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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...
