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KKK leader on trial for slayings in Choctaw territory
Friday, June 10, 2005
Jury selection will begin on Monday for the retrial of Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen accused of killing three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Philadelphia is home to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Tribal members were denied seats on the jury when Killen first went to trial for the murders in 1864. An all-white jury deadlocked on the original charges.
The case has attracted international attention. It was the subject of the 1988 film Mississippi Burning. A number of media outlets are coming to the city to cover the trial.
"There are those who dread this being reopened," Don Kilgore, 55, the Choctaw attorney general, told USA Today. "And there are those of us who see it as an exorcism."
William Spell, another lawyer for the tribe, said he welcomes the attention. "Philadelphia today is a model of racial harmony," he told The Independent of UK.
Get the Story:
Residents hope trial will heal Miss. town
(USA Today 6/10)
Mississippi Burning: The murder case that set a US state alight (The Independent 6/10)
Klan takes a stand (The Biloxi Sun Herald 6/10)
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Judge orders start of Miss. civil rights trial Mon (Newsday 6/9)
Ken Bode: A new chapter for Mississippi Burning case (The Indianapolis Star 6/10)
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