Mr. RUBY. But I had a later conversation which I remember very
clearly,——
Mr. GRIFFIN. Tell us about that.
Mr. RUBY. This was after Jack received the sentence, you know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. Then Brunner told me that he now wants to help Jack. He
feels that this would never have happened if he had handled the case
originally, the verdict, you know, the death verdict, and that I should
talk to the family and think over about him taking over the defense.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did he mention anything about Henry Wade at that
conversation?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; he said, “Even though I am very close,” words to the
effect that “even though I am very close with Wade, don’t let that
worry you,” or something to that effect. But I forget that first
conversation, and I just don’t want to give you words——
Mr. GRIFFIN. Had he mentioned Wade in the first conversation that you
recall?
Mr. RUBY. I am not sure and I don’t want to just—no, we contacted Percy
Foreman. You want to know who else?
Mr. GRIFFIN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. I didn’t know. This is only that I learned from Howard. He
said he contacted Percy Foreman. He contacted Fred Erisman, a retired
judge. There is another one, another very good criminal lawyer, but I
can’t even think of his last name to look it up. Is it important? I’ve
got it here, but I just can’t remember the name.
Oh, yes; here is another one they talked to, I understand—Jim Martin.
In fact, he was in the case more or less with Howard. Oh, that is
Charlie Tessmer, the other lawyer they contacted. And he turned it
down. Why, he never told us, but he turned it down. In the meantime,
I had talked to Charlie Bellows from Chicago who is now acting as
consultant.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How did you happen to contact Mr. Bellows?
Mr. RUBY. Well, one of my close friends in Chicago worked in his
office, another lawyer, Rheingold, Milton Rheingold.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Incidentally, let me ask you here, did you know a lawyer
in Chicago by the name of Weiner?
Mr. RUBY. A lawyer? I don’t think so, not a lawyer. I know a doctor,
not a lawyer.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Go ahead now with your contact with Bellows.
Mr. RUBY. So we talked to Bellows. I talked to him, rather. And he said
he was going to be rather busy, and he wasn’t sure he could take the
case. As a matter of fact, that is who I wanted originally, because we
knew him. His office represented me before Rheingold, was in his office
with him, was my civil lawyer in Chicago, more or less, so you know at
least we had a knowledge of who we were going to hire. And, in addition
to that, he is a great criminal lawyer. He is head of the American
Defense Lawyers, and all that.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And had you contacted Bellows before your telephone call
to Mike Shore?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; I am quite sure I did, and I asked him to give me an
idea of the fee because, you know, expenses. Well, he said his fee
would run anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000, because he figured it would
be a 2- or 3-month trial, plus expenses.
So I, of course, asked him what his expenses might be, and he says it
shouldn’t be more than, if I recall, $100 or $200 a week for his own
expenses, he said, because he doesn’t live highly and knowing me he is
going to keep it down as low as possible.
Mr. HUBERT. You are talking about Bellows now?
Mr. RUBY. Bellows.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Mr. Ruby, had you discussed a fee with Tom Howard?
Mr. RUBY. I did, but I don’t know when.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What was the fee that was finally arrived at with Tom
Howard? What was his fee to be?
Mr. RUBY. His fee was originally, if he would stay in all the way, he
told me from $10,000 to $15,000.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And how many lawyers did Howard suggest would be needed
besides himself?
Mr. RUBY. Well, I mentioned the names, you know, like Bellows. In fact,
he talked to Bellows, and we were in the process of probably working
something out with Bellows, but he was too busy, and asked—then the
question came up as to whether Bellows would be a risk in Dallas, since
he is Jewish. And I talked to about a half dozen other lawyers, and I
even talked to the best criminal lawyer in Detroit, Joe Louisell. I had
a meeting with him. I asked his advice. He says, “Don’t bring a Jewish
lawyer down there.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. What was Howard’s view?
Mr. RUBY. Howard agreed with that. So that more or less took Bellows
out of the picture. Now, in the meantime, I am back, going to
California. So I go to California. They meet me at the airport. Is
everything pretty well in sequence up until now?
Mr. GRIFFIN. That is all right, we will clarify. We will ask you some
questions about it.
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes; first the conversation, to get back to Tom Howard,
the first one or two conversations, as I said, I talked to him Monday
morning. Then I think I talked to him Monday night. I don’t remember,
I talked to him any number of times. And in our discussions we talked
money, costs. He mentioned “It is going to take a couple of months. You
have got to figure anywhere total expenses close to $50,000.”
I never knew all these things existed that you have to hire a special
investigator, and he wants $10,000. And you have got to have an appeals
lawyer like Burleson. That is how he came in. You have got to pay him.
Anyhow, he broke it down, roughly, over the phone he says it may run
$50,000. So that is why I started asking any lawyer I talked to, like
Bellows, “How much are you going to charge? I have got to know all
these things. Give me an idea what we have to raise.”
Then I had all of this information more or less in the back of my mind,
how much have we got to raise to get Jack a decent defense counsel.
Then I go out to California. They meet me at the airport, Mike Shore
and Woodfield. The first thing they say, “Have you got a lawyer yet?” I
says, “No.”
I am still talking to Bellows. He is not out yet, you see. He is not
out of the picture. Howard is still supposedly trying to contact
somebody else that is good. I haven’t been to Dallas yet. In the
meantime, as I said, he had contacted Foreman and Charlie Tessmer and
Fred Erisman. They were out. Fred Brunner, he didn’t want to get in at
the beginning. Those were considered some of the top criminal lawyers
in the State of Texas.
So, anyhow, I meet him, they meet me at the plane in Los Angeles, get
in the car. The first thing they ask is “Have you got a lawyer?” And I
tell them what is going on. I am not sure yet. So they start talking
to me about Belli, Melvin Belli. I had never heard of him. And they
couldn’t understand it. But I never had. And I told them that, that I
had never heard of him, and so they start telling me how great he was,
you know, and all that stuff.
And they said, “By coincidence he is in town. He is in L.A.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. How long before you arrived did Shore and Woodfield—how
long before you arrived did they know you were coming? In other words,
how many days elapsed between your conversation with Shore and your
airplane trip out there?
Mr. RUBY. Gee, only a day or so, I think.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Now, had Shore mentioned Belli to you on the telephone in
that first conversation?
Mr. RUBY. I think so, but I am not sure—I think so, but I am not sure,
because I think in our conversation in the car that we had makes me
think they mentioned it before now, because the conversation went like
this: I must have mentioned before I haven’t heard of Belli. He says,
“I know I haven’t mentioned Belli and I don’t want to push him too
much,” but then they started to tell me how good he is, so we must have
talked about him on the phone. My remark was, “But Mike, I never heard
of him.”
So, anyhow, they said, the conversation got around that he is in town,
and, “Would you care to see him?”