Conviction Upheld in ’63 Church Bombing

A judge in Birmingham refused to set aside a former Ku Klux Klansman’s murder conviction in the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls.

Circuit Judge James Garrett’s one-sentence ruling said he had reviewed all filings and that “the motion for a new trial is overruled.”

Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, was found guilty in May of the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a gathering place for civil rights demonstrators. He was sentenced to life in prison.

At a hearing last week, defense attorney Mickey Johnson argued that jurors at the trial should not have heard evidence about Cherry’s character or seen a film of him hitting a civil rights leader during a 1957 attempt to integrate a Birmingham school.