“I think that mitigates against the fact that he is an elderly man now. was a young Ku Klux Klansman with a reputation for hating blacks in 1963, when a. “It took (38) years for him to be brought to justice to begin with,” Jones said. Former KKK member convicted in deadly bombing up for parole. While board members could consider Blanton’s advanced age in deciding whether to grant parole, Jones said that shouldn’t be a factor. try to usurp the powers of the Parole Board, I think we should bring facts. Evidence against Blanton included secret recordings that were made using FBI bugs at his home and in the car of a fellow Klansman turned informant. Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, and Bobby Frank Cherry, who was convicted in the bombing in 2002, both died in prison.īlanton and Cherry were indicted in 2000 after the FBI reopened an investigation of the bombing. Long a suspect in the case, Blanton was the second of three people convicted in the bombing. I’m not saying what I will say until then,” said Rudolph. The crowd will include Rudolph, who survived injuries including the loss of an eye and testified against Blanton at his trial. Jones plans to attend the hearing in opposition to Blanton’s early release, and so do several relatives of the girls and the current pastor of 16th Street Baptist, the Rev. Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., the last of three one-time Ku Klux Klansmen convicted of a 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four Black girls and was the deadliest single attack of the civil rights movement, has died in prison, the governor's office said Friday. “This was, as I said during the trial, an act of terrorism before the word ‘terrorism’ was part of our everyday lives,” Jones said. attorney who prosecuted Blanton on the state charge, said Blanton shouldn’t be released since he has never accepted responsibility for the bombing or expressed any remorse for a crime that was aimed at maintaining racial separation at a time Birmingham’s public schools were facing a court order to desegregate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |