JACKSON, Miss. –Hoping the third request will result in his release. Former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to give him a new trial in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss.
Killen argues that he was denied his constitutional rights in his 2005 trial in Mississippi. He made the same claim to a federal judge in Mississippi last year and to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans earlier this year. But he lost in both courts. Killen is serving 60 years in prison for the 1964 deaths of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. He was convicted of manslaughter 41 years after their deaths.
