A mock trial held to examine whether Lee Harvey Oswald actually killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 ended in a hung jury last week.
According to The Dallas News the jury voted 9-3 in favor of Oswald's guilt, but a verdict must be unanimous.
In the kind of development that bolsters the conviction of conspiracy theorists, about three-quarters of the 150 viewers who watched the trial in Dallas County’s Old Criminal Courts Building indicated that they did not believe the gunman had acted alone when he shot the 35th president.
The mock trial was part of the State Bar of Texas' convention, which is in Dallas this week.
Responding to the hung jury, US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Sarah Saldana, who prosecuted the case, vowed Oswald would face another one.
'We’re retrying the case,' Saldana said. 'It’s difficult to believe there were three jurors who weren’t swayed by the unequivocal evidence.'
Dallas County Medical Examiner Doctor Jeffrey Barnard, who played the 1960s version of himself, reportedly said that he could have been more persuasive with the autopsy evidence had his testimony not been cut short because of the time constraints placed on the mock trial.
'I might have gotten at least one of the three,' he said.
Toby Shook, who defended Oswald, also lamented the short amount of time allocated for the mock trial. A real trial might have taken two months, he said.
Shook said his notorious client was shortchanged because closing arguments were eliminated because the mock trial had overrun its scheduled two hours.
'I’d have walked him,' Shook claimed.
Jurors will reportedly get another chance to make a decision. There have been requests already for repeat performances, State District Judge Martin Hoffman told the press.
The jury included State District Judge Andy Chatham and Robert McClelland, a doctor who actually treated Kennedy and Oswald in the emergency room.
Chatham, a felony court judge, said after the three-hour trial that he voted guilty. He believes Oswald acted alone.
'To coordinate a conspiracy setting up a lone gunman would be such a massive undertaking that it would surely crumble under its own weight over time,' Chatham said.
But the 82-year-old McClelland reportedly said he is a conspiracy theorist. He voted not guilty.
'I believe the people who killed him were two men behind the picket fence,' McClelland told the press.
The courtroom was within view of the site of where Kennedy was killed and is where Oswald would probably have stood trial had he not been gunned down by Jack Ruby.
Among the evidence presented at last week's mock trial was the famous Zapruder film, alongside clips of Oswald speaking to the media, and a replica of the rifle that was used to assassinate the president.
Katya Long, a Russian SMU law student, portrayed Marina Oswald, basing her testimony on what Marina Oswald had told the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination.
She testified that she learned about the assassination on television and immediately suspected that her husband was involved. She checked to see if her husband’s rifle was still at home. When she realized it was missing she said, 'It was clear to me that it was him' who killed Kennedy.
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