Posted on 07/06/2005 10:04:25 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Last month it was my duty to serve on the jury in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen. It was my unpleasant charge to decide the fate of a fellow human. In the course of my 55 years I have survived a war, earned a bachelor's degree, suffered and exalted, traveled the world and worked my way from high school dropout to senior engineer. Still, nothing prepared me for this, nor did any of the other 11 jurors seem any less humbled by this task. No one took this lightly.
My fellow jurors seemed to be a good representation of the people of Philadelphia, Miss., and Neshoba County. None of us wore Italian leather. Nobody was dressed in rags. We ranged in age from our 30s to our 60s. All of us were literate and soft-spoken and working people. And we were all familiar with the story of the three civil rights workers who had disappeared from our town in 1964 and whose bodies had been found only after a 44-day search.
It is unfortunate that I feel I must also point out that none of us were dirty, or barefoot, or smelly. None of us sat glassy-eyed, eating peanuts or chewing tobacco. None of us laughed at the brutal murders of three people. Nobody made any jokes. And no one argued that participation in the Ku Klux Klan was understandable given "the times," or that those "Yankee boys" brought all this on themselves, or that after "all this time" we should let this pass by the way. In short, nobody I saw, either in demeanor or in action, fit the stereotype of Mississippi that seems so prevalent, even today.
So why did we find Killen guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, instead of murder? The answer is easy...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Mississippi ping
Thanks for the post and ping!
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