'Mississippi Burning judge faced death threat'
The brother of a former Ku Klux Klan leader convicted in connection with the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers, threatened to kill the judge presiding over his recent trial, it has been claimed.
Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter but freed on bail last week pending an appeal. He was less than two months into a 60-year sentence.
Lawyers have filed an emergency petition to the Mississippi Supreme Court calling for his bail to be revoked on the grounds that he remains a dangerous man.
"Prior to the trial, a relative of Edgar Ray Killen threatened to kill the trial court judge and other individuals in the courtroom," Attorney General Jim Hood said in court documents.
He also claimed an anonymous caller had threatened to bomb the court and described a threat Killen made in 1974, and another alleged threat to a jailer after his conviction.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon confirmed he was told a week before the trial that a threat had been made on his life by one of Killen's brothers, JD Killen, who denies the allegation.
Killen, 80, is appealing against his conviction for masterminding the deaths of of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
The Supreme Court could take more than a year to reach a decision.
He was originally charged with violating the victims' civil rights in 1967, but the all-white jury failed to reach a verdict.
The case was dramatised in the 1988 film Mississippi Burning.
