Trying Times
Scenes from the rural Mississippi town where a trial is reopening a dark chapter in civil rights history
Fair trial? One of Killen's defense attorneys, James McIntyre, who represented former Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey when he was acquitted back in the 1967 trial, says his client can't possibly receive a fair trial after all this time: "His peers have all died. It's going to be extremely difficult to get a fair jury. They've had time to think about this for 40 years." Killen, if convicted, could face life in prison.
Some in Philadelphia say the trial can't fully erase the stain of the murders. The proceedings shouldn't be viewed as a way to "simply clear our name," says Jim Prince, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat newspaper. Others call the civil rights workers outside agitators who didn't belong in the South. "I certainly don't condone murder," Hugh Thomasson, a prominent local businessman, wrote in a letter to the Democrat . "But when you have activists deliberately antagonizing extremists, you are going to have trouble."
After the long passage of years, there are still others in Neshoba County and across the South who stand behind Killen. As potential jurors were escorted by police through the side door of the courthouse, a Klan leader from Georgia, Joseph Harper, quietly greeted Killen out front. Meanwhile, an old sedan cruised slowly up and down Main Street. On the back window, painted in large white letters, were the words "Free Edgar Ray."
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