Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Jury selection set in historic murder trial
Jimmie Lee Jackson died. James Bonard Fowler killed him. There’s no debate about that. But the upcoming trial over the killing is so contentious, so freighted with history, that the judge in charge ordered up a jury pool four times the normal size in an effort to seat an impartial panel.
That pool of 600 jurors will report October 20 to an Alabama courtroom to begin voir dire in a trial dating back to the 1965 killing that made civil rights history. When a Feb. 18, 1965, civil rights demonstration erupted into a mêlée between marchers and police, Fowler, then a state trooper, shot Jackson, who later died at a Selma, Ala., hospital.
His death led to two historic civil rights marches: The first, turned back at Selma by armed state troopers, became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The second, led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., made it from Selma to Montgomery, the Alabama capitol, and led to congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which fully enfranchised African-Americans.
A grand jury in 1965 reviewed evidence against Fowler, but did not return an indictment. Forty years later, Marion County District Attorney Michael Jackson, the county’s first black D.A., reopened the murder investigation. (The D.A. is not related to the victim.) In 2007, a grand jury indicted Fowler for murder. The former trooper has pleaded not guilty, claiming he shot Jimmie Lee Jackson after Jackson attacked him with a bottle and tried to snatch away his gun.
Prosecutors argue Fowler shot the victim as he tried to defend family members from club-wielding state troopers. Defense attorneys for Fowler argue their client can’t get a fair trial in majority-black Marion County, where monuments honor Jackson as a civil rights hero.
What do you think?
back to top10 Comments to “Jury selection set in historic murder trial”
Jackson may be a victim but he is not a hero.
This is just part of the never ending search to find examples of white racism. Black-on-black violence is so out of hand if often doesn’t even make the newspapers.
But a white villain from 1965 makes national news.
Report comment to moderator
I think anything but a guilty verdict could result in riots so the guy’s toast.
Report comment to moderator
The political climate has so changed that blacks, now in charge of a local government, can use that power for their own selfish ends. In this case it looks like vengeance, not justice, is on the menu.
The only difference between oppressed and oppressor is opportunity. When the “victim” turns the tables he can be just as ruthless and wicked as his former oppressor. This is true in race relations, economics, and politics. The human heart, be it black, white, rich, poor, Republican, or Democrat, has a basic problem with its own evil.
Report comment to moderator
P.S. Unfortunately, I also have to add male and female to the above list of today’s adversaries.
Report comment to moderator
I read about Jimmie Lee Jackson after completing a book about Viola Liuzzo. (Shot by FBI informant riding in vehicle with Klansmen) I believe there is actual footage of Jackson being shot.
I too doubt a trial could be fair unless you confine the prospective juror pool to young Alabamians of either race. But this man to me is maybe only slightly better than the geezers who are tried for being Nazi camp guards in their 20s or late teens.
All these southern prosecutors are out to earn plaudits yet they bring defendants to trial like Edgar Ray Killen or Byron De La Beckwith just when these men are succombing to end of life diseases (COPD, diabetes, CHF etc)
Report comment to moderator
Amazing that the police back then could use deadly force and there not be a follow up “internal investigation” to see if the deadly force was justified by the circumstances and what the cop knew at the time!
In modern times lawmen are continually second-guessed by armchair detectives for making the decsion to pull the trigger.
I was saddened to learn that the highway monument to Mrs Liuzzo had been defaced with a confederate battle flag painted on it. In 1965 Viola Liuzzo’s “crime” was driving her car with a black man on the front bench seat. Hoover’s FBI then further assassinated her character, morals etc.
As for the Jimmie Lee Jackson case, why not invoke “respondeat superior” doctrine and seek money damages from Alabama state police/attorney general?
Report comment to moderator
Is it just me, or does Alabama perhaps have more important things to do than revisit a killing which happened in the maelstrom of a race riot 40 years ago?
Perhaps Alabama should turn their attention to current problems …
Report comment to moderator
While reading about Liuzzo and Jimmie Lee Jackson I was surprised to discover the Andrew Goodman foundation. Goodman, Micky Schwerner and a young black man named James Chaney were also martyred for the cause of civil rights. Interesting how many of these “Freedom Riders” and volunteers working to register blacks to vote now have monuments or streets named for them in the South. I understand Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian and alumni of Virginia Military Institute, is now deemed a saint in the Episcopal church.
I didnt even know they canonized!
Report comment to moderator
No, Kimberly, Alabama must never be allowed to forget her mistakes. Germany and Russia on the other hand, have clearly repented of trying to take over the world and must now be permitted to dictate our foreign policy.
Report comment to moderator
@ Sawgunner:
There was an internal investigation, and even a grand jury convened on the shooting of Jackson back in 1965. Not surprisingly, though, neither decided that Fowler had done any wrong. That’s 1965 Alabama for you.
There is not, as far as I know, footage of Jackson being shot anywhere. The media in Marion at the time were attacked and many of their camera lenses spraypainted black while they were still on the town square. I believe the only people inside Mack’s, where JLJ was shot, were three State Troopers, the restaurant’s black patrons, and the protesters who ran inside during the riot.
I think the court would have to declare Fowler culpable for Jackson’s death, either in criminal court or in a civil wrongful death suit, before the family could seek damages from the state.
And the Episcopalians don’t canonize. Daniels is considered a martyr, but not a saint.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!