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Jack Ruby Trial Revisited The Diary of Jury Foreman Max Causey Edited by John Mark Dempsey |
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.
The Jack Ruby Trial Revisited
1-57441-121-7 cloth $29.95
6x9. 200 pp. 15 b&w photos. 9 illus. Bib. Index.
History. Criminal Justice.
SEPTEMBER
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