NATION : Beckwith Extradition Delayed
A judge today gave a white supremacist until Jan. 14 to show why he should not be returned to Mississippi to stand trial again for the 1963 slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
Byron De La Beckwith, 70, was arrested Monday at his Signal Mountain home on a governor’s warrant charging him with first-degree murder in the June 12, 1963, sniper slaying of Evers in Jackson, Miss.
When Beckwith’s attorney was unable to appear at a hearing today, Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Joe DiRisio gave Beckwith until Jan. 14 to petition for a writ of habeas corpus to prove why he should not be returned to Mississippi. “If the petition is not filed by that date . . . you will automatically be turned over to the authorities in the state of Mississippi,” DiRisio told Beckwith.
Beckwith told the judge that he would take whatever legal steps he could to avoid extradition.
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