Beckwith’s Fate Now in Hands of 3rd Jury : Trial: Deliberations begin in 1963 murder of civil rights leader. Defendant, an avowed racist, was tried twice in 1964 but not convicted.

The fate of 73-year-old Byron De La Beckwith was handed over Friday to a jury of eight blacks and four whites to decide whether the avowed racist is guilty of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

The jury deliberated for almost five hours before Circuit Court Judge L. Breland Hilburn called a recess. Deliberations will resume at 9 a.m. today.

“All we ask you for is to give the Evers family and the state of Mississippi some justice,” said Dist. Atty. Ed Peters in his closing statement. “We want a murderer who has been walking around 30 years bragging about back-shooting to be stripped of that badge of honor and to have a murder conviction hung around his neck like he deserves.”

Beckwith, who prosecutors say repeatedly advocated violence against civil rights leaders, stood trial twice in 1964 for the murder before all-white juries. Both times the juries failed to reach a verdict.

Prosecutors said they had new evidence, primarily the testimony of people who said they had heard him brag about the murder.

But defense attorney Jim Kitchens urged jurors to take into account the 31 years separating the crime and this trial. And he reminded the jury of two policemen who said they saw Beckwith 90 miles away in Greenwood, Miss., near the time of the murder.

The district attorney dismissed the alibi witnesses as lying, racist cops whose sympathies in 1963 lay with the accused murderer.

James Holley, the only one of the three who testified in person at the current trial, admitted that he had strong segregationist beliefs in 1963 but said he now lives in an integrated neighborhood and gets along with black people.

Kitchens urged jurors to remember the times. “Just about every white person in the state was for segregation in 1963,” he said.

Evers, the field secretary for the NAACP, was shot in the midst of campaigns to register black voters and to end segregation.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Bobby DeLaughter said Evers was shot because “he had the gall, the uppitiness, to want for his people . . . to be called by name instead of ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ to be able to go into a restaurant, to go in a department store, to vote and for your child to get a decent education in a decent school.”

Listing the evidence against Beckwith, DeLaughter said: “His gun, his scope, his fingerprint, his car and lastly but certainly not least, his mouth. When he thought he had beat the system 30 years ago, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut with people he thought would be impressed by him.”

Six witnesses, including two Ku Klux Klan members who became FBI informers, testified they heard Beckwith brag about the murder.

Defense attorneys called for a mistrial Friday, charging that the prosecution withheld information about Martha Jean O’Brien, who testified in 1964 that she saw a car similar to Beckwith’s parked near the Evers’ home. Portions of her testimony were read to the jury because prosecutors had said they were unable to locate her to testify.

Kitchens said a woman claiming to be O’Brien called him Thursday night. He contends prosecutors deliberately chose not to call O’Brien to the stand because they didn’t want her cross-examined.

Hilburn said he would rule on the mistrial motion after jury deliberations.