Nearly 30 years after two all-white juries failed to convict admitted white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Mississippi civil rights worker Medgar Evers, Mr. De La Beckwith is back in court facing a third trial on the same charges.
Mr. Evers, the 37-year-old field secretary for the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had just returned home from a meeting when he was ambushed in the driveway of his Jackson home in the early morning hours of June 12, 1963.
The killer escaped the scene, leaving his rifle behind. But 10 days later, police arrested Mr. De La Beckwith and charged him with the murder. Prosecutors said Mr. Evers was killed with Mr. De La Beckwith's hunting rifle, which bore the suspect's fingerprint on its telescopic sight. Mr. De La Beckwith, who claimed he was at home in Greenwood, Miss., 90 miles away, at the time of the murder, was tried twice before all-white juries in 1964, with both cases ending in hung juries. In 1989, the indictment against him was dismissed.