Nation IN BRIEF : GEORGIA : New Trial Sought in Atlanta Murders

The man convicted in the Atlanta child murders case asked a court in Jackson, Ga., for a new trial on grounds that prosecutors withheld evidence. Wayne Williams, convicted in 1982 of killing two young black men, was also linked by police to 20 of 27 other slayings of children and teen-agers. His attorney, Bobby Lee Cook, said police and prosecutors withheld a Ku Klux Klan member’s taped confession that he helped to kidnap and kill about 21 of the victims, all of whom were black. A police informant testified in October that in 1981, he helped authorities record klansman Charles Sanders’ confession that he and others had killed about 21 black children. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified later that he destroyed the tapes because of lack of evidence to support the confession.