JFK Assassination: Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw Criminal & Civil Court Documents & Transcripts

JFK Assassination: Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw Criminal & Civil Court Documents & Transcripts

5,886 pages of court documents and transcripts covering the 1969 criminal trial State of Louisiana v. Clay Shaw and the 1971 civil trial Clay Shaw v. Jim Garrison.

This collection includes:

Orleans Parish Grand Jury Special Investigation Testimony Transcripts (1967-1969)

1,963 pages of Orleans Parish Grand Jury Special Investigation testimony transcripts. These records were created as a verbatim record of the proceedings of the grand jury convened by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to investigate an alleged conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and the alleged involvement of New Orleans businessman Clay L. Shaw. 

Included is testimony from witnesses Dean Andrews; Perry Russo; Layton Martens; Kerry Thornley; Maria Oswald Porter; and Ruth Hyde Paine. The grand jury also heard testimony from critics of the Warren Commission's conclusions, including Harold Weisberg; Mark Lane; and William Turner.

 
State of Louisiana v. Clay Shaw (1969)

3,201 pages of documents and transcripts from the criminal trial State of Louisiana v. Clay Shaw (1969).

On March 1, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (1921-1992) arrested Clay L. Shaw (1913-1974), a prominent New Orleans businessman. Shaw was tried in 1969 for conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. The State of Louisiana v. Clay Shaw was the only trial ever held in connection with the assassination. The case was initiated by Jim Garrison. After a six-week trial, the jury acquitted Clay Shaw after forty-five minutes of deliberation on March 1, 1969. A U.S. District judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana found Garrison to have abused his power in an attempt to prove his conspiracy theory regarding the murder of the president.  

 
Clay Shaw v. Jim Garrison (1971)

722 pages of court documents and transcripts from the 1971 civil case of Clay Shaw v. Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of Orleans Parish. Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, was the plaintiff seeking injunctive relief from prosecution for perjury during his state trial in which Shaw was charged with conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. One of Garrison’s books was the prime source for Oliver Stone's film JFK in 1991, in which Garrison was portrayed by actor Kevin Costner. Shaw was granted injunctive relief.

 
Additional material includes:

The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination (2001)

A 25-page article from the CIA journal "Studies in Intelligence," Volume 45, Number 5 (2001).

Abstract: The complex story begins in early February 1967, when the FBI and CIA learned about a striking development in New Orleans. Two years after the completion of the federal inquiry into President Kennedy’s death by the Warren Commission, the local district attorney, Jim Garrison, had opened his own investigation into the November 1963 assassination. Whatever Garrison was up to, he did not seem intent on involving the federal government. So, both the Bureau and the CIA simply awaited the next development, believing, like most Americans, that no responsible prosecutor would dare reopen the case unless he truly had something.