Free Republic

One of the nation's largest neo-Nazi groups appears to have an unlikely new leader: a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it. Court documents filed Thursday suggest James Hart Stern wants to use his new position as director and president of the National Socialist Movement to undermine the Detroit-based group's defense against a lawsuit. The NSM is one of several extremist groups sued over bloodshed at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Stern's filing asks a federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the group before one of the lawsuits goes to trial. Stern replaced...

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) -- A judge has revoked the appeal bond of Edgar Ray Killen convicted in the 1964 slayings of three civil right workers. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon ordered Killen returned to prison. Gordon issued the order after a hearing Friday in Neshoba County Circuit Court. Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to three consecutive 20-year terms. Killen had posted a $600,000 appeal bond in August. District Attorney Mark Duncan asked the judge to revoke the bond, saying the 80-year-old sawmill operator and preacher "apparently misrepresented his physical condition to the court." Defense lawyers...

A Mississippi judge on Friday granted bail to 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in a case that inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon granted Killen's release on bond of $600,000 pending appeal of his manslaughter conviction, Neshoba County court clerk Patti Duncan Lee said. Killen had not posted bond as of early afternoon. "The judge granted bond of $600,000, $200,000 for each count," Lee said. Killen was convicted by a multiracial jury on June 21 on...

Associated Press PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - A circuit judge on Friday granted Edgar Ray Killen $600,000 bond so the one-time Klan leader can be released from prison while he appeals manslaughter convictions in the killings of three civil rights workers. Killen's family was trying to gather enough money or property to post the bond and get the 80-year-old part-time preacher released. Killen was convicted June 21 for masterminding the 1964 slayings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. His conviction came 41 years to the day after the trio was mobbed and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen....

When musical digital watches first came out in the late 1970s, my old man got one. It played Dixie. He'd call me at college up at LSU and play his watch into the phone. "Hey chief," I'd say. "One day the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers are going to catch up with you." I could say that to him, because Efraim O'Sullivan was chief of police in the Mississippi coast town of Ocean Springs, just across the bay from Biloxi. And he was a Jew. It was one thing to be a Jewish cop in Mississippi, but my...

My local left-wing newspaper this mornning has a leader on the front page and the story at the top of 9A about Edgar Ray Killen, who allegedly murderered three "civil rights workers" in 1964.The paper uses "Ex-Klansman" in headlines and, in the text, calls Killen a "former KKK leader." You knew this guy was going away long before the trial started, no matter what the facts were, so they could close the case.But, the interesting point to me is the sensitivity of the ultra-left-wing media to the fact that Killen is no longer a member of the Klan. I think...

One-time Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen has been jailed for 60 years for masterminding the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Killen, 80, was convicted of three counts of manslaughter on Tuesday - 41 years after the men were killed. Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced the preacher to 20 years for each killing. The murders helped spur passage of the 1964 US Civil Rights Act and the search for evidence was dramatised in the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning. Killen, a Baptist, will appeal against the convictions on Monday, arguing the jury should not have been able...

Former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen will get at least a three-year prison term -- and could draw up to 60 years -- for the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers, when he faces a sentencing hearing set for Thursday, a Mississippi legal official said. Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon scheduled a sentencing hearing on Thursday in Neshoba County, Mississippi, for the 80-year-old former Baptist preacher convicted of the notorious crime that galvanized the civil rights movement and inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning." A multiracial jury convicted Killen on Tuesday on three counts of felony manslaughter, finding that...

The name Neshoba County, Mississippi, became synonymous with publicly sanctioned murder when a sheriff's deputy conspired with the Klan to kill three young civil rights workers during the summer of 1964. The slaughter of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner became known not just for its brutality but also for the conspiracies of silence and inaction that developed inside Mississippi itself and protected the murderers by pushing the case out of public view. This week's conviction of Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Klansman, brings the case to a conclusion of sorts and affords some solace to the...

Twelve jurors have found 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. The former Ku Klux Klan leader had been charged with first-degree murder for his part in organizing the deaths of James Chaney, a black from Mississippi, and his white colleagues, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York. Edgar Ray Killen arrives for court earlier this month. (CP file photo) A murder verdict could have meant life in prison for Killen. Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. The prosecutor's office had indicated that it would...

Robert Byrd's former compatriot was found guilty of manslaughter....

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...

The defense rested Monday in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klanman in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers after a former mayor testified that the white-supremacist group was a "peaceful organization." Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Edgar Ray Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion. Majur said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past. "As far as I know it's a peaceful organization,"...

FBI INFORMANTS LINK KLAN MEMBER TO 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS MURDERS By Steve Pope (Philadelphia, Mississippi, June 17, 2005) The trial of an 80-year-old former member of the Klu Klux Klan continued today after being abruptly recessed yesterday when the Defendant, Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen was rushed to a hospital with high blood pressure. Killen returned to court this morning wearing a blue sport coat and white shirt, looking alert. Killen, is charged with three counts of murder, having allegedly masterminded the slaying of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman on June 21, 1964 in Philadelphia,...

Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen told fellow Klansmen during a 1964 meeting to leave civil rights worker Michael Schwerner alone because another unit was assigned to eliminate him, a jury was told Friday. The testimony, read by a member of the prosecution team, was given by Carlton Wallace Miller, a Klansman, Meridian police officer and FBI informant during a 1967 federal conspiracy trial of Killen and several other white men that led to seven convictions. The all-white jury couldn't agree on a verdict against Killen. In that testimony, Miller said the local White Knights of the Ku Klux...

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...

KLAN MURDER TRIAL HALTED AFTER FIRST DAY By Steve Pope Philadelphia, Mississippi (June 16, 2005)The trial of the accused mastermind behind the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi was suddenly halted today when the defendant was rushed to the hospital. After listening to the testimony of Rita Bender, wife of Michael "Mickey" Schwerner one of the three victims, the defendant Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen was taken to a Neshoba County hospital after suffering from high blood pressure. Killen, 80 who was out of the courtroom during Bender's testimony, but who could hear her testify from an adjacent...

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) -- Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen watched from a wheelchair Monday as jury selection began in his murder trial in one of most shocking crimes of the civil rights era -- the 1964 slayings of three voter-registration volunteers. The case against the 80-year-old Killen represents Mississippi's latest attempt to deal with unfinished business from the state's bloodstained, racist past. In a measure of how much things have changed over the past 41 years, about a quarter of the jury pool was black, roughly reflecting the racial makeup of the county's 28,700 residents. In 1964, very...

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - One-time Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was removed from court on a stretcher Thursday on the opening day of testimony in his trial for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. Killen, 80, was taken to a hospital to be treated for high blood pressure, said District Attorney Mark Duncan, who said he had no other details. Killen was sitting up on the stretcher as he was loaded into the ambulance. Killen came to court in a wheelchair and has been attended by a nurse because of his health. He broke both his legs in a wood...

Edgar Ray Killen's trial has been backed up a few weeks and could be the setting for protest. Judge Marcus Gordon reset Killen's trial date to April 18th. And that gives law enforcement officials time to plan for potential tense moments. Edgar Ray Killen and his family were quiet as they entered and exited the courtroom Thursday, as was his attorney Mitch Moran, who says Judge Marcus Gordon has asked all parties to tone down talks with the media. Moran says, "I'll have to file a pre-trial statement. It'll be in the making soon." Both sides believe they'll be ready...