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Killen Story

Killen Sentenced to 60 Years for 1964 Slayings
Thursday, June 23, 2005

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — One-time Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to the maximum 60 years in prison Thursday for masterminding the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers.

Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon (search) on Thursday sentenced Killen to 20-year terms on each of three counts of manslaughter. Gordon said the terms will run consecutively.

Killen was convicted Tuesday, 41 years after Michael Schwerner (search), James Chaney (search) and Andrew Goodman (search) were killed.

Killen, 80, is the only person who has faced state murder charges in the case. He was tried on three murder counts, but at the request of prosecutors, Gordon allowed jurors to also consider the lesser charge of manslaughter.

"I have to pass on a sentence to a person who is 80 years old. A person who has suffered a serious injury," Gordon said. "There are those of you in the courtroom that would say a sentence of 10 years would be a life sentence. There are those who would say Edgar Ray Killen should be sentenced to serve 60 years.

"I heard the evidence of this case ... Each life has value. Each life is equally as valuable as the other life and I have taken that into consideration. The three lives should absolutely be respected and treated equally."

Killen, dressed in a yellow jail jumpsuit, was brought before Gordon in a wheelchair that he has occupied since a March logging accident that broke both his legs. Absent Thursday was the oxygen tube that he had up his nose during the reading of the verdict on Tuesday.

Gordon did not allow statements from the victims' or the defendant's families.

Defense attorney James McIntyre has said he will appeal, arguing that the jury should not have been allowed to consider manslaughter. Gordon will hear a motion for a new trial on Monday.

With a murder charge, prosecutors had to prove intent to kill and a conviction would have carried life in prison. With a manslaughter charge, prosecutors had to prove only that a victim died while another crime was being committed.

Chaney was a black Mississippian and Schwerner and Goodman were white New Yorkers. The three civil-rights volunteers were intercepted by Klansmen in their station wagon on June 21, 1964, and shot to death. After a massive FBI search, the bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam.

The slayings helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (search) and the FBI's search for evidence was dramatized in the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning."

Killen, a sawmill operator and part-time Baptist minister, has been held in the Neshoba County Jail since his conviction.