By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were beaten and shot to death, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of manslaughter Tuesday in a trial that marked Mississippi's latest attempt to atone for its bloodstained, racist past.
The jury of nine whites and three blacks took less than six hours to clear Edgar Ray Killen of murder but convict him of the lesser charges in the 1964 killings that galvanized the struggle for equality and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
I've
always believed crimes should not go unpunished and one should be ready
to meet the consequences of their actions, but how does sending an 80
yr old man on oxygen and in a wheelchair a victory for Civil Rights?
When it comes to this story and history I am completely ignorant and really have no right to weigh in on this judgment; so I ask my fellow peers to give their own opinion.
