Religions > Atheism > codebreaker Christian Morality: Christian Preacher Wants Leniency for Murdering Civil Rights Worker
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Yang, AthD h.c, Kicking AWOLs Cocaine Snorting Ass" |
| Date: |
12 Jul 2006 11:27:56 PM |
| Object: |
codebreaker Christian Morality: Christian Preacher Wants Leniency for Murdering Civil Rights Worker |
Yep, more of that vaunted Christian morality
http://www.neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=297&ArticleID=12823&TM=68243.43
Killen could go free Friday if judge approves appeal bond
BY DEBBIE BURT MYERS
Managing Editor
Attorneys for Edgar Ray Killen will ask the court Friday to free the
former Ku Klux Klan leader who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for
his role in the 1964 civil rights murders here, saying he is entitled
to bond while his case is on appeal.
Defense attorneys claim Killen’s health has deteriorated since his
incarceration in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in
Rankin County, due in part, to injuries he sustained in a March 2005
logging accident.
The 81-year-old Killen, who was convicted last summer on three counts
of manslaughter, has been treated in the hospital at the state
penitentiary at Parchman during his imprisonment.
He was earlier hospitalized in the University of Mississippi Medical
Center in Jackson.
Killen’s attorneys have appealed the case to the state Supreme Court,
saying the judge erred in allowing a jury to consider the manslaughter
charges.
Killen’s attorneys, Percy Stanfield Jr. and Glen W. Hall, claim the
court made several mistakes in allowing jurors in the Neshoba County
trial to consider manslaughter charges in the slayings.
Attorney General Jim Hood has said he is confident the conviction will
stand.
“We anticipate appeals. The law has been pretty clear on our ability
to bring these cases up,” Hood said last month. “I don’t recall any
errors that occurred in the trial that are of grave significance.”
Hood said the lesser charges of manslaughter were “key to that
conviction.”
Killen, a former preacher and sawmill operator who spent much of his
weeklong 2005 trial in a wheelchair and attached to an oxygen tank,
was initially released on a $600,000 bond. Friends and relatives used
property to secure the bond.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon revoked that bond on Sept. 10, saying
Killen, had misrepresented medical problems to the court.
Killen broke both legs in a logging accident shortly before his trial
and asked to be released from prison while appealing his case because
he was in constant pain and confined to the wheelchair.
After testimony from witnesses who said they saw Killen driving around
town, Gordon sent Killen back to the Central Mississippi Correctional
Facility.
Gordon said he found it difficult to understand how Killen could have
limited use of his legs and right arm one week, and be able to drive
two weeks later.
Prosecutors initially sought murder convictions in the case, but
during the trial they convinced the presiding judge to let the jurors
consider the crime of felony manslaughter.
The arguments filed by Killen’s attorneys claim that he was convicted
of manslaughter based on the underlying circumstance of kidnapping, an
element that had long exceeded its statute of limitations. The statute
of limitations for kidnapping in 1964 was two years.
Killen’s “constitutional rights were trampled on beyond recognition
and he was convicted of a crime for which he not only was never
charged in the indictment, but for which there is no evidence to
support,” the attorneys argued in the legal briefs.
The pleadings also claim that “the state laid in wait for their
tactical advantage.”
Killen was tried along with several other men in a 1967 federal trial
based on violations of the victims’ civil rights, but the jury could
not agree on the charges against Killen.
Last year was the first time the state had brought charges in the
case.
Killen’s conviction in Neshoba County came exactly 41 years from the
day that the three civil rights workers disappeared while
investigating the burning of a black church during Freedom Summer in
1964.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2544 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
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Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
-----
newsgroups Yang promises not to revenge post
in response to Sound-of-Trumpet's *****:
rec.art.scifi.written
sci.archaeology
soc.history.what-if
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