Judge Rejects Bid to Avoid Trial in Evers Slaying

A white supremacist accused of assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 lost a court battle Tuesday to get the murder charge thrown out, setting the stage for trial next month.

Byron De La Beckwith, 71, had asked a judge to let him go free because of deteriorating health and memory. But Hinds County Circuit Judge L. Breland Hilburn refused that request.

Hilburn postponed the Sept. 8 trial date to at least Sept. 21, when jury selection begins. Beckwith’s attorneys asked for the delay while they appeal to the state Supreme Court the judge’s refusal to dismiss the charges.

The judge also ruled that Beckwith’s trial will be held in DeSoto County, near Memphis, Tenn. The jury will be selected from nearby Panola County, which is about 48% black.

Defense attorneys asked Hilburn to move the trial outside Hinds County, which is 51% black, saying the media had prejudiced potential jurors against Beckwith. Hilburn agreed, but specified that the new county must have a similar racial makeup as Hinds.

DeSoto County is about 13% black, but court officials said the courthouse in Hernando is better suited for a widely publicized trial.

Evers, field secretary of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, was shot and killed in his driveway by a sniper’s bullet. Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 for the slaying. All-white juries were unable to reach verdicts and the charge was dismissed in 1969.

In 1990, a grand jury indicted Beckwith again after new, undisclosed evidence surfaced. He has been held without bond since his extradition from Tennessee last October.

Beckwith’s wife, Thelma, called Hilburn’s refusal to dismiss the murder charge “horrible.”

Myrlie Evers, Evers’ widow, said from Los Angeles that “I am looking forward, as I have for a very long time, to this trial.”

Jim Kitchens, one of Beckwith’s lawyers, said he would appeal Hilburn’s refusal to throw out the murder charge to the state Supreme Court. He also said he would ask Hilburn to reconsider holding the trial in one county with a jury from another.