[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

Oswald in custody, the film also plays the actual taped interview with Oswald in New
Orleans, in which he was confronted with the fact that he was a former defector to the
Soviet Union, attempted to renounce his citizenship, and declared himself a Marxist
supporter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The prosecution argues that Oswald was
not insane and carried out the assassination for his own warped political reasons and
because of his personal failures.
While the prosecutor presents what is assumed to be the overwhelming evidence
of Oswald’s guilt, the camera occasionally shows a close up of Oswald’s eyes, which are
either staring straight ahead or shifting. Apparently the director wanted to indicate a
troubled state of mind. He also did not want to make obvious that an actor was playing
the defendant and would look different than the archival footage of the real Oswald.
When the defense presents its case, an actor plays a psychiatrist who examined Oswald
was a teenager -- obviously patterned off of Dr. Renatus Hargtogs. The psychiatrist
testifies that he found even at that young age that Oswald had a “schizoid personality”
with a “passive aggressive” and “paranoid” state of mind. The psychiatrist also notes that
mentally ill individuals like Oswald who do not have a father sometimes are “vengeful to
authority” and father-figures. In the Warren report, Hartogs’ examination of Oswald was
used to bolster the case of Oswald as lone-nut assassin, but in Buchanan’s film, the
Hartogs character was used to show Oswald was severely mentally ill and should not be
found guilty and executed. Another psychiatrist, retained for the defense, testifies that
Oswald had the “classical symptoms” of schizophrenia and should be found legally
insane. The prosecution counters that Oswald showed cunning in his crimes, attempted
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