Mississippi Burning Trial(英)

dies were being buried, Price had returned to his duties in Philadelphia. Around 12:30 A. M., Price met with Sheriff Rainey. Given their Klan membership and the close relationship between the two, it is almost unimaginable that at that time Price did not relate, in full detail, the events following the release from jail of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney.

　　At the CORE office in Meridian, meanwhile, staffers were growing increasingly concerned about the long overdue civil rights workers. Calls inquiring about their whereabouts turned up no helpful information. At 12:30 A.M., a call was placed to John Doar, the Justice Department's point man in Mississippi. Less than a week earlier Doar had been in Oxford, Ohio warning Summer Project volunteers that there was "no federal police force" that could protect them from expected trouble in Mississippi. Doar feared the worst. By 6:00 A.M., Doar had invested the FBI with the power to investigate a possible violation of federal law.

　　The morning after the civil rights worker's disappearance, the phone rang in the office of Meridian-based FBI agent John Proctor. (In the movie "Mississippi Burning," the character played by Gene Hackman is loosely based on Proctor.) Within hours, Proctor was in Neshoba County interviewing blacks, community leaders, Sheriff Rainey, and Deputy Price. Proctor was a Alabama native who had successfully cultivated relationships with all sorts of people, including local law enforcement officers, who might aid in his investigations. After his interview with Cecil Price, the Deputy slapped Proctor on the back and said, "Hell, John, let's have a drink." Price went to his car and pulled contraband liquor out of his trunk.

　　By the next day, June 23, Proctor had been joined by ten newly arrived special agents and Harry Maynor, his New Orleans-based supervisor. The first big break in the FBI investigation, called MIBURN (for "Mississippi Burning"), came when Proctor received a tip that a smoldering car had been seen in northeast Neshoba County. While Proctor was at the scene, searching the are

a around what turned out to be the burned blue CORE station wagon, he looked up to see Joseph Sullivan, the FBI's Major Case Inspector. It was by then abundantly clear that the Johnson Administration was placing top priority on the case. By June 25, the federal military had joined the search, with busloads of sailors arriving in Neshoba County to beat their way through snake-infested swamps and woods. Days later, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would fly to Jackson to announce the opening of the FBI's first office in Mississippi.

　　It soon became apparent to Inspector Sullivan the case "would ultimately be solved by conducting an investigation rather than a search." It turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult investigation. Neshoba County residents, many of whom either participated in the conspiracy or knew of it, were tight-lipped. Proctor found that some of his most useful information came from kids, so he would stuff candy in his pockets before setting out for a day's schedule of interviews. A promise of $30,000 in reward money finally brought forward information, passed through an intermediary, concerning the location of the bodies. On August 4, 1964, John Proctor was at the Old Jolly Farm to take photographs of the bodies as they were uncovered at the dam site. Inspector Sullivan invited Price to the dam site to help in the removal of the bodies. Sullivan was interested in observing the reaction of the Deputy, who was by then under heavy suspicion. Proctor noted that "Price picked up a shovel and dug right in, and gave no indication whatsoever that any of it bothered him."

　　Finally it would be informants from within the Klan that would break the case open. The first information, from a Klan member at the periphery of the conspiracy, enabled the FBI to focus on the more central figures. One Klan member who received a great deal of attention from John Proctor was James Jordan, a Meridian speakeasy owner. Over the course of five increasingly rough interviews, Jordan came to see turning state's evidence as his best bet to avoid a long prison term. He was also promised $3500 and help in relocating himself and his family in return for his full story. Jordan would become the government's key witness to the crime.

　　By December, 1964, the Justice Department had enough information to authorize arrests. On the drizzly morning of December 4, a team of federal agents swept through Neshoba and Lauderdale Counties arresting nineteen men for conspiring to deprive Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman of their civil rights under color of state law. Six days later, a U. S. Commissioner dismissed the charges, declaring that the confession on which the arrests were based was hearsay evidence. A month later, government attorneys secured indictments against the conspirators from a federal grand jury in Jackson. The Justice Department was again disappointed, however, when on February 24, 1965, Federal Judge William Harold Cox, an ardent segregationist, threw out the indictments against all conspirators other than Rainey and Price on the ground that the other seventeen were not acting "under color of state law." In March, 1966, the United States Supreme Court overruled Cox and reinstated the indictments [LINK TO SUPREME COURT DECISION]. As the Justice Department prepared for trial, defense attorneys made the cynical argument that the original indictments were flawed because the pool of jurors from which the grand jury was drawn contained insufficient numbers of minorities. Rather than attempt to refute the charge, the government summoned a new grand jury and, on February 28, 1967, won reindictments. The list of those indicted differed slightly from the original list, and included the names of eighteen Klansmen.

　　Trial in the case of United States versus Cecil Price et al. began on October 7, 1967 in the Meridian courtroom of Judge William Cox. Chief Prosecutor John Doar and other government attorneys had reason to b

e concerned about Cox. Cox, appointed as an effort to appease powerful Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former roommate of Cox at Ole Miss) Senator James Eastland, had been a constant source of problems for Justice Department lawyers (especially John Doar) who were seeking to enforce civil rights laws in Mississippi. In one incident, Judge Cox referred to a group of African Americans set to testify in a voting rights case as "a bunch of chimpanzees."

　　A jury of seven white men and five white women, ranging in ages from 34 to 67, was selected [link to list of jurors]. Defense attorneys exercised peremptory challenges against all twelve potential black jurors. A white man, who admitted under questioning by Robert Hauberg, the U.S. Attorney for Mississippi, that he had been a member of the KKK "a couple of years ago," was challenged for cause. Judge Cox denied the challenge.

　　The defense made a major mistake as John Doar presented background witnesses for the prosecution. When Doar finished his direct examination of Reverend Charles Johnson, who worked with Schwerner, Defense Attorney Laurel Weir launched into a series of outrageous questions culminating with a question asking whether Johnson had sought to "get young Negro males to sign a pledge to rape a white woman once a week during the hot summer of 1964?" Judge Cox broke in to say that such a question was "highly improper" unless the defense could show a reason for posing it. When Weir said the question had been passed to him in writing, Cox demanded to know who wrote it. Finally one of the defense attorneys admitted that "Brother Killen,'' defendant Edgar Ray Killen, had written the question. The incident made clear to the defendants that Judge Cox, who may have mellowed somewhat after a recent unsuccessful impeachment effort against him in Congress, was taking the trial seriously.

　　The heart of the government's case was presented through the testimony of three Klan informants, Wallace Miller, Delmar Dennis, and James Jordan. Miller described the organization of the Lauderdale klavern and described his conversations with Exalted Cyclops Frank Herndon and Kleagle Edgar Ray Killen about the June 21 operation in Neshoba County. Dennis incriminated Sam Bowers, the founder and Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the KKK of Mississippi. Dennis quoted Bowers as having said after the killing of Schwerner and the two others, "It was the first time that Christians had planned and carried out the execution of a Jew." It was also through Dennis that the government introduced the contents a letter written by Bowers but pretending to be from an official of a logging company referring to the murders as "the big logging operation" and to the suspects of the FBI investigation as "those deep in the swamp [LINK TO KKK LOGGING LETTER]." At another point in his testimony, Dennis described a Klan meeting in the pasture of Klan member Clayton Lewis. He then pointed to Lewis, the mayor of Philadelphia, sitting at the defense table as a member of the twelve-man defense team. James Jordan was the government's only witness to the actual killings. Fearing a Klan assassination, the government had arranged to have Jordan hustled into court by five agents with guns drawn. After first requiring hospitalization for hyperventilating, and then collapsing and having to be carried from the courtroom on a stretcher, an obviously nervous Jordan finally made it to the witness stand. Jordan described the events of June 21 and the early morning of June 22, from the gathering of Klan members in Meridian to the burial of the bodies at the Old Jolly Farm. His vivid testimony caused one black female spectator to break down and have to be led from the courtroom, sobbing.

　　The defense case co

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