Posted on 06/20/2005 4:47:00 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The jury was split after a first round of deliberation on Monday in the murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen, accused of being a Ku Klux Klan leader who recruited a mob to kill three civil rights workers in a 1964 attack that inspired the film "Mississippi Burning."
Judge Marcus Gordon told reporters that after more than two hours deliberating on the evidence of a case that recalled violent racial conflicts in America just 40 years ago the jury was split 6-6. A unanimous verdict is required for conviction.
The killings outraged much of the nation, energized the civil rights movement and were dramatized in the 1988 movie.
Prosecutor Mark Duncan urged jurors to "remove the stain" on Mississippi's Neshoba County, where the killings occurred, and deliver justice by convicting Killen.
"Tell the rest of the world that we're not going to let Edgar Ray Killen get away with murder any more, not one day longer," Duncan urged jurors.
Killen, an 80-year-old sawmill operator and Baptist minister, did not testify. He faces life in prison if convicted of murdering Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were helping Mississippi blacks register to vote during the 1964 Freedom Summer civil rights campaign.
The three men, all in their 20s, were abducted and shot by a group of Klansmen on a remote road outside the Eastern Mississippi town on June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found weeks later in an earthen dam.
Prosecutor Jim Hood said Killen was a high-ranking Klan officer who recruited members of the white supremacist group to abduct and shoot the three civil rights workers, made sure they wore rubber gloves and arranged to have a bulldozer ready to dig their graves and "dumped them in there like a dog."
"He directed this murder throughout its initial conception all the way through the final acts," Hood said.
'BIG MOUTH' BUT NOT GUILTY
Defense attorney James McIntyre said Killen "may have been associated with the Klan" but had nothing to do with the killings and was not present at the scene of the shootings.
"He had a big mouth and he was talking all the time. That's all that he's guilty of," McIntyre said.
Killen was among a group of men tried in 1967 for violating the civil rights of Schwerner and Goodman, white New Yorkers, and Chaney, a black Mississippian. Seven co-defendants were convicted by the all-white jury and served up to six years in prison but Killen's trial ended in a hung jury after a lone holdout said she could never convict a preacher.
A policeman and former Klansman testified that Killen had told him a day after the shootings that "We got rid of them civil rights workers" and described how and where the killings took place.
Another prosecution witness testified that as a 10-year-old boy in 1967, he had overheard his grandfather ask Killen if he had anything to do with the murders and heard Killen reply, "Yes, and he was proud of it."
Killen stayed in the Philadelphia, Mississippi, area after the 1967 trial, logging and preaching in local churches. He was arrested early this year and charged with the murders after Mississippi investigators reopened the case.
The defense attorney said Killen was being prosecuted for political reasons and in order to put on a show for the news media and out-of-towners who pushed to reopen the case.
State prosecutors did not pursue murder charges against any of the original suspects in the 1960s, perhaps swayed by the realization that no jury in Mississippi had at that time ever convicted whites for killing blacks or civil rights workers.
How in the heck does the judge know what's going on in the jury room, and why would he be blabbing about it to the press?
I think this was the case you were following.
"How in the heck does the judge know what's going on in the jury room, and why would he be blabbing about it to the press?"
Yeah, that's my question. Is someone trying to sabotage this trial?
But I've never heard a preliminary jury vote being released on day one, and by the judge. My guess is that judge shouldn't be a judge.
Could it be the law there? Seems bizarre to me.
So why is the judge able to know what's going in there, and why is he telling it to the whole country?
I don't have a clue. This is wrong on so many different levels.
Yes, this is the case I am following closely. WKB maintains our MS thread.
DG -- the judge knows the 6-6 count because the jury sent word they're deadlocked. He has ordered them to resume deliberations in the morning.
I just can't imagine a jury deciding it was deadlocked on the first day of deliberation. They must all be of the mindset that everything gets wrapped up in an hour, including commercials.
Apparently, the judge asjed for the vote, because the jury communicated they were deadlocked. 6-6 is an even split. I cannot see either side convincing all six of the opposing side to change their minds. Call this one a hung jury.
Maybe it's a hung jury, but they're idiots if they decide they're hopelessly deadlocked after barely sitting down.
Because the jury is sending out notes telling him what the vote is. They probably want him to declare a hung jury and send them home.
This isn't a CA trial....lol. It commenced last Monday and will be concluded tomorrow: hung jury.
A most excellent question. I've NEVER heard of this before!
Your comments on this thread bring to mind the old rural statement, slightly modified. "You ain't from around there, are you?"
They don't do business in rural courtrooms the way they do it on CourtTV from California. Trials don't take nearly as long as they do in the big city, and results usually come more quickly. Folks have better things to do with their time in the real world.
That's not even long enough to introduce each other, raid the donut supply, and decide on the foreman.
It's certainly not long enough to know that there's not the least chance of persuading others to reconsider.
It often takes two hours for some jurors to ever utter a peep.
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