For the Defense

Jack Ruby's lawyers last week laid out the strategy for getting him off scot-free from the most widely viewed killing in world history. It was only a bail hearing in Dallas' criminal court, but in its course the lawyers clearly showed their intent to prove that Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald while temporarily insane from the shock of President Kennedy's assassination. If Chief Counsel Melvin Belli can prove that--and prove as well that Ruby is now recovered--it is possible that, under Texas law, Ruby could be a free man.

The bulk of the testimony at the bail hearing came from defense witnesses who have examined Ruby since his imprisonment. Chief among them were Yale Psychologist Roy Schafer and New York Psychiatrist Walter Bromberg. According to Schafer, Ruby has an IQ of 109--meaning that he tests higher in intelligence than 73% of the population. But he also suffers from brain damage that results in a kind of epilepsy which produces blackouts and loss of self-control. "There were frequent occasions of mild confusion," said Schafer, describing the 9 1/2-hour series of tests that he gave Ruby. "His speech was loose. Some statements were almost incoherent. His perception of some test items was grossly distorted. Some of the ideas he entertained were peculiar and inappropriate, with elements of absurdity he was not aware of. He has an inability to think hypothetically. Often there is only one answer for him that can be right. He had difficulty in using abstractions, even the abstract words of everyday life such as 'tool' and 'food'."

Big Guy. Psychiatrist Bromberg interviewed members of Ruby's family as well as Ruby, constructed a vivid picture of a fellow baffled since childhood.

Ruby's parents were separated when he was twelve. His father was a "heavy drinker"; his mother was committed to a mental hospital. In brawls, he twice received severe head injuries, once from a pistol handle. He lost the tip of his left index finger after somebody bit it to the bone. "He thinks he's tough," said Bromberg. "He is a fighter--geared to attack all his life." But he is also subject to "basic emotional instability so severe that occasionally he breaks out crying for no apparent reason."

Bromberg noted that though Ruby telephoned his sister after Kennedy was killed and said, "I will have to leave Dallas--Dallas is ruined," he cheered up considerably by hanging around police headquarters after Oswald's capture. He felt "like a big guy, being in with the police." Ruby's feeling toward Kennedy, explained Bromberg, approached "a love that passed beyond a rational appreciation of a great man, coming out of his unconscious." His killing of Oswald "was in response to an irresistible impulse. His knowledge of right and wrong was obliterated at the time of the crime."

Brain Waves. Between courtroom sessions, Ruby held an impromptu press conference in which he kept licking his lips, started by speaking coherently, and ended up in tears. "I am very upset about the whole affair," he said. "They've been using the word angry about me, and that word is not in my vocabulary. I never have used the word in my life." He was neither irrational nor incoherent when reporters questioned him about stories that he and Oswald had been mixed up in a sinister plot and that even Fidel Castro had played a role in the event. Said Ruby: "I never talked to Oswald in my life, and I never saw him before, and I never knew him in my life." He admitted that he had been in Cuba in 1959, but said that he had gone there only for a vacation. He did have a plan to export Jeeps and other goods to Cuba. "I wanted to get out of the beer business," he said. He saw no reason for not trying to do business with Castro as the situation then existed. After all, he observed quite logically, no less a figure than Jack Paar had gone to Havana to conduct some friendly interviews with Fidel.

As last week's hearing turned out, Ruby did not get bond. Instead, the court appointed three psychiatrists who will perform neuropsychiatric tests--brain wave, spinal taps, blood serology--to determine if Ruby is suffering from physical, brain-destroying diseases.

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