PHILADELPHIA – Edgar Ray Killen, the reputed Klansman charged with murdering three civil rights workers in Mississippi more than four decades ago, was freed on $250,000 bond Wednesday and was told his trial will be March 28.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon announced the trial date and set the bond during a Wednesday hearing at the Neshoba County Courthouse. Later, the 79-year-old part-time preacher traded in his orange jail jumpsuit for a blue plaid shirt, pants and a brown western-style hat and left the jail with members of his family.
Killen is the only person to face state charges in the three murders that focused national attention on the violence associated with the civil rights movement in the South.
James Chaney, a 21-year-old black Mississippian, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, were ambushed, beaten and shot. The Klan’s brutal suppression of black voting rights that culminated in the 1964 killings was dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”
Nineteen men, including Killen, were indicted on federal charges in the case. Killen’s case ended in a hung jury, but seven others were convicted in 1967 of violating the victims’ civil rights. None served more than six years.
Some were not pleased with the setting of the bond.
“I don’t like it. I just don’t think it’s high enough,” said Jewel McDonald of Philadelphia, whose mother and brother were beaten by Klansmen the night of the murders.
McDonald, who attended Wednesday’s hearing, said she wanted Killen to remain behind bars.
District Attorney Mark Duncan said he did not oppose bond because he would have had to demonstrate an overwhelming presumption of guilt and that Killen was a flight risk or a danger to the community.
“We weren’t in a real position to object to it,” Duncan said. “It would require me to put on evidence and show my hand.”
The court ordered that while on bond Killen will have to contact the sheriff each month to report on his whereabouts.
Carrol Ann Edwards, Killen’s stepdaughter, joined her mother and brother at the jail to take Killen to their home in the town of Union.
“They don’t come any finer,” Edwards said of Killen. “He’s a good man. He’s been good to me.”
She said the family hoped “that the public would not judge him from the media.”
Jerry Ray Edwards said he and his sister had only known their stepfather since his mother met Killen eight years ago. He said that while Killen had health problems, including skin cancer, “He’s a tough old guy.”
“We kind of new it was going to happen sooner or later,” he said of Killen’s arrest.
State Attorney General Jim Hood has said prosecutors will not discuss evidence in the state case or what role authorities believe Killen had.
According to FBI files and court transcripts from the federal case, Killen was alleged to have participated in the crime and to have handled most, if not all, of the planning.
Mitch Moran, a Carthage attorney hired by Killen, said after he hearing that he agreed to take on the case because of “some very intriguing issues.”
“It was an awful crime and if the evidence was there 40 years to indict Mr. Killen … my question is why was he not indicted,” Moran said. “Is this in the interest of justice or is this political?”
Moran said it took decades to get Killen to trial and “they’re going to try him in less than 90 days … It’s swift Mississippi justice, I guess.”
Moran also questioned why a county grand jury, which met last Thursday, had indicted only Killen.
“As far as whether he was singled out I have no idea … haven’t seen the evidence,” he said. “It certainly brings questions to one’s mind when you look at the time frame … questions of whether it’s newly discovered evidence or are we just coming forward with the old evidence and why the 40 years delay.”
Joseph Lovece, chairman of the advisory committee for the Congress of Racial Equity, said CORE would set up an office in Jackson or Philadelphia and would visible during the trial.
Lovece said Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were CORE members at the time of their deaths.