Trial
Further information: U.S. v. Cecil Price et al.Because Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the killers for murder, a state crime, the US Justice Department, led by prosecutor John Doar, charged 18 individuals under the 1870 US Force Act with conspiring to deprive the three of their civil rights (by murder). They indicted Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and 16 other men.
Those found guilty on October 20, 1967, were Cecil Price, Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, Alton Wayne Roberts, Jimmy Snowden, Billey Wayne Posey, Horace Barnett, and Jimmy Arledge. Sentences ranged from 3 to 10 years. After exhausting their appeals, the seven began serving their sentences in March 1970. None served more than six years. Sheriff Rainey was among those acquitted. Two of the defendants, E.G. Barnett, a candidate for sheriff, and Edgar Ray Killen, a local minister, had been strongly implicated in the murders by witnesses, but the jury came to a deadlock on their charges and the Federal prosecutor decided not to retry them. On May 7, 2000, the jury revealed that in the case of Killen, they deadlocked after a lone juror stated she "could never convict a preacher".
Read more about this topic: Mississippi Civil Rights Workers' Murders
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—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
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