Killen will die in prison
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The killer Klansman got 60 years, the maximum.
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.
...Killen will be taken to state prison, where his status will evaluated and he will be held in solitary confinement, Attorney General Jim Hood said. Hood said Killen has expressed no remorse.
...Killen had been convicted in 1975 of threatening a woman over the telephone, a case that Gordon himself had prosecuted. Killen served five months in prison on the charge.
