On this day, Jack Ruby was sentenced to death for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. On 22nd November the previous year, Oswald was arrested and held in custody for the assassination of President John Kennedy. Two days later, as he was being transferred to the nearby county jail, Jack Ruby shot him, fatally wounding him, in the basement of the police station in front of a crowd of journalists and television cameras. Two years later, Ruby’s death sentence was overturned because of legal technicalities and he was due for a new trial when he fell ill and died of cancer. Although the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald, shooting on impulse and in retaliation for the Kennedy assassination, this conclusion has been challenged by various critics who firmly believe that Ruby was part of a larger conspiracy surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
