马克·莲恩

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.