Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were beaten and shot to death, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of manslaughter Tuesday in a trial that marked Mississippi's latest attempt to atone for its bloodstained, racist past.
The jury of nine whites and three blacks took less than six hours to clear Edgar Ray Killen of murder but convict him of the lesser charges in the 1964 killings that galvanized the struggle for equality and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Killen, a bald figure with owlish bifocals, sat impassively in his wheelchair, an oxygen tube up his nose, as he listened to the verdict.
PHOTO: AP
"Forty-one years after the tragic murders ... justice finally arrives in Philadelphia, Mississippi," said Representative Bennie Thompson, Mississippi's only black congressman. "Yet, the state of Mississippi must see to it that the wrongs of yesterday do not become the albatrosses of today."
The murder charge carried up to life in prison. But Killen could still spend the rest of his life behind bars; each of the three manslaughter charges is punishable by up to 20 years. Judge Marcus Gordon scheduled sentencing for today.
Civil rights volunteers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- two white New Yorkers -- and James Chaney, a black Mississippian, were intercepted by Klansmen in their station wagon on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found 44 days later buried in an earthen dam, in a case that was dramatized in the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.
Prosecutors said Killen -- a part-time preacher and sawmill operator -- organized the carloads of Klansmen who hunted down and killed the three young men.
On Tuesday, cheers could be heard outside the two-story, red brick courthouse in this small town after Killen was convicted. Passers-by patted Chaney's brother, Ben, on the back, and a woman slowed her vehicle and yelled, "Hey, Mr. Chaney, all right!"
Ben Chaney thanked prosecutors and "the white people who walked up to me and said things are changing. I think there's hope."
Schwerner's widow, Rita Schwerner Bender, hugged District Attorney Mark Duncan and called it "a day of great importance to all of us." But she said others also should be held responsible for the slayings.
"Preacher Killen didn't act in a vacuum," she said. "The state of Mississippi was complicit in these crimes and all the crimes that occurred, and that has to be opened up."
Killen's lawyers conceded he was in the KKK 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 he was at a wake at a funeral home when the victims were killed.
Defense attorney James McIntyre said he will appeal on the grounds that the jury should not have been allowed to consider the manslaughter charges.
With a murder charge, prosecutors had to prove intent to kill. With a manslaughter charge, they had to prove only that a victim died while another crime was being committed.
"It's not the perfect ending in this case. I believe we proved murder and I believe he was guilty of murder," the district attorney said. But he added: "The bottom line is they have held Edgar Ray Killen accountable for his actions."
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of