Court Votes for Retrial in Murder of Medgar Evers

Aging white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith should stand trial a third time for the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The 4-3 decision ends more than a year of legal wrangling over whether too much time had passed for Beckwith, 72, to be tried again. In 1964, all-white juries failed to reach verdicts in the case.

The decision sends the case back to a circuit judge to set a trial date and determine whether the ailing Beckwith should be freed on bail. Beckwith’s wife and lawyers say he suffers from high blood pressure and clogged arteries.

Evers, 37, field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP, was shot outside his Jackson home on June 12, 1963.

The court majority refused to consider Beckwith’s arguments that too much time has passed since his first trials, and that he was denied a speedy trial after his arrest and indictment in December, 1990. It also dismissed arguments that a new trial would place him in double jeopardy.

Presiding Justice Armis Hawkins, writing for the majority, said the issues of speedy trial and double jeopardy should be settled after a jury decides the criminal case.

The investigation of Evers’ death was reopened in 1990 amid allegations of jury and evidence tampering by the state Sovereignty Commission, a state segregationist watchdog agency.