Posted on 06/16/2005 11:40:18 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
A Mississippi judge ruled on Thursday that 1967 testimony could be used in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, a suspected Ku Klux Klansman accused of the notorious slayings of three civil rights workers 41 years ago.
Killen, 80, who broke both legs in a logging accident and uses a wheelchair, fell ill after the ruling and was taken to a local hospital, said Neshoba County Sheriff Larry Myers.
After Killen was taken away in an ambulance, Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon temporarily adjourned the court in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Gordon's ruling, coming on the fourth day of the trial, was a victory for prosecutors, who have built their case against Killen largely on testimony from now-deceased witnesses from the ordained preacher's 1967 federal conspiracy trial.
A number of those witnesses testified that Killen organized carloads of Klansmen who abducted and shot Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney on a remote road outside this town on June 21, 1964.
In the prosecution's opening argument on Wednesday, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood told jurors they would hear compelling evidence "from the grave" during the trial, which is expected to last about three weeks.
Killen, who says he is innocent, was among a group of men tried in 1967 for violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. The three young men, two whites and one black, were killed during the "Freedom Summer" campaign to register Southern blacks to vote.
Their murders energized the civil rights movement and were dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."
Seven of Killen's co-defendants were convicted and given prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years but his trial ended in a hung jury after a lone holdout said she could never convict a preacher.
Killen continued to live in the Philadelphia area after the 1967 trial, spending his time logging and preaching in local churches. Early this year, he was once again arrested and charged with the murders after Mississippi investigators reopened the case.
Killen is the first to be tried by the state for the murders.
State prosecutors did not go after 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.
In his opening argument on Wednesday, defense attorney Mitch Moran portrayed Killen as an innocent man and urged the jury not to be moved by evidence of his client's involvement with white supremacists.
"The Klan's not on trial here," Moran told the jurors, three of whom are black.
Let him endure his trial from a gurney if need be.
Always wondered what happened to Marcus Dupree??
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