Byron de La Beckwith - 1994 Trial For Evers Murder

1994 Trial For Evers Murder

In the 1980s, the reporting of the Jackson Clarion Ledger of the Beckwith trials stimulated a new investigation by the state and ultimately a third prosecution, based on new evidence. By this point, De La Beckwith was living in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and was extradited to Mississippi for his trial at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson. The 1994 state trial was held before a jury of eight black and four white jurors; it ended with De La Beckwith's conviction of first-degree murder for killing Medgar Evers. New evidence included testimony of his having boasted of the murder at a Klan rally and to others over the three decades after the crime. The physical evidence was essentially the same as was used during the first two trials.

He appealed the guilty verdict, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1997. The court said the 31-year lapse between the murder and De La Beckwith's conviction did not deny him a fair trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder. Although Mississippi had a death penalty in 1963, it was unavailable because it and other death penalty laws in force at the time had been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Furman v. Georgia. Beckwith sought review in the United States Supreme Court, but that Court denied certiorari.

On January 21, 2001, De La Beckwith died at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 80 years old. He had suffered from heart disease, high blood pressure and other ailments.