This was the cauldron into which twelve exceptional 
and ordinary people were thrown in the winter of 1964, 
just three months after the public murder of a president 
only blocks away, followed two days later by the televised 
killing of his apparent assassin. The first juror selected, 
and the eventual foreman of the jury, was Max Causey, a
thirty-five-year-old administrative engineer with Ling-Temco-
Vought. More than the other jurors, Causey was caught in 
the harsh glare of publicity surrounding the trial.


The men and women who served as jurors in the trial of Jack 
Ruby were exceptional in that it became their singular duty 
to sit in judgment on a man who played a bizarre and bloody 
role in perhaps the most controversial event of the twentieth 
century. They were ordinary in that nothing in their lives 
before or after the trial in February and March of 1964 has
distinguished them from millions of their fellow citizens. 
They lived happily in quiet anonymity with the glaring exception 
of the nearly four weeks of the Ruby trial. For those few weeks,
their pictures, names, and life stories appeared countless times 
in newspapers and magazines worldwide.


During the course of the trial, Causey kept a longhand diary 
in a reporter's notebook, beginning on the second day of his 
term as a juror. He continued keeping notes day-by-day as the 
trial continued, ending on Saturday, March 14, when the jury 
delivered its verdict. He then wrote a short epilogue. Later, 
he wrote a memoir from the diary he kept during the trial. Both 
the memoir and the diary are presented here, augmented with 
editor's notes taken from the trial transcripts, books, and 
newpaper and magazine articles and interviews with some of 
the surviving jurors.
 

Causey's memoir and diary are first-hand accounts of one of 
the most controversial, significant trials of the twentieth 
century and reveal new insights into the dynamics of the jury 
and its deliberations.


________________________________________________________


JOHN MARK DEMPSEY is assistant professor of journalism at 
the University of North Texas. The Greenville, Texas, native 
has a background in the newspaper, public relations, and 
radio broadcasting fields, and continues to work in radio as 
a news announcer for the Texas State Network. He lives with 
his family in Denton, Texas.