Killen Convicted But.....

Today a jury found Edgar Ray Killen guilty in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. The problem? Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter, not murder. As the suspected mastermind, Killen was on trial for murder. So why manslaughter? On the first day of deliberation the jury came back saying that they were deadlocked in a six to six split. The judge ordered the jury to go back to deliberations given that, having spent only one day, they had not given any serious effort. Today's verdict is therefore obviously a quick compromise, made possible by the option of the lesser charge of manslaughter that so often pulls up the slack when a murder charge won’t stick. However, the debate over which charge is academic because, for 80 year old Killen, the resulting sentence will almost assuredly last the remainder of his life.