Evers Murder Suspect Claims a Poor Memory

A white supremacist accused of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 pleaded Monday for his freedom, saying his memory and health are too deteriorated for him to stand trial next month.

“I can tell by looking at y’all I’ve done a poor job of giving you information to defend me,” Byron De La Beckwith told his attorneys during a hearing on a motion to dismiss the murder charges.

But a prosecutor countered that Beckwith’s “memory is perfectly good when he wants it to be.”

After hearing five hours of arguments, Hinds County Circuit Judge L. Breland Hilburn said he would rule this morning.

Beckwith, 71, taking the stand for the first time since his extradition last fall, was tried twice in 1964 for the assassination of Evers, field secretary of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Evers, 37, was shot in the back in front of his home on June 12, 1963.

All-white juries were unable to reach a verdict and charges against Beckwith were dismissed in 1969.

A Hinds County grand jury re-indicted Beckwith in 1990 after new, undisclosed evidence surfaced in the case. He has been held without bond since his extradition from his home in Signal Mountain, Tenn., last October. His trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 8.

Beckwith said he could not remember details of his first two trials, but prosecutor Ed Peters tried to show he did, submitting affidavits Beckwith signed that verified certain dates, names and places regarding the case.