Ex-Klansman’s conviction upheld

The Hattiesburg American, 4/13/7

The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the manslaughter convictions of former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the slayings of three civil rights workers in 1964.

In his appeal, Killen argued that in the 1960s, he wouldn’t have been convicted by a jury of his peers of any crime under the evidence presented in 2005. He said prosecutors waited for an opportune political climate in which to indict.