Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell

Author:Jerry Mitchell [Mitchell, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, True Crime, History, Race, Civil Rights, Journalism, Justice, United States
ISBN: 9781451645156
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

43

Special Assistant Attorney General Lee Martin stepped up to the jury box, sounding somber as he began his closing statement. He recounted the prosecution’s argument and pushed back against the defense lawyer’s assertion that this was nothing but an emotional prosecution, where “you wouldn’t hear the facts about the case.” Martin conceded that the case had been emotional—it couldn’t be otherwise—“but we presented facts to you.”

He recounted the testimony of former Klansman T. Webber Rogers, who said Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers beat on the table and said that “something had to be done about this damn nigger down south, [that] it should have already been done.” And, the prosecutor said, Billy Roy Pitts talked of how a KKK project down south needed to be taken care of—a “nigger who was causing a lot of problems between the blacks and whites with the voter registration drive.”

Defense lawyer Travis Buckley ambled to the podium after Martin. He suggested that the real reason for this trial had nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with the press. “This is a case where Mr. Bowers is being offered up on their altar to be sacrificed to the media for political expediency and to promote political ambition.”

He accused Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore of pursuing the murder because he “seeks political advancement. And he decides he has to offer up something to the crowd like throwing a bone to hungry lions.”

Buckley called Bowers “a model citizen,” remaining a recluse “so that he would not draw attention” for the Dahmer case, Buckley said. He called for sympathy for his seventy-three-year-old client, almost blind and deaf. What he never said was that Bowers was innocent.

Instead, the lawyer shifted the focus toward the Dahmer family, suggesting they had pursued the case because of revenge in their hearts. “That’s not justice,” Buckley said. “That’s persecution.”

Then, in one of the trial’s more surreal moments, the defense lawyer regaled jurors with the life story of Adolf Hitler. Buckley talked of the Nazi leader mesmerizing listeners and rising “to prominence through his oratorical ability, through his ability to appeal to the masses—mass psychology.”

He compared publicity against his client to the propaganda spread by Hitler, who “understood mass hypnotism. He was a genius. But he abused it. He was an evil genius.” Authorities were now trying to “use propaganda in such a way as to try to sway the public opinion and to try to sway the jury’s opinion because they are not interested in competent, credible, believable evidence,” Buckley said. “Return a verdict of not guilty.”

I glanced into the audience, noticing several puzzled faces. Bringing up the name of this infamous Nazi leader in the trial of a KKK leader who admired Hitler made me wonder if Bowers had been the one who asked him to say it.

Assistant District Attorney Bob Helfrich made his way to the podium next. The judge let him know he had twenty minutes to speak.

“I’m not gonna use all my time,” the prosecutor replied. “It’s been a long week.

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