I Only Would Have Given 57. I Guess That Makes Me a Fascist.
From AP:
Saying "each life has value," a judge on Thursday sentenced former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen to the maximum 60 years in prison for masterminding the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers.
The frail, 80-year-old Killen, sitting in a wheelchair and dressed in a yellow jail jumpsuit, sat impassively and stared straight ahead as Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to 20-year terms on each of three counts of manslaughter. Gordon said the terms will run consecutively....
The three men Killen was convicted of killing — black Mississippian James Chaney and white New Yorkers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman — were beaten and shot by a gang of Klansmen, their bodies buried in an earthen dam. The killings shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964....
The judge said the law makes no distinction based on the defendant's age at the time of sentencing.
"I have to pass on a sentence to a person who is 80 years old. A person who has suffered a serious injury," Gordon said. "There are those of you in the courtroom that would say a sentence of 10 years would be a life sentence."
He added: "I heard the evidence of this case ... Each life has value. Each life is equally as valuable as the other life and I have taken that into consideration. The three lives should absolutely be respected and treated equally."...
Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, all civil rights volunteers, were intercepted by Klansmen in their station wagon on June 21, 1964, and shot to death. Killen was tried in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights. But the all-white jury deadlocked, with one juror saying she could not convict a preacher.
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