Schwerner's widow, Rita Bender, said, "I would hope that this case is just the beginning and not the end. She acknowledged the fact that the case likely became a high-profile one because Schwerner and Goodman were white New Yorkers who came to the South the summer of with hundreds of other volunteers to register black voters.
Chaney was a black man from Mississippi. Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan said the verdict means his county will no longer "be known by a Hollywood movie anymore," referring to the film "Mississippi Burning" based on the killings.
In his closing argument Monday, Duncan implored the 12 jurors to "hold the defendant responsible for what he did.
And the cause of it, the main instigator of it was Edgar Ray Killen and no one else," the district attorney said. He is the man who set the plan in motion. He is the man who recruited the people to carry out the plan.
He is the man who directed those men into what to do. The balding, bespectacled Killen -- a former part-time Baptist preacher -- appeared to be sleeping during much of the closing remarks. Hood, who led the case, said he wished "some of my predecessors would have done their duty" by bringing charges against Killen.
Noting that it was "not good politics to bring this case up," he said, politics and time should not get in the way of justice. Hood said testimony showed Killen possessed "venom" at the time of the killings and still does. It is seething behind those glasses," he said. Defense attorney Mitch Moran said "nothing in the record shows Edgar was there" during the ambush and killings. We do not need to relive them, and we do need to go forward," Moran said. On June 21, , Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were on their way to investigate the burning of a black church when they were briefly taken into custody for speeding.
According to testimony, the Klan had burned the church to lure the three men back to Neshoba County. After they were released from the county jail in Philadelphia, a KKK mob tailed their car, forced if off the road, and shot them to death. Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam -- in a trench dug in anticipation of the killings, according to testimony. In a federal trial, an all-white jury deadlocked in favor of convicting Killen.
The lone holdout said she could not vote to convict a preacher. Murderpedia Juan Ignacio Blanco. Biography Killen was a sawmill operator and part-time Baptist minister and also a kleagle, or klavern recruiter and organizer, for the Neshoba and Lauderdale County chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Re-emergence of the case In , Killen declared that he would attend a petition-drive in his behalf, scheduled by the Nationalist Movement at the Mississippi Annual State Fair in Jackson, Mississippi.
Former Klansman found guilty of manslaughter Conviction coincides with 41st anniversary of civil rights killings CNN. Killen, 80, displayed no emotion as the verdicts were read. Prosecutor: 'Venom' still exists In his closing argument Monday, Duncan implored the 12 jurors to "hold the defendant responsible for what he did.
Seven other men were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the victims, namely their right to live. None served more than six years in prison.
At the time, no federal murder statutes existed, and the state never brought charges. Juan Ignacio Blanco. MALE murderers. Classification: Murderer. Killen was the only person ever to face state murder charges in the case. In a interview with The Associated Press inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Killen wouldn't say much about the killings. He said he remained a segregationist who did not believe in racial equality, but contended he harbored no ill will toward blacks.
Killen said he never had talked about the events that landed him behind bars, and never would. Long a suspect in the slayings, Killen had made a livelihood from farming, operating his sawmill and preaching to a small congregation at Smyrna Baptist Church in Union, south of Philadelphia, Mississippi.
According to FBI files and court transcripts from a federal conspiracy trial, Killen did most of the planning in the ambush killings of the civil rights workers. According to testimony in the murder trial, Killen served as a kleagle, or organizer, of the Klan in Neshoba County and helped set up a klavern, or local Klan group, in a nearby county.
Nineteen men, including Killen, were indicted on federal charges in the case. Seven were convicted of violating the victims' civil rights. None served more than six years. Killen's federal case ended with a hung jury after one juror said she couldn't convict a preacher.
During his state trial in , witnesses testified that on June 21, , Killen went to Meridian to round up carloads of Klansmen to ambush Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, telling some of the Klan members to bring plastic or rubber gloves. Killen was one of nineteen men arrested on December 4, At his trial in , Killen created a stir by passing to his defense attorney a question for a prosecution witness, Reverand Charles Johnson. His attorney then asked the question in cross-examination.
Is it true, Killen asked, that Johnson and Michael Schwerner had tried to "get young Negro males to sign statements that they would rape one white woman a week during the hot summer of here in Mississippi? The jury was unable to reach a verdict on Killen's guilt. In June , Killen was retried on state charges. Judge Marcus Gordon Killen to serve three year terms, one for each conviction of manslaughter in connection with the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in
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