James Carothers Garrison (born Earling Carothers Garrison; November 20, 1921 – October 21, 1992) was the

District Attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a ...

Orleans Parish, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Democratic Party, he is best known for his investigations into the

assassination of President John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with ...

and prosecution of New Orleans businessman

Clay Shaw Clay LaVergne Shaw (March 17, 1913 – August 15, 1974) was an American businessman and military officer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Shaw is best known for being the only person brought to trial for involvement in the assassination of John F. ...

to that effect in 1969, which ended in Shaw's acquittal. The author of three books, one became a prime source for

Oliver Stone William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...

's film '' JFK'' in 1991, in which Garrison was portrayed by actor

Kevin Costner Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...

, while Garrison himself also made a cameo as

Earl Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitutio ...

Early life and career

Earling Carothers Garrison was born in

Denison, Iowa Denison is a city in Crawford County, Iowa, United States, along the Boyer River, and located in both Denison Township and East Boyer Township. The population was 8,373 at the time of the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Crawford County. ...

in 1921. He was the first child and only son of Earling R. Garrison and Jane Anne Robinson who divorced when he was two years old. His family moved to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

in his childhood, where he was raised by his divorced mother. He served in the

U.S. Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, having joined the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war he obtained a law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1949. He then worked for the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...

(FBI) for two years where he was stationed with the Seattle office."Jim Garrison", ''On the Trail of the Assassins'', Sheridan Square, 1988 Leading up to the Korean War era Garrison joined the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

, even applying for active duty with the Army in 1951, but because of recurring nightmares of past missions Garrison was then relieved of duty by the Army. Remaining in the Guard when it became apparent that he suffered from shell shock due to his numerous bombing missions flown during World War II, leading one Army doctor to conclude that Garrison had a "severe and disabling psychoneurosis" which "interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree. He was considered totally incapacitated from the standpoint of military duty and moderately incapacitated in civilian adaptability." Yet when his record was reviewed further by the U.S. Army Surgeon General, he "found him to be physically qualified for federal recognition in the national army." Upon returning again to civilian life, Garrison worked in several different trial lawyer positions before winning election as New Orleans District Attorney, starting with his first of three terms in January 1962.

District attorney

In the years prior to winning office as New Orleans District Attorney in 1961, Garrison worked for New Orleans law firm of Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles from 1954 to 1958, before he first became an assistant district attorney. Garrison became a flamboyant, colorful, well-known figure in New Orleans but was initially unsuccessful in his run for public office. He lost a 1959 election for criminal court judge. In 1961, he ran for district attorney and won against incumbent Richard Dowling by 6,000 votes in a five-man Democratic primary. Despite lack of major political backing, his performance in a television debate and last-minute television commercials facilitated his victory. Once in office Garrison cracked down on prostitution and the abuses of Bourbon Street bars and strip joints. He indicted Dowling and one of his assistants for criminal malfeasance, but the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Garrison did not appeal. Garrison received national attention for a series of vice raids in the French Quarter, staged sometimes on a nightly basis. Newspaper headlines in 1962 praised Garrison's efforts, "Quarter Crime Emergency Declared by Police, DA. – Garrison Back, Vows Vice Drive to Continue – 14 Arrested, 12 more nabbed in Vice Raids." Garrison's critics often point out that many of the arrests made by his office did not result in convictions, implying that he was in the habit of making arrests without evidence. However, assistant DA William Alford has said that charges would more often than not be reduced or dropped if a relative of someone charged gained Garrison's ear. Alford said Garrison had "a heart of gold." After a conflict with local criminal judges over his budget, he accused them of

racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and ...

and conspiring against him. The eight judges charged him with misdemeanor criminal defamation, and Garrison was convicted in January 1963. In 1964 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and struck down the state statute as unconstitutional. At the same time, Garrison indicted Judge Bernard Cocke with criminal malfeasance and, in two trials prosecuted by Garrison himself, Cocke was acquitted. Garrison charged nine policemen with brutality, but dropped the charges two weeks later. At a press conference, he accused the state parole board of accepting bribes, but could obtain no indictments. Critical of the state legislature, Garrison was unanimously censured by it for "deliberately maligning all of the members". In 1965, running for reelection against Judge Malcolm O'Hara, Garrison won with 60 percent of the vote.

Kennedy assassination investigation

As New Orleans D.A. in late 1966, Garrison began an investigation into the

, after receiving several tips from Jack Martin that a man named

David Ferrie David William Ferrie (March 28, 1918 – February 22, 1967) was an American pilot who was alleged by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to have been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Garrison also alleg ...

may have been involved in the assassination. The result of Garrison's investigation was the arrest and trial of New Orleans businessman

in 1969, with Shaw being unanimously acquitted less than one hour after the case went to the jury. Garrison was able to subpoena the

Zapruder film The Zapruder film is a silent 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as United States President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November ...

from ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

'' magazine. Thus, members of the American public – i.e. the jurors of the case – were shown the movie for the first time. Until the trial, the film had rarely been seen, and bootleg copies were made by assassination investigator Steve Jaffe working with Garrison, which led to the film's wider distribution by David S. Lifton. In 2015, Garrison's lead investigator's daughter released his copy of the film, along with a number of his personal papers from the investigation. Garrison's key witness against Shaw was Perry Russo, a 25-year-old insurance salesman from

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the List of capitals in the United States, capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the county seat, parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, E ...

. At the trial, Russo testified that he had attended a party at anti-Castro activist

's apartment. At the party, Russo said that

Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963. Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...

(who Russo said was introduced to him as "Leon Oswald"), David Ferrie, and "Clem Bertrand" (who Russo identified in the courtroom as

) had discussed killing President Kennedy.Testimony of Perry Raymond Russo
State of Louisiana vs. Clay L. Shaw, February 10, 1969. The conversation included plans for the "triangulation of crossfire" and alibis for the participants. Russo's version of events has been questioned by some historians and researchers, such as Patricia Lambert, once it became known that part of his testimony might have been induced by hypnotism, and by the drug sodium pentothal (sometimes called "truth serum"). An early version of Russo's testimony (as told in Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra's memo, before Russo was subjected to sodium pentothal and hypnosis) fails to mention an "assassination party" and says that Russo met Shaw on two occasions, neither of which occurred at the party. However, in his book '' On the Trail of the Assassins'', Garrison says that Russo had already discussed the party at Ferrie's apartment before any "truth serum" was administered. Scambria said that the party information was simply accidentally left off the notes of his encounter with Russo. Throughout his life, Russo reiterated the same account of being present for a party at Ferrie's house along with the Mr. Bertrand where the subject of Kennedy's potential assassination had come up.''The Lighthouse Report'', "The Last Testament of Perry Raymond Russo"
, Will Robinson, October 10, 1992. Garrison defended his conduct regarding witness testimony, stating:

Before we introduced the testimony of our witnesses, we made them undergo independent verifying tests, including polygraph examination, truth serum and hypnosis. We thought this would be hailed as an unprecedented step in jurisprudence; instead, the press turned around and hinted that we had drugged our witnesses or given them posthypnotic suggestions to testify falsely.

In January 1968, Garrison subpoenaed Kerry Wendell Thornley – an acquaintance of Oswald's from their days in the military – to appear before a grand jury, questioning him about his relationship with Oswald and his knowledge of other figures Garrison believed to be connected to the assassination. Thornley sought a cancellation of this subpoena on which he had to appear before the Circuit Court. Garrison charged Thornley with

perjury Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...

after Thornley denied that he had been in contact with Oswald in any manner since 1959. The perjury charge was eventually dropped by Garrison's successor

Harry Connick Sr. Joseph Harry Fowler Connick (born March 27, 1926) is an American attorney who served as the district attorney of Orleans Parish (New Orleans), Louisiana from 1973 to 2003. His son, Harry Connick Jr., is an American musician. Connick is also a s ...

During Garrison's 1973 bribery trial, tape recordings from March 1971 revealed that Garrison considered publicly implicating former

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". O ...

and

Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency The Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DD/CIA) is a statutory office () and the second-highest official of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DD/CIA assists the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) and is autho ...

Charles Cabell Charles Pearre Cabell (October 11, 1903 – May 25, 1971) was a United States Air Force general and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1953–1962). Early life Charles P. Cabell was born in Dallas, Texas on October 11, 1903, ...

of conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy after learning he was the brother of Earle Cabell, the Dallas mayor in 1963. Theorizing that a plot to kill the president was masterminded out of New Orleans in conjunction with the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

with cooperation from the Dallas police department and city government, Garrison tasked his chief investigator, Pershing Gervais, of looking into the possibility that General Cabell had stayed in the city's Fontainebleau Motel at the time of the assassination. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' reported that there was no evidence that Gervais ever followed through with the request and that there was no further mention of General Cabell in Garrison's investigation. US talk radio host David Mendelsohn conducted a comprehensive interview with Garrison which was broadcast in 1988 by

KPFA KPFA (94.1 FM) is an American listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station sig ...

in Berkeley, California. Alongside Garrison, the program featured the voices of Lee Harvey Oswald and ''JFK'' filmmaker

. Garrison explains that cover stories were circulated in an attempt to blame the killing on the Cubans and the Mafia but he blames the conspiracy to kill the president firmly on the CIA who wanted to continue the Cold War.

Later career and death

In 1973, Garrison was tried and found not guilty by the jury for accepting bribes to protect illegal pinball machine operations. The prosecutor was Gerald J. Gallinghouse the United States Attorney for Eastern District of Louisiana, who was seeking to halt public corruption. Pershing Gervais, Garrison's former chief investigator, testified that Garrison had received approximately $3,000 every two months for nine years from the dealers. Acting as his own defense attorney, Garrison called the allegations baseless and claimed that they were concocted as part of a U.S. government effort to destroy him because of Garrison's efforts to implicate the CIA in the Kennedy assassination. The jury found Garrison not guilty. In an interview conducted by New Orleans reporter Rosemary James with Pershing Gervais, Gervais had admitted to concocting the charges. In the same year, Garrison was defeated for reelection as district attorney by

On April 15, 1978, Garrison won a

special election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

over a Republican candidate, Thomas F. Jordan, for Louisiana's 4th Circuit Court of Appeal

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

ship, a position for which he was later reelected and which he held until his death. In 1987, Garrison played Judge Jim Garrison in the film '' The Big Easy'', and was featured in ''

The Men Who Killed Kennedy ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy'' is a video documentary series by British television network ITV that depicts the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Originally broadcast in 1988 in two parts (with a subsequent ...

'' series, beginning in 1988. After the Shaw trial, Garrison wrote three books on the Kennedy assassination, ''A Heritage of Stone'' (1970), ''The Star Spangled Contract'' (1976, fiction, but based on the JFK assassination), and his best-seller, '' On the Trail of the Assassins'' (1988). ''A Heritage of Stone'', published by Putnam, places responsibility for the assassination on the CIA and says the

Warren Commission The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States P ...

, the Executive Branch, members of the Dallas Police Department, the pathologists at Bethesda, and various others lied to the American public. The book does not mention Shaw or Garrison's investigation of Shaw. Garrison's investigation received widespread attention through

's film, '' JFK'' (1991), which was largely based on Garrison's book as well as

Jim Marrs James Farrell Marrs Jr. (December 5, 1943 – August 2, 2017) was an American newspaper journalist and ''New York Times'' best-selling author of books and articles on a wide range of alleged cover-ups and conspiracies. Marrs was a prominent ...

' ''Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy''.

played a fictionalized version of Garrison in the movie. Garrison himself had a small on-screen role in the film, playing

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

Chief Justice

. Garrison also appears live and comments on the Shaw Trial in the documentary ''The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes'', written and directed by actor

John Barbour John Barbour may refer to: * John Barbour (poet) (1316–1395), Scottish poet * John Barbour (MP for New Shoreham), MP for New Shoreham 1368-1382 * John Barbour (footballer) (1890–1916), Scottish footballer * John S. Barbour (1790–1855), U. ...

. Garrison died of cancer in 1992, survived by his five children. He is interred at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Legacy

Political analyst

Carl Oglesby Carl Preston Oglesby (July 30, 1935 – September 13, 2011) was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Socie ...

was quoted as saying, "... I have done a study of Garrison: I come out of it thinking that he is one of the really first-rate class-act heroes of this whole ugly story he killing of John F. Kennedy and subsequent investigation" Others have stated that Garrison's persecution of Shaw was "one of the great miscarriages of justice in US history" and criticized Garrison for being reckless. At the time, Garrison came under criticism from author and researcher Sylvia Meagher, who in 1967 wrote:

... as the Garrison investigation continued to unfold, it gave cause for increasingly serious misgivings about the validity of his evidence, the credibility of his witnesses, and the scrupulousness of his methods.

According to Shaw's defense team, witnesses, including Russo, claimed to have been bribed and threatened with perjury and contempt of court charges by Garrison in order to make his case against Shaw.

Filmography

Selected bibliography

Books

* ''A Heritage of Stone''. Putnam Publishing Group (1970) . * ''The Star Spangled Contract''. New York:

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...

(1976). . . * ''On the Trail of the Assassins''. Grand Central Publishing (1981). .

Articles

* "The Murder Talents of the CIA". ''

Freedom Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving one ...

'' (April/May 1987)

References

External links

Jim Garrison's Reply to NBC News
July 15, 1967

– mp3s of Garrison speaking *

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Garrison, Jim 1921 births 1992 deaths 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American writers American conspiracy theorists Burials at Metairie Cemetery Deaths from cancer in Louisiana District attorneys in Louisiana John F. Kennedy conspiracy theorists Lawyers from New Orleans Louisiana Democrats Louisiana state court judges Military personnel from Iowa People from Denison, Iowa People associated with the assassination of John F. Kennedy Politicians from New Orleans Researchers of the assassination of John F. Kennedy Tulane University alumni Tulane University Law School alumni United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II