Nov. 23, 1963 | Judge David Johnston Details Oswald Charges

Nov. 23, 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old warehouse worker who once lived in the Soviet Union, was formally charged at 1:35 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) with assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Oswald was arrested at 1:52 p.m. CST yesterday, nearly an hour after the President died, as the suspected killer of a 39-year-old Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, on the street in the Oak Cliff district, 3 miles from where the President was shot. Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry announced that Oswald had been formally arraigned before a justice of the peace in the homicide bureau at Dallas Police headquarters on a charge of murdering the President. Captain Will Fritz, head of the homicide bureau, identified Oswald as an adherent of the left-wing “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” Oswald was employed in the Texas School Book Depository, the warehouse from which the fatal shots were fired at the President’s car. The police said at least six witnesses placed Oswald in the building at the time of the assassination. The defendant’s only comment, shouted at reporters as he was led handcuffed through a police building corridor to be questioned, was “I haven’t shot anybody.” “He has not confessed,” Chief Curry said. “Physical evidence is the main thing we have.” Such evidence reportedly includes the murder gun used in the assassination. Oswald had already been formally arraigned on a charge of murder in the death of Officer Tippit. He faces death in the electric chair if convicted of either charge.

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