| Good. He can die in prison. |
PHILADELPHIA, Miss., June 21 - In what is likely to be the final chapter in a story that has troubled a generation, a jury pronounced Edgar Ray Killen guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday in the deaths of three young and idealistic civil rights workers who disappeared on a summer night here exactly 41 years ago.
Mr. Killen, 80, sat in a wheelchair, the thin, greenish tubes of an oxygen tank under his nose, his expression impassive as the verdict was read aloud. Throughout the courtroom, people wept - the Killen family on the right, the victims' relatives on the left, as well as townspeople deeply invested in seeing the case brought to trial in hopes that Neshoba County could overcome its past.
Roscoe Jones, a tall, elderly black man with tear-rimmed eyes who had worked alongside the three men who died, pushed his way through the crowd to the side of Rita Bender, a diminutive white woman who had been married to one of them. "Excuse me," Mr. Jones said, politely urgent. "Excuse me." When he reached Ms. Bender, they embraced.
The disappearance of the three men, Andrew Goodman, 20, Michael Schwerner, 24, and James Earl Chaney, 21, on June 21, 1964, drew the national news media and hundreds of searchers to Neshoba County, while Mississippi officials said publicly that the disappearance was a hoax intended to draw attention. When the three bodies - two white, one black - were found under 15 feet of earth on a nearby farm, the nation's horror helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
Jurors said the evidence fell short of what they needed to convict Mr. Killen, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, of murder. "I should say I heard a number of very emotional statements from some of the white jurors," said Warren Paprocki, 54, a white juror. "They had tears in their eyes, saying that if they could just have better evidence in the case that they would have convicted him of murder in a minute. Our consensus was the state did not produce a strong enough case."
| Rather hard after 40 years. The victims are still dead, though. |
The defense plans to appeal. "At least he wasn't found guilty of a willful and wanton act," said James McIntyre, one of Mr. Killen's lawyers. "Manslaughter is a negligent act."
Although the federal government tried 18 men, including Mr. Killen, on a conspiracy charge in 1967, Mr. Killen - a preacher and sawmill operator - was the first to be charged by the state. The 1967 jury deadlocked over Mr. Killen, and he has maintained his innocence. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each count. With witnesses dead and memories fading, he could be the only one of the mob of Klansmen responsible for the killings to be tried.
"Finally, finally, finally," said Jim Prince, the editor of the local weekly newspaper, The Neshoba Democrat. "This certainly sends a message, I think, to the criminals and to the thugs that justice reigns in Neshoba County, unlike 41 years ago." |