Editing Joseph A. Ball (section)

==Warren Commission Role==
In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission, to investigate the November 22, 1963, assassination of President Kennedy. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who knew Ball from California political circles, selected him as one of six senior counsels. At age 61, Ball was a leading criminal lawyer, a member of the Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and a USC law professor. He was paired with junior counsel David W. Belin to focus on determining the identity of Kennedy’s assassin.

Ball and Belin managed an immense volume of evidence—approximately 10,000 documents from the FBI, Dallas police, sheriff’s office, and CIA. They spent a month organizing this material, cataloging it on index cards, and Ball proposed procedures for field investigations and witness interrogations adopted by the entire commission staff. Their work contributed to the commission’s 888-page report, delivered on September 24, 1964, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy and that Jack Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald two days later. Ball’s correspondence with Dallas Police Captain J. W. Fritz, including letters dated April 30 and May 18, 1964, addressed evidence like cartridge hulls found at the Texas School Book Depository and the sighting of Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, though Fritz deemed Craig’s information irrelevant.