Nation IN BRIEF : GEORGIA : Retrial Hearing Due on Atlanta Murders

Some of America’s most prominent lawyers were due in court in rural Georgia to attempt to win a new trial for Wayne Williams, convicted of killing two of the 30 young blacks who disappeared in Atlanta in 1979, ’80 and ’81. Attorneys Alan Dershowitz, William Kunstler and Bobby Lee Cook were to argue in Jackson, Ga., that prosecutors withheld evidence during Williams’ trial in 1982. They contend there was evidence of Ku Klux Klan involvement in several of the murders, and that at least one witness held a grudge against Williams and had told police so. After Williams was convicted, Atlanta police closed 22 other cases and attributed all of those murders to him. Williams, 33, is serving two life terms in prison.