Ex-Klan leader faces 60-year sentence for civil rights deaths

23/06/2005 - 16:56:35
One-time Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to the maximum 60 years in prison today for masterminding the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers.

Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon, sitting in Philadelphia, Mississippi, sentenced Killen to 20-year terms on each of three counts of manslaughter. Gordon said the terms will run consecutively.

Killen was convicted on Tuesday, 41 years after Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were killed.

Killen, aged 80, is the only person who has faced state murder charges in the case. He was tried on three murder counts, but at the request of prosecutors, Gordon allowed jurors to also consider the lesser charge of manslaughter.