In 1964, Klansman, Edgar Ray Killen (a fitting name) murdered 3 civil rights workers who were assisting the local black population in registering to vote. The murders galvanized the nation (not that they were in any way the first such killings) and prompted President Lyndon Johnson to flood the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi with FBI agents in search of the victims and subsequently, their killers.

For 40 years Killen remained a free man, free to run his sawmill, to preach his hate and relish in the fact that he had gotten away with murder. Last year, however, that oversight was corrected when a Philadelphia jury found Killen guilty of murder. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his crimes, which amounts to only 20 years for each life taken (hardly appropriate).

Now it seems Judge Marcus Gordon, the same judge who sentenced Killen, is having second thoughts. Killen’s defense team is asking that he be freed from jail pending his appeal, allowing Killen to “die at home” amongst family and friends, a fate James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were not afforded.

Exactly why should the state show mercy to a ruthless murderer such as Killen, a man who to this day has expressed no remorse for his bloody acts of murder? Defense lawyers, his family and townspeople alike contend that Killen is old and in poor health and should be allowed to return, a proposition that is ludicrous. Even the town’s former mayor, Harlan Majure, has called on the court to release Killen. Majure testified on Killen’s behalf during his trial last year, he even contended that the Klan wasn’t a violent organization, which says a great deal about the Philadelphia electorate.

Above all Killen is a murderer and there is one place for such people: prison or the morgue and those are the only places Killen should be allowed to return to.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-13-mississippi-killings_x.htm