Indictments dismissed by
District Court (reversed and remanded)
Subsequent
7 of the 18 defendants convicted on remand
Holding
The 14th amendment grants the United States authority to indict state actors and all private citizens who assist state actors during alleged crimes became de-facto state actors themselves and as a result, find themselves in the exact same legal jeopardy as the de jure state actors they assisted. District court reversed.
Indictments were originally presented against 18 defendants, three of whom were officials of the Mississippi government, for conspiracy to commit as well as substantial violations of deprivation of rights secured or protected by the
Constitution. The District Court initially dismissed the indictments, but the dismissal was unanimously reversed by the
Supreme Court upon appeal. The trial then proceeded. The Supreme Court declared that the victims had been denied due process under the terms of the
Civil Rights Act of 1866. That law was still in effect and it made it a federal crime for state
officials to deny a person any of the rights and privileges guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution because of race. The Court further stipulated that actions by any private citizen who participated with the state official also came under the scope of the act.[2]
Edgar Ray Killen, a fundamentalist minister and sawmill operator. In the case of Killen, the jury deadlocked after a lone juror stated she "could never convict a preacher". The case against Killen was reopened in 1999, and on June 21, 2005, he was found guilty of three counts in state court of
manslaughter for orchestrating the killings. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison, and died in prison in 2018.[3]
Jury
An all-white, mostly working-class jury consisting of five men and seven women heard the case. The jurors were:
Langdon Smith Anderson (foreman), a
Lumberton oil exploration operator and member of the State Agricultural and Industrial Board
Adelaide H. Comer, a cook at an
Ocean Springs school cafeteria
Penalties
The penalties exacted by the federal penal system were,
for Price: sentenced to six years in prison, and served four years
for Bowers: sentenced to ten years in prison, and served six years
for Barnette: sentenced to three years in prison
for Arledge: sentenced to three years in prison
for Posey: sentenced to six years in prison
for Snowden: sentenced to three years in prison, and served two years
for Roberts: sentenced to ten years in prison, and served six years
Film adaptation
In 1988, the film Mississippi Burning was loosely based on the trial and the events surrounding the murder. It starred
Gene Hackman and
Willem Dafoe as two
FBI agents who travel to Mississippi to uncover the events surrounding the disappearance of three civil rights workers.
Several of the fictitious characters in the movie were based on real-life defendants in the trial. Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell (played by
Brad Dourif) was based on
Cecil Ray Price, Sheriff Ray Stuckey (played by
Gailard Sartain) was based on Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, and Frank Bailey (played by
Michael Rooker) was based on Alton W. Roberts. The film also starred
R. Lee Ermey and
Frances McDormand.
Linder, Douglas O. (2002). "Bending Toward Justice: John Doar and the "Mississippi Burning Trial"". Mississippi Law Review. 72 (2): 731–79.
SSRN1109093.