Edgar Killen Guilty

[dragon]

They just read the verdict and he is guilty on all accounts

[dragon]

Hum hit submit to soon. For those that don't know him he was accused of planning the murders of 3 civil rights workers by the KKK 41 years ago.

[Firefox]

MSNBC link.

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty on three counts of manslaughter in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in 1964.

The murder case against Edgar Ray Killen went to the jury Monday after prosecutors made an impassioned plea for a conviction, saying the victims' families have waited a long 41 years for someone to be brought to justice in the case that inspired the movie "Mississippi Burning."

"Because the guilt of Edgar Ray Killen is so clear, there is only one question left," prosecutor Mark Duncan said in closing arguments. "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 Killen's fate for about two and a half hours Monday before going home without a verdict. At the end of the day, the judge polled jurors to determine how they were progressing, and the panel reported being deadlocked 6-6.

Tuesday's verdict comes 41 years to the day that James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner disappeared. Their bodies were found 44 days later.

In his closing argument, defense attorney James McIntyre said that while events that occurred in 1964 were horrible and he had sympathy for the families of the victims, "the burden of proof does not reflect any guilt whatsoever" on the part of Killen, who could get life in prison.

Defense: Reasonable doubt
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.

"If you vote your conscience you are voting not guilty," he said. "There is a reasonable doubt."

The prosecutor 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 were helping register black voters when they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen. They were beaten and shot, and their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam.

Records indicate Killen was organizer
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."

"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," Duncan said.

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.

Perspectives on KKK
The defense rested earlier 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.

[dragon]

Damn MSN is quick considering they just read the verdict live as I was typing the first message.

[dragon]

Dang lack of edit. With him being that old and that bad of shape what do you think they'll do to hin.

[Keevan_Colton]

Damn MSN is quick considering they just read the verdict live as I was typing the first message.

They'll have had two versions ready to run with spaces for quotes. They'll have been straight onto copy from the verdict being given. It;s just part of how things work these days.

As for the verdict, let him rot in the corner of a cell, it'll be difficult to tell when he dies and starts to decompose anyway from the looks of him.

[The Yosemite Bear]

well maybe they can accidentally declare him dead a little early, he did help bury three men alive after all.

[Montcalm]

I heard the old fucker may try to get an apeal.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I heard the old fucker may try to get an apeal.

Fuck that monster, hope they beat him to death with a branch up the rectum