimony (as recounted in DA Assistant's memo Andrew Sciambra, before Russo became the target of pentotal sodium and hypnosis) failed to mention the "assassination party" and said that Russo met Clay Shaw on two occasions, both not happening at the party. However, in his book On the Trail of the Killers , Garrison said that Russo had already discussed the party at Ferrie's apartment before any "truth serum" was given. Throughout his life, Russo repeats the same story about his presence at a party at Ferrie's house where the subject of the potential Kennedy killing comes up.
Jim Garrison defended his conduct on witness testimony, stating:
Before we introduced our witness testimony, we made them undergo independent verification tests, including polygraph examinations, truth serums and hypnosis. We think this will be regarded as an unprecedented step in jurisprudence; instead, the press turned and signaled that we had anesthetized our witnesses or gave them posthypnotic suggestions to testify falsely.
In January 1968, Garrison summoned Kerry Wendell Thornley - an Oswald acquaintance of their days in the military - to face the grand jury, questioning him about his relationship with Oswald and his knowledge of other Garrison figures believed to be linked to the assassination. Thornley sought a cancellation of this summons in which he had to appear before the Circuit Court. Garrison indicted Thornley with a false oath after Thornley denied that he had been in contact with Oswald in any way since 1959. The cost of perjury was eventually dropped by Garrison replacement Harry Connick Sr.
During Garrison's 1973 bribery hearing revealed that Garrison considered openly the involvement of the former US Air Force Deputy General and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Center Charles Cabell for the Kennedy assassination conspiracy after learning that he was the brother of Earle Cabell, Mayor of Dallas in the year 1963. Theory that a plan to kill the President was orchestrated from New Orleans along with the CIA with the cooperation of the Dallas police and city authorities, Garrison commissioned his chief investigator, Pershing Gervais, to find the possibility that General Cabell remained at the Fontainebleau City motel at the time of the murder. The Washington Post reported that there is no evidence that Gervais ever followed up with the request and there was no further mention of General Cabell in Garrison's investigations.
US radio speaker David Mendelsohn conducted a comprehensive interview with Jim Garrison which was broadcast in 1988 by KPFA in Berkeley, California. Together with Garrison, the program features the sound of Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK filmmaker Oliver Stone. Garrison explained that the cover story was circulated in an attempt to blame the killing of Cubans and Mafia, but he blamed the conspiracy for killing the president firmly on the CIA who wanted to continue the Cold War.
Later career
In 1973, Garrison was tried and found innocent by the jury for taking bribes to protect illegal pinball machine operations. The prosecutor is Gerald J. Gallinghouse of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who seeks to stop public corruption. Pershing Gervais, Garrison's former chief investigator, testified that Garrison had received about $ 3,000 every two months for nine years from dealers. Acting as his own defender, Garrison called the allegations unfounded and claimed that they were made as part of an attempt by the US government to destroy it because of Garrison's efforts to involve the CIA in Kennedy's assassination. The jury considers Garrison innocent. In an interview conducted by New Orleans reporter Rosemary James with Pershing Gervais, James suspects Gervais has admitted to concocting the allegations.
In the same year, Garrison was defeated for re-election as district attorney by Harry Connick Sr. On April 15, 1978, Garrison won a special election of Republican candidate Thomas F. Jordan for the Court of Appeal of the Louisiana Circuit Court, a position which he subsequently reelected and which he held until his death.
In 1987, Garrison appeared as himself in the movie The Big Easy, and featured in The Men Who Killed Kennedy series, starting in 1988.
After Shaw's trial, Garrison wrote three books on the Kennedy assassination, The Heritage of Stone (1970), The Star Spangled Contract (1976, fiction, but based on JFK murder), and best-seller, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988). A Heritage of Stone , published by Putnam, the place of responsibility for killing the CIA and said the Warren Commission, Executive Branch, members of the Dallas Police Department, pathologists in Bethesda, and others lied to the American public. The book does not mention Shaw or Garrison's investigation of Shaw.
Garrison's investigation again received widespread attention through the 1991 film Oliver Stone, JFK, largely based on Garrison's book as well as Jim Marrs' Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy . Kevin Costner plays a fictional version of Garrison in the movie. Garrison himself has a small role on screen in the film, playing US Supreme Court Justice, Earl Warren. Garrison also appeared directly and commented on Shaw Trial in the documentary The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes , written and directed by actor John Barbour.
Garrison died of cancer in 1992, survived by his five children. He was buried in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.
Legacy
Political analyst Carl Oglesby is quoted as saying, "... I have done a study on Garrison: I came out of his thinking that he was one of the first class-class action heroes of this whole bad story [John F. Kennedy's murder and subsequent investigations], which suffering greatly for heroes. "The libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard states that" Garrison, one of the most cruel figures applied in modern political history, is just a district attorney trying to do his job in the most important criminal case of our day. "
In addition to Pro-Warren Commission writers such as Gerald Posner, other pro-conspiratorial writers criticized Garrison for being frivolous. However, some researchers, including Jim DiEugenio, publisher KennedysandKing.com, Gerry Campeau of JFKFacts.org, William Davy, and Joan Mellen, have defended Garrison.
Source of the article : Wikipedia