Klansmen 'hunted Down Civil Rights Trio'

Edgar Ray Killen, the Ku Klux Klan member on trial for the 1964 murder of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi, organised carloads of Klansmen who chased the victims, killed them and buried their bodies, a court heard yesterday.

The claim was made by prosecutors shortly after a 17-person jury, made up of four blacks and 13 whites, was sworn in to hear the historic case.

The panel, composed of 11 males and six females, includes five alternates (reserve jurors) whose identity will not be known until the end of the trial - even to the panel themselves - leaving open the possibility that the final jury will contain no black members

When Mr Killen, now 80, first faced charges over the murders, he was freed after an all white jury failed to reach a verdict.

Yesterday, Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon told the jury: "What we do here will be forever recorded in the history of Neshoba County and you and I, when this case is over, should be proud of ourselves and the work done here in this courtroom."

The murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were helping register black voters during the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, and were investigating a church burning the night they disappeared, galvanised the civil rights movement and helped win passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The case was dramatised in the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.

Mr Killen is the first and only person to be charged with the murders, although those familiar with the case say seven more men who are still alive were involved.

Eighteen men, including Mr Killen and the county sheriff, were tried by the federal government in 1967 for violating the civil rights of the three men. Seven were convicted. None served more than six years in prison.

Defense attorney Mitch Moran told the jury that Mr Killen denied playing any part in the attack, although he did admit publicly for the first time that the 80-year-old was a Klan member. "For the sake of this trial, we're going to assume he was in the Klan," he said.

"The Klan's not on trial here. Being a member of the Klan is not on trial here."

Opening the case for the prosecution, Mississippi's attorney general Jim Hood gave a detailed narrative of the events leading up to the murders of the three men.

He said that witnesses would "speak from the grave", referring to testimony the state plans to read from the 1967 conspiracy trial.

Mr Hood told the jury that Mr Killen served as a "kleagle," or organizer, of the Klan in Neshoba County and helped set up a "klavern," or local Klan group.

He also alleged that Killen led an April 1964 Klan meeting at which members discussed what to do to stop "Goatee" - as Mr Schwerner was known because of his beard - and his voter registration activities.

The prosecutor said testimony will show that Killen and some other local preachers used the pulpit to encourage their church members to join the Klan.

"They told them that God sanctions it," Mr Hood said.

At Mr Killen's original trial, during which he claimed he was at a wake at the time of the murders, he was freed after a juror said she could not bring herself to convict a preacher and produced a hung jury.

Telling the jury that the fact Mr Killen was a preacher should play no part in their decision, Mr Hood said: "I think we are all sinners, aren't we? Some just worse than others."

Rita Schwerner Bender, the widow of one of the civil rights workers, and Carolyn Goodman, Andrew Goodman's mother, are expected to give evidence at the trial today.