Brother Jerry on the Stand: November 30, 1978
JERRY RAY TESTIFIED before the HSCA in open session on Thursday, November 30, 1978. Mark Lane was not permitted to represent Jerry because he already represented James and there might be a conflict of interest. Jerry had asked me to consider appearing with him. There were two problems. First of all, I was obviously concerned that my appearance on his behalf—special appearance though it was—not be construed as a commitment at that stage to the unequivocal innocence of his brother. Second, my family feared that this overt action would be unwise. Nevertheless I decided to represent Jerry for the specific purpose of protecting his rights.
I overrode family opposition by inviting New York lawyer, feminist, and civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy to be co-counsel. As one of the nation’s most prominent black women lawyers, with considerable experience in opposing abuse of process, Flo added considerable strength to the witness table.
I believed that the question of James’s and his brothers’ alleged involvement in a 1967 bank robbery in Alton, Illinois (James’s birthplace), was likely to be a key element of the committee’s interrogation. In attempting to disprove the existence of Raul and thus the existence of a conspiracy, the committee would most likely claim that the money James received during his time on the run had been obtained from the $27,000 robbery of the Alton bank.
It was evident that after July 13, 1967, and during his stay in Canada, James Earl Ray had acquired money. The Alton bank robbery occurred on the day before some of his purchases began, and had thus been seized upon as the explanation for the source of his funds. James, however, said he initially obtained funds in Canada by robbing a Montreal brothel, and that Raul subsequently gave him money. The HSCA speculated that rather than James escaping from prison, spending two and a half months in the States, traveling to a strange city in Canada in a destitute condition, and committing an armed robbery, it would be more reasonable to assume that he escaped from prison, made contact with his brother John in St. Louis, got a job while they planned a crime, then, after committing the robbery in a familiar area, fled to Canada.
On November 17, 1978, the New York Times published a frontpage article by Wendel Rawls, Jr., stating that the results of a Times investigation agreed with the conclusions of a separate investigation by the HSCA that the Ray brothers, including Jerry, were guilty of robbing the Alton bank.
On Wednesday, the 29th, the day before Jerry’s appearance before the HSCA, I placed a call to East Alton police lieutenant Walter Conrad. I advised him that in an effort to put to rest the continuing allegations that my client had been a participant in that robbery, I had counseled him to return once again to East Alton and offer to be charged and stand trial (Jerry had previously surrendered himself on August 18, 1978, offered to waive the statute of limitations, take a lie detector test, and, if charged, stand trial for the robbery). I then told Lieutenant Conrad about the New York Times article.
Lt. Conrad said that he had told Jerry Ray during his August visit that neither he nor his brothers were suspects, nor had they ever been suspects in that crime. He told me explicitly that neither he nor any member of the Alton police department, nor, to the best of his knowledge, any employee or official of the Bank of Alton, had ever been questioned by the New York Times or any investigator of the HSCA. He said that he couldn’t imagine what the basis was for the Times’s claims or the committee’s allegations.
Accordingly, he advised me that there would be no need for Jerry Ray or any of his brothers to return to Alton.
I later acquired an FBI “airtel” of July 19, 1968, sent to the SAC of Memphis from director Hoover, which gave a report of an analysis of all fingerprint impressions relating to unsolved bank robberies at that time. The report concluded that a comparison of the prints of James Earl Ray didn’t match with any prints on the Alton bank robbery file.
A further FBI teletype of August 1, 1968, to the director from the Springfield SAC, recited details of an interview conducted in Madison County Jail in Edwardsville, Illinois, with a suspect in the Alton robbery. The report of this interview states that the individual being questioned “meets physical description … in above bank robbery; has history of using automatic pistol similar to that used by op. sub. Number 1 and was employed part time for cab company which had stand directly across street from Bank … and invested heavily in cabs shortly after Bank robbery.”
In my view, there was no question that on August 1, 1968, the FBI was on the trail of the suspects for the Alton robbery, and that those suspects didn’t include the Ray brothers. Yet in August 1978 the HSCA, through Counsel Blakey, contacted Philip Heymann, assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, seeking the prosecution of John Ray for allegedly giving false testimony to the HSCA regarding the Alton bank robbery.
Before formally referring this matter to the Department of Justice, Mr. Blakey met with U.S. Attorney Earl Silberg and a representative of the Criminal Division on May 24, 1978. Blakey admitted that the primary reason he wanted John Ray charged with perjury was to convince James Earl Ray to testify before the committee concerning his knowledge of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Blakey tried to persuade the Justice Department that John Ray had, in fact, committed perjury in denying his participation with his brothers in the robbery.
In a letter reply to the HSCA (obtained through a Freedom of Information Act application years later), Assistant Attorney General Heymann and Alfred L. Brantman, chief of the General Crimes Section of the Criminal Division, forcefully declined to consider any prosecution, declaring that “there is no existing or anticipated or other evidence to link John Ray or James Earl Ray to that robbery.”
He also stated that “returning an indictment against John Ray in order to pressure his brother James Earl Ray into cooperating could and should be viewed as an abuse of process. It is one thing to use the criminal laws to pressure an individual into cooperating with the government. It is another thing to use the criminal laws against someone to pressure another individual into cooperating with the Government. This is particularly true when the individuals involved are close family relatives such as brothers.”
During Jerry Ray’s appearance on November 30, HSCA Counsel Mark Speiser did indeed focus one aspect of his questioning on the Alton bank robbery. I informed Speiser that Jerry was not and had never been a suspect in that case and that this had been confirmed to me by the Alton authorities as late as the previous day. I also put on the record Jerry’s willingness to waive the statute of limitations and stand trial for that crime if any authority was willing to try him.
Jerry explicitly denied any participation in the robbery, pointing out that at the time of the Alton robbery he was working at the Sportsman’s Club in Northbrook, Illinois. His employment records would confirm that in the three years he worked there he never missed a day and that he frequently worked seven nights a week, making it impossible for him to have been in Alton at the time of the crime. Jerry’s factual responses fell on deaf ears.
Throughout the hearing Flo and I frequently locked horns with the committee counsel. They continually attempted to tie Jerry and John to James during the time James was a fugitive. Any facts to the contrary would be ignored.
Though Flo and I believed as counsel that we had taken some of the bite out of the HSCA’s persistent attack on the facts, we expected the HSCA report to confirm the committee’s predetermined conclusions.
We were right.