Mark Lane (February 24, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American attorney, New York state legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war-crimes investigator. Lane is best known as a leading researcher, author, and conspiracy theorist on the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Lane authored or co-authored a dozen books, including five on the JFK assassination, the most notable of which was Rush to Judgment (1966). It reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list. The book was written as a trial lawyer's adversarial argument against the methods and conclusions of the Warren Commission. Lane's lifelong involvement with the JFK assassination began shortly after the events in Dallas when he was retained by Marguerite Oswald, mother of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, to represent her murdered son before the Warren Commission. Lane later defended other publicly scorned outcasts such as convicted assassin James Earl Ray, American Indian Movement activists Dennis Banks and Russell Means, and cult leader Jim Jones. One of Lane's most gratifying legal achievements came in 1989 when he obtained the release of James Richardson, an African-American man wrongfully convicted of murdering his own children.
Early life and career Mark Lane was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, on February 24, 1927. He was the son of Harry and Elizabeth Levin (Levin was changed to Lane in the 1920s), and was raised in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. His sister was the historian Ann J. Lane. He served in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946. It was soon after the end of World War II, and he was stationed in Austria. He earned his undergraduate degree from Long Island University, and then received a Bachelor of Laws from Brooklyn Law School in 1951. As a law student, he was the administrative assistant to the National Lawyers Guild. He once organized a fund-raising event for the Guild at Town Hall in New York City; it featured blacklisted American folk singer Pete Seeger, blues artist Sonny Terry, and the Austrian-born singer Martha Schlamme whom Lane subsequently married.
Following his admission to the New York bar in 1951, Lane established a practice with Seymour Ostrow in East Harlem. Although Lane acquired a reputation as "a defender of the poor and oppressed", Ostrow later asserted that Lane was "motivated more by his ambition and quest for publicity than any dedication to a cause or concern for the interest of his clients." Their partnership dissolved in the late 1950s. In 1956 Lane began his political involvement as a key worker in the successful election campaign of Alfred E. Santangelo for Congress. Afterwards he was appointed as his executive assistant and ran his New York congressional office for three years.
In 1959, Lane was active in the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, also known as the Reform Democratic Movement. He co-founded it along with former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and ex-New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman. The movement challenged the Tammany Hall machine that still wielded influence in the New York Democratic Party, both in New York City and statewide. That year he became campaign manager for John Harrington, who successfully contested in the Tenth Assembly District. Lane decided to become a candidate in the 1960 election, vying for a seat in the New York State Assembly. He was endorsed by Eleanor Roosevelt, who made campaign appearances with him.
In the run-up to the 1960 election, Lane was contacted by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who sought Lane's help "to coordinate the varying, indeed conflicting, elements of the Democratic party in New York". To that end, Lane managed the New York City area's campaign for Kennedy, and he also met with the candidate on three occasions, taking publicity photos together in one of them. Lane would later write that those photos and JFK's endorsement were "significant factors" in Lane's narrow victory in November.
As a member of the New York State Assembly in 1961 and 1962, Lane represented New York County's 10th District, encompassing East Harlem and Yorkville, where Lane resided. In the legislature, he spent considerable time working to abolish capital punishment. As he promised, he served only one term and then managed the campaign for his replacement.
In June 1961, during the civil rights movement, Lane was the only sitting legislator to be arrested for opposing segregation as a Freedom Rider. In 1962, he ran for Congress in the Democratic primary and lost. Afterwards he went on to serve as a lawyer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In the 1968 presidential election, Lane appeared on the ballot as a third party vice-presidential candidate, running on the Freedom and Peace Party ticket (an offshoot of the Peace and Freedom Party) with Dick Gregory.
Assassination of John F. Kennedy Warren Commission After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lane wrote a letter to Chief Justice Earl Warren on December 17, 1963, requesting that the Warren Commission give consideration to appointing defense counsel to advocate for Lee Harvey Oswald's rights, and enclosed a 10,000 word "brief" that he had submitted for publication. The only newspaper that would publish the brief was a small New York-based left-wing weekly, the National Guardian, where it appeared on December 19—just four weeks after the assassination—with the article title, "Oswald Innocent? A Lawyer's Brief". Lane organized the article as a set of arguments against fifteen assertions by Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade regarding the JFK assassination and the murder of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, followed by a defense of Oswald who deserved, in Lane's estimation, "the presumption of innocence". Oswald's mother, Marguerite Oswald, reached out to Lane after reading the article.
In late December, Lane traveled to Dallas to question Oswald's family and, on January 2, suggested to Mrs. Oswald that she sue the city of Dallas for the death of her son. Lane said: "It would be an attempt to give Lee Oswald in death what he could not obtain in life—a fair trial." Mrs. Oswald announced on January 14 that she had hired Lane to represent her deceased son before the Warren Commission. After Lane notified the Commission that he had been retained by Marguerite Oswald, the Commission's general counsel J. Lee Rankin replied: "The Commission does not believe that it would be useful or desirable to permit an attorney representing Lee Harvey Oswald to have access to the investigative materials within the possession of the Commission or to participate in any hearings to be conducted by the Commission." Although the Commission would soon reverse its position in February when it appointed Walter E. Craig, president of the American Bar Association, to represent Oswald, Lane remarked that he still considered himself to be Oswald's counsel.
Lane testified before the Warren Commission on March 4, 1964 and again on July 2, 1964. In his March 4 testimony, he said he had conducted a phone interview five days earlier with Helen Markham (a witness to the Officer Tippit murder), and that she described Tippit's killer as "short, a little on the heavy side, and his hair was somewhat bushy". Lane added, "I think it is fair to state that an accurate description of Oswald would be average height, quite slender with thin and receding hair."
At the beginning of April, Mrs. Oswald asked Lane for a copy of his report, and requested that he halt any further "organized campaign" on behalf of her son through the Citizens' Committee of Inquiry (CCI), and she terminated his representation.
In his July 2 testimony, Lane's exchanges with Chief Justice Warren were often heated. After Lane reiterated his request to serve as Oswald's counsel, Warren reminded him that the Commission had previously denied his request to act as counsel, explaining that Marina Oswald was her late husband's legal representative and that she was already represented by counsel. In addressing the assertion that Markham's description of Tippit's killer did not resemble Oswald, the Commission's lawyers said they had reviewed the telephone transcript in which she was alleged to have made her comments to Lane. The Warren Report stated: "A review of the complete transcript has satisfied the Commission that Mrs. Markham strongly reaffirmed her positive identification of Oswald and denied having described the killer as short, stocky and having bushy hair." The discrepancy over this matter was a key rationale for Lane to reappear before the Commission in July. Chief Justice Warren told Lane that the Commission had "every reason to doubt the truthfulness" of some of his testimony due to his apparent misrepresentation of what Markham told him. It was observed that Warren displayed significant contempt for Lane. According to biographer Ed Cray, Warren deemed Lane "a publicity seeker who played fast and loose with the subject." Warren maintained that the Commission had investigated all leads and left no witness unheard.
Lane's work on the assassination prompted Bertrand Russell to rally support for the formation of a Who Killed Kennedy Committee in Britain.Peter Knight, The Kennedy Assassination, Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2007, page 77.
In October 1964 Lane debated Jack Ruby's defense lawyer Melvin Belli at the Manhattan Center. In December 1966, Lane debated William F. Buckley Jr. on an episode of the latter's television program Firing Line, in which Buckley defended the Warren Report.: "Toward the end of 1966, I was in New York City for a brief stay to video-tape a one-hour program with William F. Buckley." In the latter half of the 1960s Lane would act as a consultant to the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, during his investigation into the assassination. He was later interviewed for the 1992 documentary The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes.
In 1975, Lane restarted the Citizens' Committee of Inquiry with him as its director (it was now called the Citizens Commission of Inquiry). The CCI lobbied Congress to reopen the JFK murder probe. In September 1976, in legislation Lane helped draft, Congress voted to create a House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Also in 1976, Lane worked with director Lincoln Carle on a 48-minute documentary titled Two Men in Dallas. It mainly consists of an interview Lane conducted with Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig, who recalls what he witnessed on the day JFK was killed.
Rush to Judgment Lane's critique of the Warren Commission, Rush to Judgment, was published in 1966. The book became a number one best seller and remained on The New York Times best-seller list for over 25 weeks. In 1967, it was adapted into a documentary film. This was the first film, documentary or otherwise, to criticize the Warren Commission.
In the manner of an adversarial trial lawyer, Lane wrote Rush to Judgment as a point-by-point rebuttal of the Warren Report. He questioned, among other things, the conclusion that the only shots fired were from the Texas School Book Depository. He quoted numerous witnesses who recounted seeing or hearing shots coming from the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. He stated that none of the Warren Commission firearm experts were able to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat. As one writer put it, "The main argument of Rush to Judgment centered around the perceived improbability of Oswald acting alone." Lane also raised doubts—based on timeline, ballistics, and witness testimony—whether Oswald murdered Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, as the Warren Commission asserted. Lane's book, along with Edward Jay Epstein's 1966 bestseller Inquest, undermined public confidence in the government's account of the JFK assassination.