Arlen Specter

Arlen Specter’s role in this account is defined by two kinds of public prominence: his association with the Warren Commission’s explanation of the Dallas shootings and his effort, as Philadelphia district attorney, to prosecute Frank Sheeran in the DeGeorge case. The book presents the latter as an attempt to build political standing through a case the prosecution could not sustain, a portrayal that culminates in dismissal after years of delay.

Public Profile and the Warren Commission

Before becoming a U.S. senator, Specter served as Philadelphia’s district attorney and had been a lawyer for the Warren Commission. The narrator links Specter’s earlier national visibility to the single-bullet theory, describing him as having invented the explanation for the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally in Dallas. This account therefore introduces Specter not simply as a local prosecutor but as a figure already associated with a prominent and contested public explanation of political violence.

The DeGeorge Prosecution

The book places Specter at the center of the effort to bring Sheeran to trial for the DeGeorge case. The narrator characterizes the incident as, at most, manslaughter, but says Specter sought a first-degree murder prosecution. He further alleges that Specter urged his top prosecutor, Dick Sprague, to proceed despite the weakness of the case. Sprague, in the narrator’s account, refused, saying there was not even a manslaughter case and telling Specter to try his own cases. The episode is presented as a clash between the district attorney’s ambitions and his prosecutor’s assessment of what the evidence could support.

The narrator’s account stresses the disorder surrounding the underlying incident: some 3,000 people were present, there was extensive shooting, and no guns were found. He says the charges against him remained in the system from 1967 through 1972. These details do not independently establish what happened in the DeGeorge case; they show why the narrator disputes the prosecution’s ability to prove a first-degree murder charge.

Delays and Dismissal

When the case finally reached jury selection, the judge questioned Sheeran about the parties’ requests to postpone. Sheeran said the Commonwealth had sought 68 postponements and that he had requested none. The judge called the situation a disgrace and indicated that a motion was in order. Sheeran’s new lawyer, Jim Moran, then obtained dismissal on a speedy-trial motion, the first such motion to succeed in Pennsylvania, according to the account.

The Commonwealth had also offered a nolle prosequi, which would have dropped the charges while leaving open the possibility of reindictment. Sheeran rejected that option and instead received a dismissal from the judge. The distinction matters to the narrator’s telling: the case did not merely pause at the prosecutor’s discretion; it ended through a judicial ruling prompted by the long delays.

Narrative Role and Limits of the Account

Specter is not given an independent viewpoint in these passages. His motives and conduct are filtered through Sheeran’s retrospective account, which explicitly casts the prosecution as an effort to advance Specter politically at the Teamsters’ expense. The article’s portrait should therefore be read as the book’s characterization, not as a neutral finding about Specter’s private intentions. Within that framing, the DeGeorge case becomes a contrast between the reach of a politically prominent prosecutor and the limits imposed by evidentiary weakness and the right to a speedy trial.