When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, 56 years ago (1963), the news spread as quickly as the technology of the day allowed. In Milwaukee, people gathered around television sets and radios to hear the latest, while the phone company called operators to work emergency shifts as the volume of calls so neared the capacity of what their equipment allowed that radio and TV broadcasts interrupted their coverage of the event to ask people not to use their phone unless absolutely necessary.
Yet, in the midst of this landmark moment in US history, there were 13 people—well-dressed, sober and attentive—who had no idea of what had happened in Dallas and would remain unaware until the next evening. They were sitting on a jury in the downtown courthouse, about to decide the fate of 28-year-old Andrew W. Thompson, accused of fatally shooting a man through the jaw and neck the previous July.
As was standard practice at the time for first-degree murder trials, the jury was sequestered, kept from their homes and families and strictly forbidden to hear news of the outside world. While other proceedings at the courthouse were excused on Friday afternoon after news of the assassination spread, the Thompson trial—which had begun on Tuesday—was held over, continuing on while everyone in the courtroom, save for the 12-man jury and a single alternate, had learned of Kennedy’s death. A photo of the jury appeared in the next day’s Milwaukee Journal, the members billed as “possibly the only Milwaukeeans who hadn’t heard.” They were not told why a newspaper photographer had taken their photo during arguments in a trial that had received no attention from the papers. Nor was a juror told why a flag in front of the courthouse was flying as half-mast when he asked a bailiff. They spent Friday night where they had been since Tuesday: in the jurors’ quarters of the downtown Safety building.
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The trial wrapped on Sunday, Nov. 24, with closing arguments being given while Jack Ruby stepped out from the crowd in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach as television cameras broadcast the scene coast-to-coast. As the trial wrapped, Milwaukee learned that Oswald was dead. It took the jury just a few hours to find Thompson guilty. Just before 8 p.m., they were taken back to Judge Herbert Steffes’ chambers and read their verdict.
After hearing the verdict, Judge Steffes addressed the jury. “Gentlemen of the jury, you have been isolated from the outside world since last Tuesday night,” he said. “It becomes my somber function to relate to you the appalling and incredible news that has befallen our country. Yesterday afternoon, the President of the United States was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. We had to keep the news from you because it might have affected your verdict in this case. You are excused.”
Members of the jury audibly gasped as the news and at least one buried his face in his hands. They filed silently into the hall, where some murmured as they processed the news. Back inside the courtroom, Andrew Thompson was given a sentence of 25 years.
