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Wednesday May 14th 2008 |
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Wednesday May 14th 2008 |
a non-profit education organization | |
June 21
This ruling was against Edgar Ray Killen in the murders of three Civil Rights workers exactly 41 years ago. A jury of nine whites and three Blacks reached the verdict on their second day of deliberations, rejecting murder charges against Killen but also turning aside defense claims that he wasn't involved at all. Chaney, a Black Mississippian, and Goodman and Schwerner, Jewish New Yorkers, were in Neshoba County to look into the Burning of a Black church and help register Black voters during what was called Freedom Summer. The three were stopped for speeding, jailed briefly, and then released, after which they were followed out of town by a gang of Klansmen and intercepted, and ambushed on June 21, 1964. Killen showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He was comforted by his wife as he sat in his wheelchair, wearing an oxygen tube. Heavily armed police formed a barrier outside a side door to the courthouse and jurors were loaded into two waiting vans and driven away. Ben Chaney, James Chaney’s brother thanked the prosecutors but said that for the community, "I really feel that there is more to be done.'' Schwerner's widow, Rita Schwerner Bender, praised the verdict, calling it "a day of great importance to all of us.'' But she also said, "Preacher Killen didn't act in a vacuum, the state of Mississippi was complicit in these crimes and all the crimes that occurred, and that has to be opened up.'' Prosecutors had asked the jury to send a message to the rest of the world that Mississippi has changed and is committed to bringing to justice those who killed to preserve segregation in the 1960s. They said the evidence was clear that Killen organized the attack on the three victims. Killen's lawyers conceded he was in the Klan but said that did not make him guilty. They pointed out that prosecutors offered no witnesses or evidence that put Killen at the scene of the crime. Killen did not take the stand, but has long claimed that he was at a wake at a funeral home when the victims were killed. While Killen was indicted on murder charges, which could carry a life sentence, prosecutors asked the judge to allow the jury to consider the lesser charge of manslaughter, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Attorney General Jim Hood said that with a murder charge, prosecutors had to prove intent to kill. With a manslaughter charge, he said, prosecutors had to prove only that a victim died while another crime was being committed. Killen was only person ever brought up on murder charges in the case by the state of Mississippi. Killen, a part-time preacher and sawmill operator, was tried in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. But the all-white jury deadlocked, with one juror saying she could not convict a preacher. Seven others were convicted, but none served more than six years. Reference: The Associated Press permissions 450 W. 33rd St., New York, NY 10001.
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The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
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