The screenplay focuses on the framing of Oswald over that weekend. The frame was being developed using the usual methods noted in cases taken up by the Innocence Project.
This thread will go through those methods as they applied to Oswald. There will be other examples, but these are the ones used in the script.
MANUFACTURE OF EVIDENCE
The Hidell Selective Service Card
The official story was that Oswald had this card on his person when arrested for disturbing the peace in New Orleans. The card would be easily recognizable as fake due to the card having a photo of Oswald attached to it. Real selective service cards had no such photo.
We then skip forward to the hours immediately following the assassination, and Robert Jones of the 112th MIG phones the San Antonio office of the FBI to give them what they have on Oswald. An FBI memo was made regarding this call which states that Jones advised of the NO arrest, that he had the Hidell card at the time and had been using the AJ Hidell as an alias.
Then we go to the Dallas Police who would claim before te Warren Commission that Oswald had this card on him when arrested in Oak Cliff.
All of this served to link Oswald to the purchase of the rifle via mail order in the name of AJ Hidell.
The issues:
Jones was interviewed by the HSCA. In that interview, he denied remembering telling the FBI anything about Oswald carrying the Hidell selective service and underlined that by saying he would have had no way of knowing that.
The FBI memo mentions a "Anna (or Ana) Hidell. When questioned about this Jones suggests they misread their own notes from the phone call and it should read "AKA Hidell" - "Also known as". The questioner then suggests another possibility - that the misreads notes had actually said "An A Hidell", suggesting a separate person and not an Oswald alias. Jones had to agree that this was also possible, but that it was all too long ago fr him to recall and the file had since been culled.
If Oswald had truly had this card on him in NO when arrested, there would be no doubt it was an Oswald alias and therefore no need for anyone to search for "AJ Hidell" as allegedly happened both at that time and most certainly later, post-assassination.
The idea that the NO police would find fake ID on Oswald and return it to him to continue using it - as the official story proclaims must have happened for it to be in Oswald's wallet in Dallas, is antithetical to common sense and even to normal police conduct and actions.
None of the 5 officers who took Oswald into custody including anything about finding Hidell ID on him, despite claiming his wallet was searched to find ID. The story changed some time after those initial reports were submitted.
So if Oswald did not make it and did not have it, where did it come from?
The script provides the only logical answer and it is an answer suggested through the testimony of NO Police Officer Francis Martello. On Saturday at 3:00 pm, Adrian Vial of the Secret Service, picked up the Oswald file (including evidence) held by the NO police from Martello. It consisted mainly of the FPCC leaflets that Oswald had been distributing. But as the two men were going through the material, a passport photo of Oswald was discovered. Martello confirmed that this must have been accidentally caught up in the evidence when it was taken.
The fake card was not discussed or produced by Dallas police until during the interrogation session which commenced at 6:00 pm on Saturday. Three hours is sufficient time to fly the passport photo to Dallas, make a fake card in the name of AJ Hidell, attach Oswald's passport photo and produce it during that interrogation session at the same time as the fake Back Yard Photos make their debut appearance.
The goal of the fake card and photos was the same as for the paraffin test - scaring Oswald into a confession.
Each unsuccessful attempt to scare Oswald into confessing was a step closer to his pre-trial murder.
JUNK SCIENCE
The Paraffin test
The Paraffin test was introduced to the US in 1933 via Mexico.
Teodoro Gonzales of the Criminal Identification Laboratory, Police Headquarters, Mexico City, reported that during a period just short of two years, 121 tests were made by his department using this method, of which 70 were positive and 51 negative. Gonzales claimed that in many cases where positive indications were shown, confessions followed and convictions were obtained. And therein is the reason they continued to be used even after the tests were comprehensively shown to dangerously faulty.
In all cases, the confession is the Holy Grail sought by police.
The fatal blow to the validity of the tests occurred in Los Angeles, 1955.
A series of 20 consecutive cases of known self-inflicted gunshot wounds by small arms were studied with the following result:
4---positive, degree suggesting gun fired by deceased
15-inconclusive-positive, but not to a degree excluding possibility of nitrates other than gunpowder
1-negative-no reaction.
Another series of 20 consecutive cases of persons dying of causes unrelated to gunshot with the following results:
0-positive
16-inconclusive-positive in a degree resembling the 14 inconclusive cases of gunshot deaths
4-negative-no reaction.
It should be said that no court holds scientific evidence needs to be completely infallible. But the above results fall well short of appropriate standards of efficacy.
Some books on the case have pointed to a lack of nitrates on the right cheek as proof that Oswald had not fired a rifle and that nitrates on the hands could have come from any number pf other sources that Oswald may have had contact with. Meanwhile, supporters of the Warren Commission point to tests carried out by the FBI which obtained similar results to the San Francisco tests carried out some years prior, in order to say that no conclusions at all can be drawn from the tests.
The fact is that such tests should not be done if there in no intention of using a positive result in court to help demonstrate guilt. The corollary of that is that a negative should be able to used to demonstrate innocence.
But apart from that, both sides miss the real issues.
The man who performed the test, Pete Barnes, testified to the Warren Commission that it he was instructed to test the right cheek, despite knowing that residue from a rifle could not reach the cheek. He confirmed that the only time he had ever been requested to test that area was with Oswald.
Other things that may cause a false positive on the hands include tobacco or tobacco ash, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, leguminous plants, urine, etc.
The paraffin testing of hands and cheek was done for two reasons and two reasons only:
Trial by media. It was announced to the media that his hands and cheek had been tested and that had produced a positive result. This left the impression that he must have fired a rifle as well as a pistol.
The hope of drawing out a confession. False confessions are not as rare as some may assume. A number of methods are used to get a confession. The production of the results of junk science is but one method.
There is one other issue that I do not think has ever been mentioned. The tell-tale sign of a positive test is the appearance of blue spots on the case when cut off. As these spots can disappear quickly, they are photographed with color film. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Oswald's cast was not photographed. Instead the pattern of dots was reproduced in an illustration. This is analogous to the JFK autopsy drawings and the lack of taping of the Oswald interrogations, and can be regarded as evidence that perhaps, the hands, as with the cheek, were negative.
These drawings should have been color photos. of the casts.