Beckwith Arrested Again on New Evers Case Warrant

A white supremacist was arrested again Monday and could be returned to Mississippi this week to face a third trial for the 1963 slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

Byron De La Beckwith, 70, was arrested on a governor’s warrant charging him with first-degree murder and was jailed without bond.

Beckwith’s attorney, Russell Bean, filed a writ of habeas corpus seeking his release and a hearing was set for Wednesday before Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Joe DiRisio.

If DiRisio finds the governor’s warrant is in order, he could immediately turn Beckwith over to Mississippi authorities, said Hamilton County Chief Deputy Jim Hammond.

“The purpose of that hearing is basically just to try to keep (Beckwith) from going to Mississippi by (his attorney’s) saying it’s improper paperwork,” Hammond said.

Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 for the slaying of Evers, field secretary for the NAACP, who was killed by a sniper’s bullet in front of his Jackson, Miss., home on June 12, 1963.

Both trials ended with the all-white juries unable to reach a verdict, and the murder charge was dismissed in 1969. The case was reopened in 1990 amid charges of jury- and evidence-tampering in those trials.

Beckwith, an avowed racist, has denied killing Evers and contends the indictment is “nonsense, poppycock and just something to stir the people up . . . and incite the lower forms of life.”

Beckwith, who has lived on nearby Signal Mountain for nearly eight years, was arrested on a fugitive warrant Dec. 17 after a Hinds County, Miss., grand jury indicted him again.

He had been free on $15,000 bond since a Dec. 18 hearing, where he was ordered to return to court Feb. 22. But the quick processing of the governor’s warrant, signed by Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus and Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter, eliminates the need for that appearance.

Beckwith did not resist when two officers served the warrant Monday morning at his home, Hammond said. “I think he was surprised it was this soon, but I think he’s been expecting to hear something,” he said.