Mississippi Jury
Convicts Ex-Klansman in 1964 Killings
By SHADI RAHIMI,
NYTimes on the Web, June 21, 2005
Edgar Ray Killen, a former member of
the Ku Klux Klan, was found guilty today of felony manslaughter in the killings
of three civil rights workers in Mississippi four decades ago. The
verdict, delivered on the 41st anniversary of the deaths, was less severe than
the murder conviction that the state prosecutors had sought.
Mr. Killen, 80, who had been free on bond, was immediately taken into custody.
He faces up to 20 years in prison. A date for sentencing was not set.
Relatives of the victims said at a televised news conference that the trial was
an important step but that the lesser conviction demonstrated the need for
justice for the victims of crimes committed during the civil rights era.
"The fact that some of these jurors have lived all these years, and could not
bring themselves to recognize that these were murders, indicates that there are
still some people among you who choose to look aside, who choose to not see the
truth," said Rita Bender, the widow of one of the victims, Michael Schwerner.
Ben Chaney, the younger brother of victim James Earl Chaney, said that the trial
had shed light on social and economic problems related to race that persist in
the community today.
"The light will shine on this state, on this community -- lightly -- but we are
still living in the dark," he said. "There's a lot of work to be done.
This is not over with."
One after another in the last decade or so, a new generation of southern
prosecutors, prompted by news reports, victims' families or even their own
youthful memories, have reopened some of the most notorious cases from the civil
rights era. In 1994, for example, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted in
the 1963 assassination of the Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
More recently, the body of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was
kidnapped and slain in Mississippi in 1955, was exhumed by prosecutors
revisiting that case.
With Mr. Killen's sentencing, another of what some have called these southern
"atonement trials" -- the legal system's revisiting of the most notorious
atrocities of the civil rights era -- will be brought to an end.
The jury, which began deliberating Monday afternoon, reported just before
breaking for the night that they were spilt 6 to 6 on the case against Mr.
Killen, an ailing, 80-year-old sawmill operator who was charged with
masterminding the 1964 slayings. The jurors resumed their deliberations
this morning, after spending the night sequestered at a hotel on the order of
the judge, Marcus D. Gordon of State Circuit Court in Neshoba County.
Mr. Killen, the first to face state murder charges in the case, could be
sentenced to up to 20 years on each of the three counts. He did not
testify at his short trial, which began last Wednesday, and he was breathing
with the aid of an oxygen tube, looking straight ahead, as he listened to the
reading of the verdict and the confirmatory poll of the jurors by the judge.
On the night they disappeared, the three victims, all in their 20's, had been
helping to register black voters during the "Freedom Summer" of 1964 and were
investigating a church in Philadelphia, Miss., that had been burned by the Ku
Klux Klan. The victims, Mr. Chaney, Mr. Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were
initially taken into custody on speeding charges. Upon their release from
jail, their car was pursued by Klansmen. They were shot dead and later
found buried in an earthen dam.
Their 44-day disappearance thrust the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South
into the national spotlight and helped to spearhead passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.
Of the 18 men tried a year later on federal civil rights charges, 7 were
convicted by the all-white jury. Mr. Killen was freed when the jury
deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of conviction, after a holdout juror said she could
not convict a preacher.
Eight of the defendants are still alive. The men who were convicted were
sentenced to prison terms ranging from 3 years to 10 years, although none served
more than 6 years. The case gained renewed international attention when it
was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."
Mr. Killen, who was tried by the State of Mississippi on three counts of murder,
was free on bail and was using a wheelchair because of arthritis that worsened
after he broke his legs in a tree-cutting accident in March.
Prosecutors sought to convince the jurors -- nine whites and three blacks --
that although Mr. Killen was not present during the killings, he had organized
groups of men and planned what they would do, including, according to testimony,
telling the men where to go and instructing someone to buy rubber gloves for the
men to wear during the crime.
The district attorney, Mark Duncan, said during his closing arguments that the
evidence that Mr. Killen was culpable in the killings is "absolutely
overwhelming."
"There is only one question left," Mr. Duncan said. "Is a Neshoba County
jury going to tell the rest of the world that we're not going to let Edgar Ray
Killen get away with murder? Not one day more."
|
