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Mississippi Burning

'MISSISSIPPI BURNING' TRIAL BEGINS

Forty-one years after three civil rights workers were killed in rural Mississippi, jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of a Baptist preacher accused of instigating the crime.
Ref. https://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/13/miss.killings/index.html

Burning Mississippi

I think there should be no time limit on hate crimes. I'm glad that they are still making people pay for crimes committed in that era. I saw the movie Mississippi Burning several years ago. It prodded me to research the actual event, and I for one am glad that the people involved are still being tracked down and prosecuted for their crimes.

Mississippi Burning History & Civil Business Politics

I disagree with you about "hate" crimes. Murder is murder, assault is assault, robbery is robbery, no matter what the person thinks or feels when he commits the crime.

However, in the case of Mississippi Burning, remember that there is no statute of limitations on murder, anyway. I am also glad that the investigation continues, and that prosecutions continue. However, what really makes those murders different than the many other unsolved murders in the country? Just because the white men who committed them "hated" the black people and the other white people helping them? What about the many cases of black people murdered by other black people, or white people murdered by whites, or ....

The concept of hate crimes is abominable, as it seeks for greater punishment for someone just because of his political or cultural views.

Burning Mississippi

I agree with Nighthawk on the hate crimes issue.

I have really mixed feelings about crimes that were committed 30 or 40 or more years in the past that are then finally brought to trial. I don't mean this case specifically, but in general.

If this crime had been prosecuted when it happened, it is likely he would have gotten a much lighter sentence. Times were different then. Not better, in fact, worse, but I think when punished for a crime, it should be in context of the time in which is was committed.

A good example in my view is that Kennedy cousin convicted of murdering his neighbor when he was 15. I think the crime happened in 1975 or so. At that time, no way he would have been tried as an adult. That just wasn't done very often back then. So, he would have been freed at 18 or 21. Since he was convicted in 200x, he was treated how we now treat juveniles and tried as an adult. I don't consider that true justice. Also, our criminal system for juveniles is supposed to be to reform. If he did kill this girl, I think how he lived his life as an adult for the next 30 or so years shows he was reformed even if it wasn't as a result of the criminal justice system.

Having said all that, I am sure I would probably feel differently if it were a loved one of mine.

Please don't take any of what I have said to mean I think killing black people or neighbors is acceptable. As I have said, I just have mixed feeling about true justice in these cases.

Edited: funbikerchick on 26th Jun, 2005 - 3:08pm

Burning Mississippi

After Over Four Decades, Justice Still Eludes Family of 3 Civil Rights Workers Slain in Mississippi Burning Killings

As the Justice Department announces it has closed nearly half of its investigations into unresolved killings from the civil rights era, we look back at the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the subject of the new documentary Neshoba: The Price of Freedom. Although dozens of white men are believed to have been involved in the murders and cover-up, only one man, a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen, is behind bars today. Four suspects are still alive in the case. We play excerpts of Neshoba and speak with its co-director, Micki Dickoff. We're also joined by the brothers of two of the victims, Ben Chaney and David Goodman. And we speak with award-winning Mississippi-based journalist Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger, who's spent the past twenty years investigating unresolved civil rights murder cases, as well as Bruce Watson, author of the new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy. Ref. Source 5