Courtroom sketch of Dr. Robert L. Stubblefield dated March 11, 1964

At the time of the Jack Ruby trial in 1964, Dr. Robert L. Stubblefield was professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical School and Chief of Psychiatry at the adjacent Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. (In Volume 6 of the Ruby Trial court transcript, Stubblefield is incorrectly identified as the "Chief of Surgery" instead of Psychiatry.) He came into that position in July 1957 after serving as staff psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and later at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Judge Joe B. Brown had called Dr. Stubblefield in January 1964 and consulted him about the benefits of a mental examination of Jack Ruby. Stubblefield first met with Ruby on January 27, 1964, at the Dallas County Jail. Based on his examination of Ruby, Stubblefield testified that he felt that Ruby was both competent to stand trial and legally sane. However, he did state that Ruby "is and was an emotionally unstable person."

In later years, some assassination researchers have pointed out that in addition to his examination of Jack Ruby, Dr. Stubblefield also conducted psychiatric examinations of both right-wing activist Major General Edwin Walker and Dallas resident Silvia Odio (who allegedly met Lee Harvey Oswald in September 1963), two figures who are referenced in Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator