The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: bijou on July 25, 2008, 04:40:03 PM
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Edgar Ray Killen, 84, was convicted in 2005 of ordering the Klan killings of the trio 41 years earlier, a crime that was dramatised in the film Mississippi Burning.
His lawyers have appealed against his life sentence for triple manslaughter, citing new evidence that the FBI used Gregory Scarpa - known as The Grim Reaper - to put pressure on Klan members to reveal where the bodies had been hidden.
The lawyers also say that his conviction was tainted by the fact that a defence lawyer in a previous trial over the killings in 1967 was an FBI informant who had been providing prosecutors with information about the defence case.
The court transcript from 1967 - in which Killen was acquitted on civil rights charges - was allowed to be used in the later trial because many of the witnesses had since died.
Rob Ratliff, Killen's lawyer, said the evidence included crucial information from a Klan member who revealed where the bodies had been buried.
It was now clear that the informant had been kidnapped by Scarpa and an FBI helper, and subjected to "typical Mafia-type behaviour", he said.
The "behaviour" may have included a severe beating but certainly included death threats to his family and having a gun barrel inserted into his mouth, he added.
...more...
link (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2458844/FBI-'used-Mafia-enforcer'-to-find-bodies-in-Mississippi-Burning-case.html)
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And this should be retried because . . . ?
:bird: to the plaintiffs in this case.
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Nothing to worry about, DUmmies won't say a word, all the government torture was against rednecks, not innocent Iraqi's.