Time of Trial

On the evening of June 21, 1964, Civil Rights Workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney disappeared shortly after they were released from Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Miss. Six weeks later, their bullet-punctured bodies were found. Not until last week, when 18 Mississippians went on trial in the Meridian courtroom of U.S. District Judge William Harold Cox, 66, did the public learn the Government's version of the young activists' journey to death.

The Next Victims. Though the Justice Department's case, in effect, sought to show that the defendants conspired to kill the civil rights workers, the official charge against them was the relatively minor crime of conspiracy to deprive the slain men of their constitutional rights. Only the state could have brought a murder charge, and it has failed to do so. Nonetheless, if the defendants thought they would get any extra legal break from Judge Cox, a native Mississippian, they soon learned better. While Cox presided firmly and fairly, the prosecution played its trump cards: two paid FBI informers, both former Ku Klux Klansmen, and a chilling eyewitness account of the killings.

Carlton Wallace Miller, 43, a Meridian police sergeant who received $2,400 from the FBI over a two-year period, testified that the Meridian chapter of the White Knights of the Klan had marked Schwerner for "elimination--the term for murdering someone." To lure Schwerner from Meridian, where he and his wife Rita were operating a Negro community center, said Miller, Klansmen burned down the Mount Zion (Negro) Church at Longdale, outside Philadelphia. Five days later, Schwerner and two companions, Goodman, a white man, and Chancy, a Negro, drove 50 miles to Longdale to inspect the ruins of the church.

Near Philadelphia, the three men were arrested on a speeding charge by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, 29. Soon, said James E. Jordan, 41, who received $8,000 from the FBI and has been living safely in Georgia and Florida since turning informer nearly three years ago, the word went swiftly around Meridian that there were some "civil rights workers locked up and they need their rear ends torn up."

Jordan and seven others, he said, armed themselves and drove to Phil adelphia. There they parked by the courthouse where Ethel Glen ("Hop") Barnett, 45, current Democratic nominee for sheriff of Neshoba County and one of the defendants, told them to wait. Two uniformed men in a city police car informed them that the prospective victims had been released. Later they were told by men in a highway patrol car that the victims would be stopped somewhere down the highway by Deputy Sheriff Price, who, along with Neshoba Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, is now on trial.

Severest Sentence. "Price pulled the station wagon over to the side of the road by turning on his red light," said Jordan. "He told the three men to get out and get in his car." They were driven into a deserted area, and Jordan got out to stand guard. "The cars then went on up the road," testified Jordan. "I heard doors slam and loud talk. Then I heard several shots." According to a confession by one of the defendants, Horace Doyle Barnette, 28, former Meridian salesman now living in Louisiana, Jordan was more than a mere witness: he was one of the killers. Barnette's confession was taken by the FBI five months after the slayings and was admitted in evidence only after all defendants' names had been deleted except Jordan's. "(Blank) pulled Schwerner out of the car, spun him around and said, 'Are you that nigger lover?' Schwerner replied, 'I know how you feel.' " After that, said Barnette in his confession, the killer placed his left hand on Schwerner's shoulder and shot him with a pistol. "Jim Jordan said, 'Save one for me.' He got out of the car and got Chaney out. Jordan stood in the middle of the road and shot him. Jordan said, 'You didn't leave me anything but a nigger, but at least I killed a nigger.' "

The bodies were dumped into the station wagon and driven to a new dam site where the gang hung around until a bulldozer operator arrived to gouge out a burial hole. It was six weeks be fore the remains were discovered 20 ft. underground. Five bullets were in the three bodies.

By the time the prosecution had concluded its case at week's end, the testimony all pointed to murder. Nevertheless, the most severe sentence the defendants can get--assuming they are convicted--is ten years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

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