[Newspaper Clipping: Judge Blocks Author In Move to Aid Shaw #2] Part: 1 of 2

                                
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Judge Blacks Author
In Move to Aid Shaw
NEW ORLEANS, La. (UPI)-
Judge Edward A. Haggerty Jr.
has blocked Saturday Evening
Post author James Phelan from
providing defense testimony
prior to • Clay L. Shaw's trial
for conspiring to assassinate
President John Kennnedy.
Defense attorneys wanted
Phelan to be permitted to
swear, in a pre-trial deposition,
that Dist. Atty. Jim Garrison's
star witness against Shaw had
been prompted and prodded
while under drugs and hypnosis
to link Shaw with accused pres-
idential assassin Lee Harvey
Oswald.
The witness, Perry Raymond
Russo, 25, of Baton Rouge,
La., testified at a 4-day hear-
ing in March that he attended
a party in mid-September 1963
at which he allegedly heard
Shaw, Oswald and the late Da-
vid W. Ferrie discussing ways
to go about assassinating Ken-
nedy.
Garrison's office has denied
Phelan's claims and has asked
Phelan to repeat them before
the New Orleans grand jury.
Garrison's office did not want
Phelan to give testimony on be-
half of Shaw unless he first
appears before the grand jury.
Haggerty said the defense
motion "isn't even close under
Louisiana statutes."
In another development, the
New Orleans grand jury has
subpoenaed for May 10 a truck
salesman who told the FBI that
Lee Harvey Oswald may have
been in New Orleans and not
Dallas two weeks before Ken-
nedy was assassinated.
The Warren Commission said
Oswald left New Orleans Sept.
25, 1963 never to return, but
Oscar W. Deslatte said a man
calling himself "Oswald" priced
trucks "a couple of weeks" be-
fore the Nov. 22, 1963 assassi-
nation.
Attorney G. Wray Gill, speak-
ing for Deslatte, said Deslatte
attached no importance to the
questions the man and a large,
swarthy companion asked on
behalf of the "friends of Cuba,"
until after the assassination
and the prominence of Os-
wald's name.
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