Killen: "NOT GUILTY"

Deliberation Stalled in Killen Trial

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) -- Jurors deliberating the murder case against a former Klansman in the slayings of three civil rights workers are deadlocked.

The 12 jurors deliberated the Edgar Ray Killen case for about two-and-a-half hours (Monday) afternoon before telling Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon that they voted 6-to-6 and could NOT reach a unanimous verdict today. Gordon dismissed the jurors for the day and told them to return to the Neshoba County Courthouse tomorrow.

Earlier ... in closing arguments, 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.

Mississi
ppi Attorney General Jim Hood said in his closing argument that --quoting-- "How
much time is enough that murder is not a crime anymore? How much time should pass before we say it's OK to murder?"

Nine jurors are white and three are black. They began deliberating whether to convict the 80-year-old Killen of murder. He could get life in prison. Defense Attorney James McIntyre says 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.

*******************
It's premature to celebrate. However, if the jury is deadlocked tomorrow and the next day the judge will have no choice but to declare a mistrial.

T.N.B.
 
The prosecution got what it wanted when they offered the "compromise" option of manslaughter.. now the jury can go home thinking they've made both sides happy. Hopefully the defense appeal will carry, but I'm betting there's not a judge in the world that'd uphold that appeal. I'm sorry that this ended the way I feared it would, with a "symbolic" decision.

USA Today: Killen guilty of manslaughter in '64 civil rights murders

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP)
 
http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/news/4634301/detail.html

4075484_120X90.jpg


Mississippi Jury Finds Ex-Klansman Guilty Of Manslaughter

POSTED: 11:07 am CDT June 21, 2005
UPDATED: 3:35 pm CDT June 21, 2005

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. -- Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, has been convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers.

The jury of nine whites and three blacks reached the verdict on their second day of deliberations, rejecting murder charges against Killen.

Killen showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He was comforted by his wife as he sat in his wheelchair. He was wearing an oxygen tube. Heavily armed police formed a barri
er outside a side door to the courthouse and jurors were loaded into two waiting vans and driven away.

The
verdict was 41 years to the date after James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were ambushed, beaten, and shot.

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.

Prosecutors had sought murder charges, but included the manslaughter charges just before the trial began. Killen could get up to 20 years on each of the three counts of manslaughter.

After three hours of work Monday, the jury told the judge it was split 6-6 on whether Killen, 80, was behind the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. The judge told the jurors to try again Tuesday, so they spent the night sequestered in a local hotel.

A veteran of black voter reg
istration drives said she was not surprised a Mississippi jury was initially split on the case. State Rep. Reecy Dickson said
"the mindset" from the era lives on.

During closing arguments, prosecutor Mark Duncan said the victims' families and the people of Mississippi had waited 41 years for justice. Duncan said Killen's guilt is clear -- so much so that the only question remaining is whether the jury will tell the world that it won't let Killen "get away with murder any more."

Killen's attorney, however, told jurors "there is reasonable doubt," so his client should be acquitted. James McIntyre also pointed out that no witnesses could put his client at the scene of the murders.

As for his client's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, McIntyre noted Killen is not charged with that -- so his guilt shouldn't rest on it.

One of the final defense witnesses was a former mayor, who defended both Killen and the Klan.

Harlan Majure te
stified that the Killen was a good man. And he told jurors he knew the Klan to be "a peaceful organization" that "did a lot of good" in the area.

Another defense witness testified Monday
that his brother lied last week when he told jurors he'd once overheard Killen talking about playing a role in the murders.

On June 21, 1964, Chaney, 21, a black volunteer from Mississippi, and Goodman, his 20-year-old white coworkers from New York, and Schwerner, 24, set out to investigate the burning of a black church near Philadelphia, Miss. They were stopped for speeding, jailed briefly and then released, after which they were ambushed by a gang of Klansmen.

As many as 22 Ku Klux Klan members were accused of killing the three and burying their bodies beneath a 15-foot earthen dam. Their bodies were found six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney from a savage beating, according to the Congress of Racial Equality.
 
What's Next for Edgar Ray Killen

Edgar Ray Killen's attorneys are making plans to ask for a new trial. Killen was convicted Tuesday of three counts of manslaughter. Prosecutors say he planned the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. Thursday, he'll learn how long he'll have to spend in prison if the conviction holds up.

It comes as no shock. Killen's attorneys will ask for a new trial. They feel they have good cause. James McIntyre says, "We weren't really prepared for manslaughter. We came to trial to defend a murder case not a manslaughter case."

But it's what Killen got after prosecutors asked the court to consider it. Permission was granted. Now, he could spend up to sixty y
ears in prison. And no less than three.

McIntyre says, "The court is
gonna have to look at his health, is he going to be a burden upon the state of Mississippi?"

A decision will come Thursday morning at ten. All eyes will be on judge Marcus Gordon. If the pressure of the media isn't enough, Gordon grew up in the same town as Killen, and is just seven years younger.

"I can assure you that if there's any judge who can handle the pressure, judge Gordon is that judge." Breland Hilburn was the judge in Byron de la Beckwith's murder trial. De la Beckwith was convicted for murder in the death of Medgar Evers, which meant an automatic life sentence.

Still, Hilburn says he can relate to the current situation. "My heart goes out ot him because I know the stresses that he is having to endure at this time and it's a very difficult situation for a judge to be in."

***************
I
can't wait to find out what kind of man Marcus Gordon is.

T.N.B.
 
And in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an ending of a totally different kind, altogether. This man, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of manslaughter. It was 1964. Three civil rights workers were murdered, shot in the dead of night, their bodies buried with a bulldozer. Take a look at them.

Killen, a former KKK member, was convicted of planning and organizing these men's killings. It was exactly 41 years ago today they were murdered. Let's just take a look at these pictures: James Cheney, there you see him in the middle, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. All in their early 20s. Combine their ages, they still would not be nearly as old as 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen.

Yesterday on the witness stand, the former mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi was testifying as to the good character of Mr. Killen and he made a startling statement. He said, "the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful organizati
on and did a lot of good."

Now, we
don't take sides on 360. We like to look at all of the angles, but we do care about facts. The truth does matter. So, earlier today I spoke with Philadelphia's former mayor, Harlan Majure.

COOPER: Why do you believe the Ku Klux Klan, at any time in their history, was a peaceful organization and did a lot of good?

MAJURE: Because when I was a small child in the mid-'30s and during the Depression years, my daddy worked at a little country store and made two or three dollars a day. At night, when he would come in from being at that store, he would say, well, the Klan was busy of the weekend. And he was not a member of the Klan. None of our family have ever been a member of the Klan. But he said they went by to see whoever -- so-and-so -- because if there was anybody in the community or the neighbors that would not take care of their family, too sorry to work or would waste their money and not take care of the wife and the children, the Klan
would pay them a visit. If there was somebody in the neighb
orhood that was messing around with somebody's house or somebody else's wife, the Klan would pay him a visit. And they visited more white people and they whipped more white people than they did black people, and this was, like I said, in the '30s.

COOPER: Are you kidding? Do you know that the U.S. Senate just apologized for their role in not preventing the lynchings of several thousand African-Americans going back more than 100 years -- 4,700 lynchings that happened from 1982 and 1968?

MAJURE: No. I'm not aware of that.

COOPER: You were a twice-elected official. Don't you have responsibility to be aware of the history, not only of your town and your -- but the country we live in? Shouldn't -- if you're going to make comments about the Ku Klux Klan, shouldn't you read some history books about it?

MAJURE: Well, I didn't plan to be making any comments about it. I was summoned to be up there
. I didn't believe even that the people were killed. I thought it was a publicity stunt until late
r on, while they were looking for them, the FBI and whoever else were having a search party, then I realized that it had actually happened, but I didn't believe it before that.

COOPER: You thought at the time that James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, that it was a publicity stunt?

MAJURE: Exactly. You're right. Uh-huh, and it should not have happened. I -- we were never in favor of that type of operation. We wasn't in favor of what they did coming down here, but certainly not killing anybody. That's wrong.

COOPER: You're saying they should not have been killed but they shouldn't have come down there?

MAJURE: Well, I'm saying that the people that were responsible for their death was the people that organized them, wherever, whatever towns they were in. I think, one of them, two of them, were from New York City. They should have been properly t
rained and expected more or less what you're come into and to change your tradition one summer that had been going to for hundreds and
maybe thousands of years. It just doesn't happen.

COOPER: I'm sorry, sir. I really try to be respectful of all my guests and I respect you and your position, but you just said that these three men who were murdered in the dead of night and buried in an unmarked grave and just abandoned and, you know, bulldozed over -- you said that the people who responsible for their deaths are the people who sent them there to do voter registration, not the actual people who pulled the triggers?

MAJURE: I say they were responsible for them without schooling them, without proper training them, without giving them proper protection when they come down here because they should have known they were coming into a hostile environment. It would have happened in any city and any state. Where are you? Where am I talking to you?

COOPER: Ah, New York City.

MAJURE
: All right, if I recruited a group of young people -- and I have two granddaughters that would be at the right age for that right now -- to go in and say,
we're going to clean up the drugs, the prostitution, the money-laundering, the gang wars and stuff like that, in the city of New York and we just going to move in and take over, because that stuff is illegal and it was when I was up there in the military -- do you think we'd see the sunrise the next morning if we went in there forcibly changing that?

COOPER: Sir, it's just sad that in this day and age you're comparing people who came down to try to help African-Americans who were living in your community and been there for hundreds of years, people who had the right to vote and couldn't vote and weren't being allowed to vote and weren't being allowed to sit at lunch counters -- you're comparing to people who came down to help those people to someone, like, trying to root out drug dealers and killers and rapists?
<b
r>MAJURE: No, I'm comparing the situation. They were uninvited. They should've -- we were making progress down here. It was slow and it wasn't at the speed that the federal govern
ment wanted and it wasn't at the speed that whoever these were that organized this wanted to.

COOPER: Well, whoever these were -- you know, the NAACP -- you say as if these three people came down were aliens from outer space. I mean, yes, two of them were from New York, but you know, James Chaney was from Meridian, Mississippi, and that's where my grandmother's from. That's where -- my dad was born in Quitman, not too far from where you are right now, and I've got to tell you, you know, what's wrong with someone from Meridian, Mississippi, an African-American, saying I want to be able to vote?

MAJURE: Not anything wrong with it as far as I'm concerned. The timing was bad and when we were more or less invaded, but it's just like I said, if I did the same thing in New York City,
they wouldn't see the sunrise and you know that.

COOPER: When was the right timing to give African-Americans the vote?

MAJURE: I don't have the answer to that question. There's no way I could.

COOPER: You t
estified that Mr. Killen is a good guy, basically. You were testifying to his character. Do you still think he's a good guy now that the jury has said he's responsible for manslaughter? MAJURE: Oh, this should not have happened. And evidently, he was probably part of it because I didn't hear the testimonies, but there's no way that you can answer all these questions that you asked because this is history and it was history in the making. They should have known they were going to run into a hostile situation when they came in, but they should not have been killed. I've never thought that. :Cheers:
 
I don't understand...if he was already acquitted 40 years ago, how could he be convicted when just about every single witness who testified against him is now dead?

Where is the new evidence?

How do you cross-examine read out loud testimoney from someone who died years before?

If he's not guilty of murder...where is the evidence for manslaughter?
 
Originally posted by Gmanjunior@Jun 23 2005, 09:35 AM
I don't understand...if he was already acquitted 40 years ago, how could he be convicted when just about every single witness who testified against him is now dead?

Where is the new evidence?

How do you cross-examine read out loud testimoney from someone who died years before?

If he's not guilty of murder...where is the evidence for manslaughter?
Click to expand...
The way I see it.

This whole trial was a sham designed to convict Edgar Ray.

The trial in 1967 was a federal 'Snivel Rights Violation' trial. The jury hung and a mis
trial ensued for Edgar Ray. When there is a mistrial the defendant can be retried.

The recent trial was on a state murder statute, different jurisdictions, different charges, no double jeopardy.

Some believe that the state never brought murder charges against Edgar Ray because the
y felt that there would either be another hung jury or an acquittal.

The niggerloving Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, decided that he could get a movie made about him by trying this case. Why shouldn't he think that since every time some self hating white Attorney General tries some 30-40 year old crime against niggers case, Hollywood goes wild. He also felt that enough time had elapsed and that decades of propaganda that the nigger is only a white man in black skin, insured a conviction on at least some charge. Note that the manslaughter charge was added at the last minute right before the jury was asked to decide.

Edgar Ray wasn't allowed to face his accusers.

All the tes
timony against Edgar Ray was PAID testimony.

Nobody doubts that Sam Bowers gave the order, but Sam Bowers isn't going to be tried for this crime as he is already doing life in prison and nobody cares about him anymore.

Three niggers on the jury assured that there would not be an acquittal. The only thing Jim
Hood had to worry about was another hung jury.

On the first day the jury was hung 6-6, but it could have been six for manslaughter and six for murder.

Any juror who hung this jury would have their good name demonized in the national broadcast and print media. Such a person would become a target for niggers seeking revenge. A hung jury could have been the impetus for nigger riots across America. Jim Hood asked the jury to convict Edgar Ray to ease the conscience of the state of Mississippi. Had there been a hung jury, the broadcast media and print media would have gone on for another 40 years proclaiming that Mississippi is just a backwood hillbilly haven. All of this
played on the jury's mind. Jim Hood even accepted the help of a jury specialist to select jurors who would be prone to convict.

Edgar Ray's chances of living through the appeals process is slim to none. His death will stop the appeal, which allows Sons of Bitches like Jim Hood to find another old man to convict using the sam
e unconstitutional shenanigans.

The whole thing stinks and there is nothing we can do about it.

Killing these two jooboys and the nigger brought the weight of the New York broadcast media and the FBI down on Mississippi hard. This case was the impetus for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Klan and the whole of the United States of America would have been better off if these outside agitators had been horsewhipped and sent packing back to New York instead murdered. It's a bad strategy to give your enemies martyrs. A better strategy is to discredit your enemies by publishing damning facts about them. That is why New Na
tion News is so important because it gives us an opportunity to do just that.

T.N.B.
 
Killen Sentenced to 60 Years

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) -- One-time Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to the maximum 60 years in prison Thursday for masterminding the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon on sentenced Killen to 20-year terms on each of three counts of manslaughter. Gordon said the terms will run consecutively.

Killen, 80, was convicted Tuesday, 41 years after Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were killed. Killen sat in a wheelchair as the judge announced the sentence. The judge said he took no pleasure in the task and said the law makes no distinction on the defendant's age at the time of sentencing.

"I have taken that into consideration that there are three lives involved in this case
and the three lives should absolutely be respected," Go
rdon said.

Killen is the only person who has faced state murder charges in the case. He was tried on three murder counts, but at the request of prosecutors, Gordon allowed jurors to also consider the lesser charge of manslaughter. Defense attorney James McIntyre has said he will appeal, arguing that the jury should not have been allowed to consider manslaughter. Gordon will hear a motion for a new trial on Monday.

Chaney was a black Mississippian and Schwerner and Goodman were white New Yorkers. The three civil-rights volunteers were intercepted by Klansmen in their station wagon on June 21, 1964, and shot to death. After a massive FBI search, the bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam. The slayings helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the FBI's search for evidence was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

Killen, a sawmill operator and pa
rt-time Baptist minister, has been held in Neshoba County Jail since his convicti
on. With a murder charge, prosecutors had to prove intent to kill and a conviction would have carried life in prison. With a manslaughter charge, prosecutors had to prove only that a victim died while another crime was being committed.

Killen 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. Killen had been convicted in 1975 of threatening a woman over the telephone, a case that Gordon himself had prosecuted. Killen served five months in prison on the charge.

Gordon, who has a reputation among attorneys as a strict judge, also was able to consider a presentencing report on Killen's finances, and a health report that the judge requested from Killen's doctors. Killen uses a wheelchair because of a logging acci
dent that broke both of his legs in March, and he had an oxygen tube up his nose during the re
ading of the verdict on Tuesday.

*************
Niggers and niggerlovers everywhere rejoice.

T.N.B.
 
Ex-Klansman gets maximum prison term of 60 years

Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon gave Edgar Ray Killen the maximum sentence of 60 years in prison, but it could be several years before the reputed Klan leader goes there.

That's because Killen's lead counsel, Mitch Moran of Carthage, said he will ask the judge to allow the 80-year-old Union sawmill operator and part-time preacher to remain free on bond while appealing his three-count manslaughter conviction involving the June 21, 1964, killings of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. Appeals can take several years.

Prosecutors say they'll oppose the appeal bond request, expected to be heard at 9 a.m. Monday in Neshoba County Circuit Court.

Circuit Clerk P
atti Duncan Lee said Gordon sometimes grants appeal bonds,
and when he does "it's usually fairly high. Whether he will or he won't in this case, I have no way of knowing."

Philadelphia lawyer Fent Deweese, who practices before Gordon, said he doubts the judge will let Killen stay free on appeal bond "because of the heinous nature of the crime and the length of sentence. There is no logic to an appeal bond under these circumstances."

On Thursday morning, Killen appeared in the courtroom in a yellow jumpsuit with the words "Neshoba County Jail" on his back. Killen sat quietly in his wheelchair and heard Gordon tell him each life has value: "The three gentlemen who were killed ... each life had value, and each life is as valuable as the other life. The three lives should absolutely be respected."

He sentenced Killen to 20 years for each count of manslaughter, with each sentence running consecutively f
or a total of 60 years.

Killen showed no emotion to the sentencing and offered no response when asked by the judge.

Vict
ims' families praised the sentence given Thursday.

"This is a great day for Mississippi. Thank God that today we saw Preacher Killen in a prison uniform taken from the courthouse to the jailhouse," said Chaney's younger brother, Ben, who went to prison himself for 13 years in Florida from 1970-1983 in a case involving the deaths of three people.

Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender, praised Gordon for recognizing "every life has equal value. ... He recognized each of them was a mother's son."

Goodman's younger brother, David, said of Thursday's sentence: "I never wish anybody any ill will, so it doesn't make me feel good. What is important is our society continues to respect law and order. Anybody who murders someone should be punished. Justice is blind to hair, skin, re
ligion or age. It's that simple."

After the sentence, Killen's brother, Oscar Kenneth Killen, remarked, "Money will do anything."

Attorney General Jim Hood called the sentence "appropri
ate for the crime" and said there are no plans to pursue the seven living suspects in the case unless new evidence arises.

He said he hopes Killen realizes one day in prison that "you don't get to heaven unless you admit what you've done and ask for forgiveness."

Because Killen was sentenced under the law in 1964, he will be eligible for parole after serving a third of his sentence, or 20 years. The most he could have gotten had he been convicted of three counts of murder was three life sentences, which would have made Killen eligible for parole after 30 years.

Moran said he's also going to ask Gordon for a new trial, saying the judge prefers to order a new trial rather than to allow
a case to go up and be reversed on appeal.

Asked if Killen had any last words, Killen's other attorney, James McIntyre of Jackson, replied yes: "I'll see ya."

**************
Philadelphia lawyer Fent Deweese, who practices before Go
rdon, said he doubts the judge will let Killen stay free on appeal bond "because of the heinous nature of the crime and the length of sentence. There is no logic to an appeal bond under these circumstances."
Click to expand...

Edgar Ray Killen isn't a threat to the community and neither is he a flight risk. He deserves to be allowed to remain free on bond pending appeal.

T.N.B.
 
Most glad for tough sentence

Justice was done when reputed Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen received a 60-year prison sentence for the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964, some Mississippians say.

But others felt the maximum sentence was too much and came too late.

"I don't think it is fair,'' said Jackson resident Richard Scott, 43, an African-American carpenter.

"I don't think he should have been given that much time. If I was the judge, I'd give him nine years,'' Scott said hours after Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced Killen. "I'd give him three years on each count (of manslaughter).''<
/b>

Some residents questioned if it was right to sentence an 80-year-old Killen to such a lengthy sentence.

"The Lord didnt put us here to take lives,'' said Jackson resident Jose A. Paz, 63.

Killen "is not going to make it, but he shouldn't have killed,'' Paz said.

A native of Honduras who works in the property management business, Paz was living in New Orleans when Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were slain 41 years ago near Philadelphia.

"There is no way to repay for somebody's life,'' he said.

Drinking coffee at a Cups store near the University of Mississippi Medical Center, two longtime Jackson residents offered views on the Killen trial.

Computer consultant Jim McCraw, 57, a white man who was a student at St. Joseph High School when the killings occurred, praised Judge Gordon.

"If he was convicted he should be sentenced harshly," McCraw said. "You can't go by
how old the guy (Killen) is
 
Finding other killers focus

Prosecutors announced last week the only two triggermen in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers are dead.

But the work of world-renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and Mississippi state forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne has revealed other triggermen may have been involved in the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

"There are still bullets in the body of James Chaney," Baden said. "They could be matched to the weapons that did it."

Baden and Hayne studied autopsy reports, testimony, photographs, FBI reports, X-rays and other documents in the trio's killings. Prosecutors originally planned to call the pai
r to testify in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen, but when the defen
se stipulated to all the medical evidence, jurors
 
Killen Denied New Trial

Edgar Ray Killen is in a Rankin County prison after a judge denied his request for a new trial. Killen was convicted last week of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

Killen was moved today to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County. He'll undergo tests there for about a month. His attorneys hold out hope they can get him home as the appeals process runs its course.

Killen arrived at the Neshoba County Courthouse with a smile on his face. He was greeted inside by his wife Betty Jo and other family members. Circuit judge Marcus Gordon turned down pleas by Killen's lawyers for a new trial. Now, he'll go through a lengthy and cos
tly appeals process.

Defense attorney James McInty
re said, "Mr. Moran and I will write the appeal but there's been a lot of interest in bringing some suggestions to us about the merits of the appeal."

For that, the defense could turn to outside help for assistance. They'll ask Killen be given bond as the process plays out. Meanwhile, prosecutors can rest easy.

D-A Mark Duncan said, "It certainly was a major undertaking but I'm glad that it's done with and hopefully I can move on to tending to all all the cases that are still going on."

Killen was transported from the Neshoba County Jail to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County.

Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps told us, "He'll be photographed, fingerprinted, lots of forms he'll have to fill out."

He'll either stay there or be transported to Parchman State Penitentiary. Where he goes could depend on how he feels.

E
pps said, "Say that the medical staff feels that he need to be housed in a hospital. Well, Parchman has a 56 bed hospital."

[
b]Mcintyre says people have called him asking if they could help pay for Killen's legal expenses. He says he did not know if the interested parties held any sort of affiliation to Killen. "These people that have called me, they don't tell me if they're a member of the coalition or the KKK or anybody else."

McIntyre gave no timetable on when Killen's appeal will be ready. Legally, he says it's supposed to be done 30 days from Monday, but he says the judge can grant an extension. [/b]

***************
Edgar Ray has more friends that you can imagine.

T.N.B.
 
Killen seeking release from jail pending appeal

Defense lawyers say the law demands convicted Klan killer Edgar Ray Killen get out of jail on an appeal bond.

"Any person convicted of a felony other than treason, murder, rape, arson, burglary or robbery is entitled to bail pending appeal," Killen's attorney, Mitch Moran of Carthage, wrote in a motion filed Monday, asking for his client to be freed.

Attorney General Jim Hood said Tuesday that prosecutors will oppose the release of the 80-year-old Union sawmill operator, saying he deserves to stay behind bars for his involvement in the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Go
odman. On the 41st anniversary of those killings, a jury convicted Killen of mansla
ughter. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

The defense request is expected to be heard before the end of the month.

On Tuesday, corrections officials classified Killen as a medium-security prisoner, which means he can make collect calls and get two visits a month. For now he'll stay at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County.

He remains in protective custody, said Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps. "He hasn't been a problem. He's eating his meals, and he's participating in the yard call."

That means Killen is using his one hour each weekday to leave his cell "and get some fresh air," he said.

Defense attorney James McIntyre of Jackson said the defense plans to call witnesses and petitions are being circulated to show Killen is "not a threat to society, not a flight r
isk, not a menace to society."

"The only people he's a menace to are people north of the Mason-Dixon line," McIntyre told The
Associated Press.

The state has the burden of proof to show Killen is a menace, he said. "I just don't think people like him for what he was accused of doing."

Wrote Moran: "Edgar Ray Killen has close ties with family, friends and community. Edgar Ray Killen has never shown any propensity toward violence with anyone, and he is not a flight risk."

Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender of Seattle, disputed Moran's claims, noting Killen has a prior criminal record: He was convicted in 1975 of threatening a woman over the telephone. She also said Killen made a threat to a jailer after his June 21 conviction.

After Killen arrived at the Neshoba County Jail, jailers asked him st
andard questions about suicide. Asked by a black jailer if he had any thoughts about killing himself, a jailer said Killen replied, "'I ain't thinking about killing myself. I'll kill you before I kill myself.'"

Because Killen was convicted of manslaugh
ter, he should be entitled to bond, Moran said. "Manslaughter is an accidental death because you did something really stupid. All the other crimes require premeditation."

Bender, a lawyer, said the Klan-ordered killings were hardly a typical manslaughter.

"This isn't like somebody does something in the heat of passion that goes too far," she said. "The evidence was quite clear that he (Killen) said (of the trio), 'We're going to tear up their a----.' I would say that's evidence of a propensity for violence."

Fent Deweese
 
Killen's Attorneys File Appeal Bond

On July 29th, a Neshoba County judge will hear Edgar Ray Killen's bid to get out of prison while he appeals his conviction. Killen's attorney filed the motion this week, asking for an appeal bond. Killen was convicted last month in the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

**********
Two weeks away.

T.N.B.
 
Originally posted by Tyrone N. Butts@Jul 16 2005, 06:59 AM
Killen's Attorneys File Appeal Bond

On July 29th, a Neshoba County judge will hear Edgar Ray Killen's bid to get out of prison while he appeals his conviction. Killen's attorney filed the motion this week, asking for an appeal bond. Killen was convicted last month in the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

**********
Two weeks away.

T.N.B.
Click to expand...
So far there is no
news out of Mississippi as to what happened in court.
I'm still watching.

T.N.B.
 
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