By DEBBIE BURT MYERS
Managing Editor
Opening statements in the Edgar Ray Killen murder trial began after the jury filed into the courtroom Wednesday.
Attorney General Jim Hood told jurors they would have to rely on their memories when deliberating Killen’s guilt or innocence as it was not economically feasible for the state of Mississippi to provide them with transcripts of testimony.
Hood gave a detailed narrative of the events leading up to the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney which he said were orchestrated by Killen.
He told jurors that Goodman sent a postcard to his mother the day before he was murdered to let her know he had arrived in Mississippi.
“Weather great, people are nice,” Hood quoted the card as saying.
Witnesses will “speak from the grave” the Attorney General said of testimony the state would read from the 1967 conspiracy trial.
On the night of the murders, after the three men were jailed for speeding, Hood said Killen drove to the Long Horn Restaurant in Meridian and organized Klansmen. The group later met Killen at the courthouse and then he showed them the jail where the men were incarcerated, he said.
The state will prove that Killen planned and organized Klansmen to commit the murders, Hood told the jurors.
Defense attorney Mitch Moran reminded the jury that the Klan was not on trial.
He said Killen has denied he was in the Klan but that it was not the issue.
For the sake of the trial, you can assume he was in the Klan, he said.
Moran said it was common knowledge that the Meridian Klan and Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers organized the murders which he described as a terrible crime.
“When you hear about it, it’s awful, but we’re here to decide if Edgar Killen is guilty of these crimes,” he said.
Moran said Killen was not present when the murders occurred and “they will have to admit that.”
He said law enforcement pulled the men’s car over after they were released, and the Klan killed them.
After court adjourned, District Attorney Mark Duncan said the prosecution felt it was important that the jury realize that the three civil rights workers were real people.
“People here don’t have a connection with the victims. They don’t know them, they don’t know their families, they don’t go to church with them, work with them or go to the ballpark with them,” he said.
“What we want to do is let the jury know that these are real people, with real families and real lives, with brothers and sisters, mothers and daddies who cared for them and loved them just like we do our families.”
Defense Attorney James McIntyre said after court adjourned that he did not know that Killen was a member of the Klan until 1967 when testimony from the federal trial said he was.
“The Klan’s not on trial today. Mr. Killen is on trial for murder,” McIntyre said.
McIntyre, ringed by security outside the two-story brick courthouse, said, “This is a sad, sad day for the state of Mississippi. We’ve been getting along good in this state. Mississippi needs to go forward, not backward.”
McIntyre said his strategy was to ensure that Killen got a fair trial. He said there was no better strategy.
The defense planned to prove that Killen had nothing to do with orchestrating the crime, he said.
“He’s charged with pulling the trigger — he wasn’t there,” McIntyre said.
The 17-person jury, composed of 13 whites and four blacks, included five alternates. The group included 11 females and six males.
Circuit Court Judge Marcus D. Gordon said the identity of the alternates would remain a secret until after the trial.
“Whatever you do will forever be remembered in the history of Neshoba County,” Gordon told the jury pool before the final selections were made.
Killen was present during the voir dire process in the judge’s chambers and, after returning to the courtroom, gave his family a smile and made an OK gesture with his hand.
The only potential juror struck from jury service for cause came from the state because of one of his responses on a jury questionnaire.
The question was “what do you think about the case being prosecuted 41 years after the fact?” to which the man responded “Bull, been too long a time.”
According to the questionnaire, this potential juror also knew several people who testified in the 1967 federal trial and either he or a member of his family had at one time or another been in the Klan, an Associated Press reporter present in the judge’s chambers said.
“If there ever was anybody who tried to get on a jury, it was this man,” she quoted District Attorney Mark Duncan as saying.
Jurors, who are subpoenaed for the duration, reported to the courtroom at 8:30 a.m.
One woman who has been intimately involved in the case, Jewell Rush McDonald, was summoned to appear for the jury pool, but was dismissed.
McDonald was 18 years old when her mother and brother were beaten in the Klan attack at Mt. Zion United Methodist church, whose burning some have testified was intended to lure the three civil rights workers out to investigate. McDonald was dismissed after she told the judge that she believed Killen was guilty.
“I feel Edgar Ray Killen should get a fair trial,” McDonald said. “I don’t want anything to jeopardize this man getting a fair trial.”
