'Mississippi Burning' trial and conviction thread

Here is the most recent results taken from a poll being run by The Neshoba Democrat:

What means will you use to follow the triple murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen?

Attend Court 3%

Television 26%

Newpaper 11%

Internet 47%

Not at all 13%

Total Voters: 526

Results taken a short while ago 16 Jun 2005. Not surprising, the internet gets the biggest hit.

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That's because a lot of people can check the net while at work.

A disgusting crime, which should be punished severely no matter how much time has passed or how decrepit the current state of the defendant.

Today's happenings from the trial. Good coverage from the local paper.

Witness says Killen, Klan 'got them civil rights workers'Source[/color]

I find it a little hard to believe that Nell Miller, wife of Sgt. Wallace Miller, didn't know that her husband was a Klan member in the 1960's until after he became an informant. It sounds like he was financially motivated. $25,000 was a lot of money in those days.

Testimony from 1967 trial heard

The Neshoba Democrat
Friday, June 17, 2005
By DEBBIE BURT MYERS

Witnesses literally spoke from the grave through transcripts from a 1967 conspiracy case when the triple murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen got under way Friday morning.

A school teacher and officials from the State Attorney General's office read testimony of now deceased witnesses from Killen's 1967 trial which ended with a hung jury.

Those transcripts included the testimony of Wallace Miller, a Meridian police officer and Klansman who is now deceased; Ernest Kirkland, a deceased resident of the Longdale community who befriended the civil rights workers; Earl Robert Poe, a deceased highway patrolman; and deceased jailer Minnie Lee Herring.

Among other witnesses called to testify for the state was a retired FBI agent sent here to investigate the disappearance of the civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

Also taking the stand Friday morning was the wife of a deceased Meridian police officer and Klansman who also testified in 1967.

Nell Miller, wife of Sgt. Wallace Miller, testified shortly after 8:30 a.m. that she had no knowledge that her husband was a member of the Klan in the 1960s until after he became an informant for the FBI. She testified that Killen met privately with her husband in their home on two or three occasions.

She also spoke of death threats and other problems her family experienced because of his involvement with the FBI.
Defense attorney James McIntyre asked Miller if she knew that the FBI paid her husband $5,000 for his testimony in the 1967 case to which she responded, no.

Assistant Attorney General Lee Martin played the role of Wallace Miller, reading his testimony from the 1967 trial. Miller testified that he was sworn into the Klan by Killen and later recruited members himself. Miller said that he was at a Klan meeting when Michael Schwerner's name was brought up. Killen, who was in charge of the meeting, told Klansmen to leave Schwerner alone. His elimination has been approved by the Imperial Wizard, Miller quoted Killen as saying.

Miller testified that Killen later told him in his home that the three men had been shot, their bodies buried in a dam and their stationwagon burned. Miller also testified that he was banished from the Klan after it was learned that he was an informant.

Under cross examination in 1967, Miller spoke of the Klan oath which he said didn't include anything about violence or intimidation. He testified that Killen swore him into the Klan.

"At that the time I joined, I thought it was a good organization," Miller said.

Miller was asked by prosecution if he told the FBI where the bodies were buried and if he received a $25,000 reward.

He responded that he didn't become associated with the FBI until after the bodies were recovered.

"I didn't tell them because I had so much faith and confidence in the Klan and in Mr. Killen," he told the court.

Miller testified that he was an informant for over two years and was paid about $2,400 for the work he had done and to cover his expenses.

Keith Millsap, an investigator in the AG's office, played the role of Kirkland, who befriended the three civil rights workers who came here to help blacks register to vote and to establish Freedom Schools.

Kirkland testified in 1967 that he and other blacks met with Schwerner and Chaney in numerous homes and in Mt. Zion Church. He testified that he talked with Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney on June 21, 1964, when they came to Neshoba County after the church burned.

He described the clothes they were wearing and said they left in a 1963 blue Ford station wagon.

The defense asked Kirkland if the three men advocated the boycotting of stores.

No, he replied.

Do you know whether or not Michael Schwerner was an Atheist? he was asked.

I don't know, he responded.

Assistant AG Martin returned to the stand to play the role of Poe.

Poe testified that he and patrolman Harry Wiggs were present when Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price stopped the three civil rights workers on June 21 at the intersection of Beacon and Main streets. Poe said Price told him he was arresting Chaney for speeding and the two others in connection with the church burning. He said the men were jailed between 3:30 and 4 p.m.

On cross examination Poe identified a traffic ticket charging Chaney with speeding.

The final transcript testimony was that of Herring which was read by Julia Cole, a tribal school teacher.

In the 1967 case Herring testified that she was at the jail when Price brought the three civil rights workers in about 4 p.m. She said they were released about 10:30 p.m. after Chaney borrowed $20 from Schwerner to pay his fine.

The defense did not cross-examine Herring.

The final witness of the morning was Dean Lytle of St. Louis, Mo. Lytle worked as an FBI agent in the 1960s and was sent to Neshoba County to investigate the men's disappearance. Lytle, 71, testified about finding the men's burned station wagon in the Bogue Chitto Creek, identifying pictures which were shown to the jury.

Defense attorney McIntyre asked Lytle, who did not testify in 1967, if he was basing his testimony on notes or his memory.

Basically from memory, Lytle responded.

"That was a memorable time and I was a young, impressionable man at the time," he said.

McIntyre questioned Lytle extensively about the FBI's use of paid informants and at one point asked Lytle if he ever paid witnesses. His response was no.

Did you ever interview Mr. Killen, McIntyre asked. Lytle said he did not but that he had heard his name during the investigation.

On redirect, District Attorney Mark Duncan asked Lytle to describe the atmosphere in Neshoba County during his time here.

"People were hostile to us. They were unhappy we were here. I can't recall anybody furnishing us with useful information. If they knew, they didn't tell."

Lytle said the FBI joined local and state law enforcement for a meeting in the courthouse to discuss the investigation and when they left about 10 p.m. the square was filled with people.

"People were shoulder to shoulder, very hostile," he said.

People weren't going to talk for fear they could be the next person harmed, he said.

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Closing arguments on Monday already? Wow! That seems fast for a trial of this importance.

Killen was with family day of murders, witnesses saySource[/color]

Oscar Killen and other siblings testify for the accused.

Siblings Provide Alibi for Ex-Klansman

The Bellingham Herald
Jun 18, 7:12 PM EDT

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) -- Siblings of the man accused in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers took the stand Saturday in his defense, saying he was at a Father's Day meal that day and was never a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

"Until he tells me so, I won't believe it," said Oscar Kenneth Killen, 74.


Oscar Killen

His brother, Edgar Ray Killen, 80, a part-time preacher and sawmill operator, is being tried on the first-ever state murder charges in the killings of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. He faces life in prison if convicted in the case that helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The defense called four witnesses Saturday - including Oscar Killen and a sister, Dorothy Dearing, who both testified Killen attended a family Father's Day meal until late in the afternoon of June 21, 1964, the day the three civil rights workers were killed.

Oscar Kenneth Killen testified that he saw his brother at a funeral home that night.

The slain men, who were helping register black voters, had been stopped for speeding, jailed briefly and then released, after which they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were shot, their bodies found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam.

Prosecutors wrapped up their case Saturday with testimony from Chaney's mother, Fannie Lee Chaney. She testified that her son went to join the other two in delivering books.

"He never come back," she said.

Fannie Lee Chaney, who now lives in New Jersey, said she moved from Mississippi in 1965 after receiving threats that including one by a man who said he would dynamite her house.

She said another caller told her "I wasn't going to be there long before I be put in a hole like James was."


Fannie Chaney

After the initial defense witnesses, the trial was recessed for the weekend.

Defense attorneys said they would call two more witnesses Monday before closing arguments. Killen is not scheduled to testify.

Attorney General Jim Hood told reporters after court recessed that prosecutors would ask the judge to allow the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter in the case. Killen is charged with three counts of murder, which could lead to a life sentence. A manslaughter conviction would carry a maximum of 20 years.

Defense attorneys had no immediate comment.

Killen's name has been associated with the slayings from the outset. FBI records and witnesses indicated he organized the carloads of men who followed Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York.

Killen was tried along with several others in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. The all-white jury deadlocked in Killen's case, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years. Killen is the only person ever indicted on state murder charges in the case.

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I guess the trial is short because so much of the testimony is from already dead persons.

Yes, good point. I guess the previous testimonies were simply read in the transcripts? Of course, the jury would have to re-evaluate it.

Rights Workers Honored as Trial in Their Killings Proceeds

The New York Times
June 20, 2005
By SHAILA DEWAN

PHILADELPHIA, Miss., June 19 - Every year for 41 years, Mount Zion United Methodist Church has held a memorial service for its martyrs: the three young men who were killed when they came to investigate the burning of the church by the Ku Klux Klan.

But this year, by coincidence, the memorial fell in the midst of what was, for the congregation, a long-awaited murder trial - a first step, many there said, toward bringing the perpetrators of the killings to justice.

"Finally, somebody is brought to trial for murder," James Young, the only black member of the Board of Supervisors here in Neshoba County, said from the pulpit. "Not just a slap on the hand for some constitutional misgivings, but murder. This is a victory."

The constitutional question was dealt with in a 1967 federal trial in which 7 of 18 defendants were convicted of conspiring to deprive three civil rights workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, of their civil rights. The three were shot to death and buried by bulldozer.

Now, in the state's first prosecution of the case, Edgar Ray Killen, 80, is being tried on three counts of murder. The jury is expected to hear closing arguments on Monday.

Tuesday, June 21, is the actual anniversary of the deaths.

On Sunday, Rita Bender, Mr. Schwerner's widow, and Barbara Dailey, the older sister of Mr. Chaney, sat in the front pew of the church, which was packed with a multiracial crowd. At the back of the low-slung sanctuary, fuzzy green chairs had been lined up to provide extra seats. A choir of teenage girls performed in white blouses, their expressions pious or painfully self-conscious.

Many of the speakers addressed the sacrifice the young men had made. One guest, Rabbi Debra L. Kassoff, director of rabbinic services at the Goldring-Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, said they had given their lives in tikkun, a Jewish concept meaning the repair of a broken world. "What were they doing," she asked, "if not searching for the hidden spark, the seeds of justice buried in the dust and ashes of a Mississippi summer?"

Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner were Jewish.

Ms. Dailey, 63, said she had not been to one of the Mount Zion memorial services "for years and years and years."

"The makeup has changed," she said. "There's more young people. There's more white folks."

After her brother's death, Ms. Dailey worked at the Council of Federated Organizations in Philadelphia for two years, helping register black voters and teaching literacy classes. She said she had wanted to do civil rights work before but had refrained out of respect for her mother.

"She didn't want all of her children involved in this because she was so afraid, but she couldn't convince him not to be," Ms. Dailey said of her brother. "So the rest of us took a back seat for a while."

Less than a mile from the church was a second memorial event, held in a field with folding chairs, shade tents and tables laden with barbecue and homemade cakes. About 50 people gathered to hear speakers including Ben Chaney, Mr. Chaney's younger brother, and veterans of civil rights-era boycotts and sit-ins like Curtis Muhammad, who came from New Orleans, and Diane Nash of Chicago.

It was organized by what might be termed a splinter group of the committee that planned the church service. The event was on land once owned by Cornelius Steele, who was working with Mr. Schwerner to register blacks to vote. Mr. Steele is now dead; his son John helped organize the service.

John Steele said his family had decided to hold its own service because the other group was too "soft-spoken" about the fact that only Mr. Killen had been tried. Eight of the defendants from the 1967 case are still alive. None of those convicted in that case served more than six years.

"We're more after a full measure of justice," Mr. Steele said, although several members of the church planning committee have said they would also like to see others indicted.

Mr. Steele said Mr. Schwerner had visited his father about 30 times to discuss voter registration and starting a "freedom school" on his property. "This is holy ground," he said.

One of the 50 or so people in attendance was David Sims, a barber who grew up next door to the Chaneys; he gave Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Goodman haircuts in Meridian on the day they left for Philadelphia and never came back.

Mr. Sims sometimes participated in their civil rights work but said he was too afraid of being beaten to submit to what they called the "nonviolent crouch" - head down, hands on head - that they were supposed to use if police officers appeared.

"I told them I couldn't do it," Mr. Sims said. "I never did believe in that nonviolent crouch. Either fight or run, those were your two choices."

Of Mr. Schwerner, he said: "Mickey was a kid, he was a loving fellow. He didn't believe anybody would hurt a fly, especially not those white folks down South."

Mr. Chaney, he said, was more of a prankster. "He liked to tell jokes," he said, "maybe put a match in your shoe and light it."

Mr. Sims said he met Mr. Goodman, who arrived in Mississippi to join the civil rights workers the day before he was killed, only that one time. "I didn't know him, but I was probably the last one to have my hands on his head," he said.

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"The KKK was a peaceful organization that did some good things"??? Huh? I can't believe that former mayor said that!! Doesn't make him a very credible character witness.


Klan did good, former mayor testifies

The Neshoba Democrat
Monday, June 20, 2005
By Debbie Burt Myers

A former Philadelphia mayor was a character witness this morning for Edgar Ray Killen and testified that the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful organization that did some good things.

Two-term Mayor Harlan Majure told the court he talked with Killen on the night of June 21, 1964 at McClain-Hays Funeral Home.

Closing arguments in the triple murder trial were to begin at 1 p.m., and the case is expected to go to the jury by mid-afternoon.

Killen is charged with the civil rights murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

David Winstead, whose brother Mike testified earlier in the trial that he overheard Killen tell his grandfather that he was proud to be involved in the murders, was the first defense witness to take the stand this morning.

Winstead said he contacted defense attorneys after watching his brother testify on television.

David Winstead said his brother never confided in him about the conversation and said he didn't believe his testimony was truthful.

On cross examination by the state, David Winstead said his family lived eight or nine miles away from the Killen home and that he often rode horses on the Killen property when he was growing up.

He admitted he wasn't present when the alleged conversation occurred.
Majure testified that he has known Killen 45 to 50 years and had a good opinion of his character.

District Attorney Mark Duncan asked Majure if he had any knowledge of Killen's activities prior to his going to the funeral home that night.

Majure said he didn't know if Killen had traveled to Meridian that day.

"Did you know he was in the Klan?" Duncan asked.

"No," Majure responded.

Duncan responded: "Would it change your opinion of his character if you knew he was?"

"Not necessarily so," Majure replied, saying the Klan did some good things.

Duncan asked the former mayor if he knew the Klan beat and murdered people.

Majure said as far as he knew it was a peaceful organization and offered to tell "a little story" about the organization to which Duncan objected.

"Did you know he was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan," he asked of Majure.

He responded "no."

Mike Hatcher, a Meridian police officer who testified earlier in the trial, returned to the stand this morning.

Defense Attorney Mitch Moran grilled him about his testimony in the 1967 civil rights trial and pointed out, what he said, were contradictions.

Hatcher said he didn't offer any information in 1967 other than answering questions from law enforcement officers because he feared his safety.

When the Klan started in 1964, Hatcher said there were secret members, sympathizers and informants and he feared he could be killed.

Moran asked Hatcher if he lied in 1967, when he testified that Killen told he had nothing to do with the murders.

Yes, I could have said that back then, Hatcher said.

On cross examination by Attorney General Jim Hood, Hatcher said that Killen repeated to him Michael Schwerner's final words.

"I understand how you feel, sir," he quoted Schwerner as saying.

Afterwards when being questioned by Moran, Hatcher said he had personal knowledge that Wayne Roberts and Jim Jordan were present when the murders occurred.

"I can't say if Killen was there," he said.

Hatcher talked about seeing Killen at Klan meetings in his robe and cowboy boots and said Killen was the usual one who made comments about the elimination of Schwerner.

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We should know tomorrow what the jury thinks.

What a nail biter! Seems the 1967 trial went this way, too. We'll have to wait to see what happens tomorrow...

Jury divided 6-6 before being recessed

The Neshoba Democrat
Monday, June 20, 2005

The jury foreman in the Edgar Ray Killen triple murder trial told the judge they were divided 6-6 shortly after 5:30 p.m. today and said she saw no hope for a unanimous decision without further deliberations.

Judge Marcus Gordon brought the jury back into the courtroom for a report. He did not ask whether the jury was divided between murder, manslaughter or acquittal.

The case went to the jury shortly before 3 p.m. and about 4:30 p.m., they sent a note to the judge who met briefly in chambers with attorneys. A short time later the circuit clerk sent a single sheet of paper to the deliberation room.

Judge Marcus Gordon recessed the jury and said it would be sequestered until 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The defense rested its case about 11:30 a.m. and closing arguments got under way at 1 p.m.

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Here is another article about today's jury deliberation. I notice this time that the jury make-up is 9 white and 3 black jurors, as opposed to the all-white jury from 1967.

Mississippi jury ends first day without verdict in case of 1964 civil-rights murders

Sun Herald.com
Posted on Mon, Jun. 20, 2005

EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Defense attorneys were smiling and the prosecution's jury consultant said he was disappointed Monday after jurors ended their first day of deliberation without deciding the fate of a one-time Ku Klux Klansman accused of murdering three civil-rights workers in 1964.

Edgar Ray Killen, the 80-year-old defendant, got hugs from his wife after Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sent jurors back to their hotel for the night. Deliberations continue Tuesday morning.

During closing arguments, prosecutors made an impassioned plea for a conviction, saying the victims' families have waited 41 long years for someone to be brought to justice.

"Because the guilt of Edgar Ray Killen is so clear, there is only one question left," District Attorney Mark Duncan said. "Is a Neshoba County jury going to tell the rest of the world that we are not going to let Edgar Ray Killen get away with murder any more? Not one day more."

The 12 jurors - nine white and three black - deliberated for 2 hours, 45 minutes before Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon called them into the courtroom to check their progress.

Because the jury forewoman said she didn't think the group was close to reaching a verdict, Gordon sent them back to a hotel to be sequestered for the night. Gordon didn't ask jurors whether they were split between finding Killen guilty or acquitting him, or whether the split was between convicting on murder and convicting on manslaughter.

Killen could get life in prison if convicted of murder or up to 20 years on each of the three counts if convicted of manslaughter.

Defense attorney James McIntyre said juries are difficult to predict.

"You can read a dog. He'll growl if he's going to bite you," McIntyre said outside the courthouse. "A jury, they don't give any indication at all of what they're going to do.

Andrew Sheldon of Atlanta, a jury consultant hired by prosecutors, said he was "disappointed and sad" that jurors ended the first day without a verdict. At one point, jurors sent the judge and the attorneys a note with a question about a part of the jury instructions dealing with kidnapping.

Shelton wouldn't guess what jurors are discussing.

"It's so difficult to speculate because we're not back there," Sheldon said.

During closing arguments, McIntyre said that while events that occurred in 1964 were horrible and he has sympathy for the families of the victims, "the burden of proof does not reflect any guilt whatsoever" on the part of Killen.

"A hung jury would be a victory," McIntyre later added.

McIntyre acknowledged that Killen was once a Klan member, but added: "He's not charged with being a member of the Klan, he's charged with murder." He then pointed out that no witnesses could put Killen at the scene of the crime. Killen did not take the stand.

McIntyre questioned the state's motive for pursuing a case after 41 years, saying: "This is nothing but stirring the simmering pot of hate for profit."

At one point during his closing argument, McIntyre leaned into the jury box and said he knows why prosecutors put Killen on trial.

"They want to get a preacher," he said in a stage whisper.

Prosecutors said that while there was no testimony putting the murder weapon in Killen's hands, the evidence showed he was a Klan organizer and had played a personal role in preparations the day of the murders.

"He was in the Klan and he was a leader," Attorney General Jim Hood said.

The trial has reopened one of the most notorious chapters of the civil rights era.

The victims - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - were investigating the burning of a black church when they were stopped for speeding, held in the county jail for several hours. After they were released, they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were shot to death on a dark country road near Killen's home, and their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam several miles away.

Hood called Killen a "coward" for going to a funeral home while others were killing the trio.

"He wants you to be weak and not do your duty to find him guilty of his crime," Hood said as he pointed at Killen, who appeared to snarl at the prosecutor.

FBI records and witnesses indicated Killen organized carloads of men who followed Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, and Schwerner and Goodman, white men from New York.

Their disappearance focused the nation's attention on the Jim Crow code of segregation in the South and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Hood noted that the men disappeared on June 21, 1964. He said families of the three men "have waited 41 years - tomorrow it'll be 41 years - to see this case put before a jury on murder charges."

Duncan said: "Those three boys and their families were robbed of all the things that Edgar Ray Killen has been able to enjoy for these last 40 years."

Killen was tried in 1967 along with several others on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. The all-white jury deadlocked in Killen's case, but seven others were convicted. None served more than six years.

The defense rested Monday after a former mayor testified that the Klan was a "peaceful organization."

Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion.

Majure said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past.

"As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.

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Very interesting background about Neshoba County and the people. It gives a sense of why things are the way they are in this small town, and what contributed to the deaths of the civil rights workers. Must reading if you want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes here.

In a Small Town, a Trial Mirrors Familiar Divisions

June 21, 2005
The New York times
By SHAILA DEWAN

PHILADELPHIA, Miss., June 20 - It was bad enough that Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman wanted racial integration and blacks in the voting booth. But to many people here in 1964, they were also outsiders: Jews, Yankees and, some said, Communists.

Forty-one years later, the tension between outsiders and residents here still reverberates, as prosecutors try to make the case that Edgar Ray Killen organized the murders of Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Goodman and a third civil rights worker, James Earl Chaney, who was from a nearby town.

Before the trial began, the district attorney, Mark Duncan, extracted a promise from potential jurors. "Tell me you'll treat them like they were from here and were our neighbors," Mr. Duncan said.

His request was all the more significant because many in the courtroom were indeed neighbors, their histories intertwined in births and funerals, weddings and business deals.

This is a place where restaurants are decorated with framed photos of the owners' grandchildren, where customers at the antique shop on the courthouse square know about the proprietor's hip problem, where a case involving the Ku Klux Klan - whose members were responsible for the three men's deaths - can divide sisters and brothers.

Even the judge, Marcus Gordon, and the defendant, a preacher and sawmill operator, are connected; Mr. Killen presided at the funerals for Mr. Gordon's parents.

No one has accused Judge Gordon of favoring the defense. Rather, people seem to accept such connections as inevitable in Neshoba County, with its population of only about 28,000.

Stanley Dearman, the former owner of the local weekly newspaper, The Neshoba Democrat, said that although he did not believe that behind-the-scenes relationships affected what happened in the courtroom, such links might have contributed to the 40-year delay in the state's prosecution of the case.

"There's what I call a grass-roots politics, and it has a great deal to do with whether things are done or not done," Mr. Dearman said, recalling a Neshoba County constable who refused to serve arrest warrants for fear of losing votes.

Mr. Dearman, who has long called for the killers to be brought to justice, is himself distantly connected to the case. Mr. Killen has said he was at a funeral home on the night of the killings. The visitation he attended was for the 4-year-old daughter of Carolyn Barrett, who is now Mr. Dearman's wife. Mrs. Dearman still has the guest book with Mr. Killen's signature in a safe-deposit box.

Mrs. Dearman's brother, Harlan Majure, who was at the funeral home that night, testified for the defense on Monday that he saw Mr. Killen at the visitation, and that he thought the Klan was a peaceful organization that "did a lot of good."

The intricate ties in the case extend beyond the county line. Take, for example, State Senator Gloria Williamson, who delivered one of the more dramatic moments on Sunday at a memorial service for the three victims at Mount Zion United Methodist Church. Ms. Williamson, who is white, apologized to blacks for "all the wrong that was done" to them. She added, "Change had to come from outside of this little society."

The allegiances and grievances of residents posed a particular problem when it came to selecting a jury for the Killen trial.

"People don't move around that much, and lots of people have been here their whole lives," said Beth Bonora, a jury consultant for the prosecutors. "So the question becomes, how well do you know this person?"

Throughout the trial, the defense subtly underscored the fact that many involved in the case in 1964 were not from the area. "You were one of the F.B.I. agents sent down here to investigate the civil rights cases?" a defense lawyer, James McIntyre, asked a retired F.B.I. agent during cross-examination.

Editorials and news accounts from the 1960's portrayed the Freedom Riders and other civil rights supporters who came here as unkempt intruders looking for trouble.

"A lot of people to justify things say, 'Oh, they were filthy,' " Mr. Dearman said, "and that seems to be all you need to say."

Deborah Posey, a resident, recalled that when she finally saw photos of Mr. Chaney, Mr. Goodman and Mr. Schwerner on a poster offering a reward for information about their disappearance, she was shocked at how well-groomed they were. "I was told, 'Well, they cleaned them up for the pictures,' " Ms. Posey said.

Of course, not everyone shunned the civil rights workers. Mount Zion, the black church whose burning by the Klan drew the three workers to Neshoba County, has held a memorial service for them every year since their deaths, church members say.

Jewel Rush McDonald, a member of the church, said it worried her that Judge Gordon had allowed the sequestered jury to go home for the weekend.

"This is a small town; someone is going to call them," Ms. McDonald said. In the 1967 federal trial, in which 7 of 18 defendants were convicted of conspiring to deprive the three victims of their civil rights, jurors reported receiving threatening phone calls telling them not to convict.

Some trace the dislike of outsiders to the Civil War and even earlier, when abolitionists were seen as condescending by Southerners.

"It was when the North came into the South and told the South, 'You have to do this, this and this,' " Ms. Posey said. "They didn't want to be told what to do."

Mr. Dearman made a similar point. "The ghost of the carpetbagger," he said, "casts a long shadow."

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I think the photo at the end of this article says it all as to the character of the accused.

Jury split in Mississippi KKK killing trial

Mon Jun 20, 2005 08:01 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (Reuters) - The jury was split after a first round of deliberation on Monday in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen, accused of being a Ku Klux Klan leader who recruited a mob to kill three civil rights workers in a 1964 attack that inspired the film "Mississippi Burning."
Judge Marcus Gordon told reporters that after more than two hours deliberating on the evidence of a case that recalled violent racial conflicts in America just 40 years ago the jury was split 6-6. A unanimous verdict is required for conviction.

The killings outraged much of the nation, energized the civil rights movement and were dramatized in the 1988 movie.

Prosecutor Mark Duncan urged jurors to "remove the stain" on Mississippi's Neshoba County, where the killings occurred, and deliver justice by convicting Killen.

"Tell the rest of the world that we're not going to let Edgar Ray Killen get away with murder any more, not one day longer," Duncan urged jurors.

Killen, an 80-year-old sawmill operator and Baptist minister, did not testify. He faces life in prison if convicted of murdering Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were helping Mississippi blacks register to vote during the 1964 Freedom Summer civil rights campaign.

The three men, all in their 20s, were abducted and shot by a group of Klansmen on a remote road outside the Eastern Mississippi town on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found weeks later in an earthen dam.

Prosecutor Jim Hood said Killen was a high-ranking Klan officer who recruited members of the white supremacist group to abduct and shoot the three civil rights workers, made sure they wore rubber gloves and arranged to have a bulldozer ready to dig their graves and "dumped them in there like a dog."

"He directed this murder throughout its initial conception all the way through the final acts," Hood said.

'BIG MOUTH' BUT NOT GUILTY

Defense attorney James McIntyre said Killen "may have been associated with the Klan" but had nothing to do with the killings and was not present at the scene of the shootings.

"He had a big mouth and he was talking all the time. That's all that he's guilty of," McIntyre said.

Killen was among a group of men tried in 1967 for violating the civil rights of Schwerner and Goodman, white New Yorkers, and Chaney, a black Mississippian. Seven co-defendants were convicted by the all-white jury and served up to six years in prison but Killen's trial ended in a hung jury after a lone holdout said she could never convict a preacher.

A policeman and former Klansman testified that Killen had told him a day after the shootings that "We got rid of them civil rights workers" and described how and where the killings took place.

Another prosecution witness testified that as a 10-year-old boy in 1967, he had overheard his grandfather ask Killen if he had anything to do with the murders and heard Killen reply, "Yes, and he was proud of it."

Killen stayed in the Philadelphia, Mississippi, area after the 1967 trial, logging and preaching in local churches. He was arrested early this year and charged with the murders after Mississippi investigators reopened the case.

The defense attorney said Killen was being prosecuted for political reasons and in order to put on a show for the news media and out-of-towners who pushed to reopen the case.

State prosecutors did not pursue murder charges against any of the original suspects in the 1960s, perhaps swayed by the realization that no jury in Mississippi had at that time ever convicted whites for killing blacks or civil rights workers.

Edgar Ray Killen, accused of being a Ku Klux Klan leader who recruited a mob to kill three civil rights workers in a 1964 attack, gestures as he listens to the foreman announce a split jury during his trial in Philadelphia, Mississippi June 20, 2005. Judge Marcus Gordon told reporters that after more than two hours of deliberating on the evidence of a case that recalled violent racial conflicts in America just 40 years ago the jury was split 6-6. An unanimous verdict is required for conviction.
Photo by Pool/Reuters

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Well, now to see if the sentencing reflects the nature of the crime.

On the evening news (very rare event for me to waste my time watching that--but i was at a friend's house), they said he can get twenty years per count, and i believe they would be consecutive. The old boy may never see the light of day again--one can only hope.

Yes, I agree, Edgar, even if it is mostly symbolic at this point in time. If he were to get a 20 year sentence, he would die in prison probably within the next few years. I'll look out for the sentencing date.

Killen guilty of three counts of manslaughter

The Neshoba Democrat
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
By DEBBIE BURT MYERS

A Neshoba County jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen of three counts of manslaughter shortly before noon this morning in the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

Circuit Clerk Patti Duncan Lee read the three guilty verdicts about 11:25 a.m. as the 12-person jury stood in a semi-circle in front of the judge's bench.

Killen did not show any emotion as the verdict was read. Afterwards, his attorney Mitch Moran told the court that the defendant "wants to poll the jury himself."

Judge Marcus Gordon responded: "That would be improper."

Gordon is expected to set a sentencing date later today.

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I don't care about his age and health. He lived free and smug all these years while the victims lay under the ground. Lay it on him, judge.