The Trial

The judge sent for the jury. The twelve white men filed into their seats. "Gentlemen," said the judge, "have you made any progress since the last time?"

"Judge," said Farmer Clifford McMurphy, the foreman, "I wouldn't say we've made any progress. We've been hung at the same almost from the outset, judge. It's been right constant."

With no hope for an end to the deadlock, the judge declared a mistrial and sent the jury home. And so, last week, in the county courthouse in Hayneville, Ala., ended the murder trial of Collie Leroy Wilkins, 21, who had been charged with murdering Detroit Housewife Viola Gregg Liuzzo on the Selma-Montgomery highway in March.

Wilkins was the first of the three men accused of the Liuzzo murder to stand trial; the other two, Eugene Thomas, 42, and William Orville Eaton, 41, are scheduled to go to court on the same charges in the fall. The Wilkins trial was high courtroom drama with a rich cast of characters: the jury, all natives of Alabama except for one man, a transplanted Floridian; Circuit Judge Thomas Werth Thagard, 63, a gently humorous man with a long and respected record of public service; the soft-spoken prosecutor, Circuit Solicitor Arthur E. Gamble Jr., 45; the melodramatic defense attorney, Matt H. Murphy Jr., 51, self-described "Imperial Klonsel" of the Ku Klux Klan; the defendant himself, a bored auto mechanic, potbellied despite his youth; Robert Shelton, Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, who sat at the defense table providing moral support and advice until the judge requested him to take a seat elsewhere; and the two key prosecution witnesses--Negro Leroy Moton, 20, who was riding in the car with Viola Liuzzo on the night of the murder, and FBI Informer Gary Thomas Rowe, 34, who was in the car with the accused killers.

Overcome. Leroy Moton took the stand and told how he and Mrs. Liuzzo got into the Liuzzo car on March 25 and left Selma just after 7:30 p.m. At about 8 o'clock, Moton was "fiddling with the radio dial, and she was humming We Shall Overcome,'" when "a car pulled up beside us and shot into the car two or three times." When the car came to a stop down the road, Moton shut off the ignition, turned off the lights and waited for five minutes. Soon "a car came back," shone its lights at the Liuzzo car, then drove off. When Moton tried to stop a passing car, he was nearly run over, so he "went back to the car and passed out for about 25 or 30 minutes."

Star Witness Rowe, who had been an FBI informant in the Klan for more than five years--during which the FBI paid him a total of $9,000--told a story that for sheer throat-gripping drama could scarcely be equaled except in fiction.

"Looka There!" On the day of the murder, he said, he had been driving around Selma with Wilkins, Thomas and Eaton. Late in the afternoon they got a warning ticket for speeding from a state patrolman.

For half an hour that evening they cruised around the city--Thomas driving, Eaton seated next to him, Rowe in the left rear seat, Wilkins on his right. At length, "we pulled up to a red light, and there was an auto to our left." In that car "was a white lady and a colored man. Wilkins said, 'Looka there, Baby Brother.' He said, 'I'll be damned, looka there!', and we all looked and saw them together. Gene Thomas said, 'Let's get 'em.' Mr. Eaton said, 'Wonder where they're going?' Gene Thomas stated, 'Well, I imagine they are going out here to park some place together.' "

As Viola Liuzzo drove away from the red light, the four men followed in their car. At one point, "Gene Thomas reached over and got his revolver out from between the seats and said, 'Get your pistols, cousins,' and I drew my pistol out."

Rowe said he tried to talk Thomas into turning back. Thomas insisted, '' 'Naw, we're gonna take this car tonight.' At this time, both autos were doing 85 to 90, to 100 maybe. Really moving. Gene says, 'All right, boys, here we go!' "

Passing two highway patrol cars that had stopped a Volkswagen bus, Thomas slowed, then sped up. When Rowe argued again for turning back, Thomas replied, "I done told you, Baby Brother, you're in the big time now. We're gonna take that automobile."

Thomas handed his pistol to Wilkins. There was a brief discussion on whether they should force the other car off the road, but Wilkins said, "Bubba, if you hit that automobile at all we may get caught. If you get just a little bit of paint on it we'll get caught."

"I Don't Miss." Thomas gained on Mrs. Liuzzo. "As we got almost even, Wilkins said, 'Give it some gas.' Gene sped up a little bit and put our auto immediately beside the driver. Wilkins put his arm out of the window approximately elbow distance, and just as we got even with the front window, there was the lady driving the automobile and she turned and looked around directly facing the automobile we were in. She looked directly at us. Just as she looked at us, Wilkins fired two shots through the window of the front of the auto mobile. Gene Thomas says, 'All right men, shoot the hell out of it.' Everybody started shooting. I was on the side by Wilkins and Wilkins said, 'Here put your gun out here,' and I laid my arm outside the window up beside Wilkins.' "

Rowe testified that he had only pretended to fire his .38-cal. revolver, but "Wilkins and Eaton both emptied their revolvers toward the automobile." As they sped away, Rowe noticed that the Liuzzo car still seemed to be moving along the road. "I said, 'The automobile is following us now. I believe you missed.'" Retorted Wilkins: "Baby Brother, I don't miss. That so-and-so is dead and in hell."

The Oath. The remainder of the prosecution's case was short and sharp. FBI men and other witnesses confirmed important details of Rowe's story: the bullet that killed Mrs. Liuzzo, and shell hulls found on the highway, came from a revolver found in Gene Thomas' home:* the Klansmen were placed near Selma at the time of the crime through testimony from the trooper who had written the traffic ticket.

All this was of course circumstantial; it was upon Gary Rowe's testimony that the prosecution would stand or fall. Defense Attorney Murphy set out to cross-examine Rowe savagely. Murphy asked Rowe if he had taken an oath when he joined the K.K.K. "Such as it was," replied Rowe. Shouted Murphy: "Such as it was! What do you mean by that?"

In ministerial tones, Murphy then recited the Klan oath: " 'I most solemnly swear that I will forever keep sacredly secret the songs, words and grip . . . regarding which a most rigid secrecy must be maintained ... I will never yield to bribe, flattery, threats, passion, punishment, persecution, persuasion, nor any other enticements whatever coming from or offered by any person or persons, male or female, for the purpose of obtaining from me a secret or secret information. I will die rather than divulge them, so help me God.' Did you swear to that oath?"

A. To the best of my knowledge.

Q. You swore before God on that, didn't you?

A. To the best of my knowledge. Murphy wheeled and stormed back toward his desk, muttering, "Bastard."

Pimp? He tried again: "You considered yourself an undercover man, or pimp?" (Objection sustained.) "You had a burp gun in your car, didn't you?" (Objection sustained.) "Are you a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?" (Objection sustained.) Then:

Q. You didn't do anything to prevent the firing of the shots?

A. No, sir, I didn't know the shots were going to be fired until they were fired.

Q. You talked about it for a considerable time down there?

A. We spoke of stopping the automobile. There are various ways of stopping an automobile, I would think.

For the defense, Murphy called only six defense witnesses; Wilkins himself did not take the stand. In 21 minutes, Murphy rested his case.

Remember Judas. Murphy clearly was saving himself for his summation--and it was a remarkable exhibition. For more than an hour, he ranted and raved. His statements at times sounded so utterly divorced from reality that some of the jurymen cast their eyes down and studied their hands. Judge Thagard slumped deeper and deeper into his brown leather chair as if by doing so he might disappear altogether.

"What kind of man is this Rowe that comes into a fraternal organization by hook or crook?" cried Murphy. "He cares not what he swears to, and let me say this, gentlemen: he took an oath when he joined the United Klans of America. Remember Judas Iscariot! [Rowe] took this oath with his hand raised to Almighty God in joining the United Klans of America!

"You know he's a liar and a perjurer, holding himself out to be a white man, and worse than a white nigger!"

White Woman? "And here is another strange thing. This white woman. White woman?" He paused, then asked, "Where is that N.A.A.C.P. card?" He held up an N.A.A.C.P. membership card that was among Mrs. Liuzzo's effects.

"I'm proud of my heritage. I'm proud to be a white man. And I'm proud that I stand upon my feet and I stand for white supremacy. Not black supremacy, not the mixing and mongrelizing of the races, not the biggest onslaughts of the civil rights movement that has invaded your quiet little county, the Martin Luther Kings, the Arthur Spingarns,* the white Zionists that run that organization. The Zionists that run that bunch of niggers. And when white people join up to 'em, they become white niggers."

He spoke of Leroy Moton. "The black man has no sense, morals, manners, courtesy, decency or anything when he sits up here on this stand and says 'yeah' and 'no in front of this honorable white judge ... He said, 'I passed out for 25 or 30 minutes.' What was he doing down there all that time?"

Mrs. Liuzzo, he cried, "was up there singin' 'we will overcome, we will overcome, we will overcome.' What in God's name were they tryin' to overcome? To overcome God himself? And do unto the white people what God said you shall not do because there'll be thorns in your eyes, thorns in your flesh; if you intermarry with a servile race, then you shall be destroyed!"

No Right to Kill. Summing up for the prosecution was Alabama's Assistant Attorney General Joseph Breck Gantt. "I don't want to talk about the Communist Party," he said, "or the Teamsters Union, or the N.A.A.C.P. or segregation or integration or whites or niggers or marches or demonstrations. I want to talk about a murder case that happened in Lowndes County." He argued that no man has the right to kill just because he is enraged at the sight of a white and a Negro sitting together in the same car. Such scenes, he said, are common in Lowndes County, where white people drive home their Negro maids, handymen and cooks. "If that's grounds for murder, blood can flow in Lowndes County." The Klan, he said, had killed a defenseless woman. "Is that the kind of bravery we fought for? I'd say not." Gantt concluded by invoking the name of Alabama's Governor, who is all but worshiped in Lowndes County--"one of the greatest segregationists, George Corley Wallace. He said this is a cowardly act that should not go unpunished."

Following Gantt was Prosecutor Gamble, who warned against "anarchy," urged that the jurors refuse to "put our stamp of approval on this kind of lawlessness." Said Gamble: "I don't agree with the purpose of this woman. But gentlemen, she was here, and she had a right to be here, and she had a right to be here without being killed. This was a coldblooded, middle-of-the-night killing that you cannot overlook. You've got to face up to it."

The Holdouts. For ten hours the jury faced up to it. Twice they called for answers to technical questions. Finally, the judge sent them off to Montgomery for the night.

Next day the jurors went at it again. They deadlocked, eight for conviction on a manslaughter charge, four for acquittal. They requested dismissal, but the judge asked them to try again. At length Foreman Clifford McMurphy declared an irrevocable deadlock: two still held out against conviction.

One of them, Bookkeeper Billy R. Cheatham, explained later: "I didn't accept Rowe's testimony--not when he swore before God and broke his oath." Mechanic Dan Lee, the other holdout, added: "Me and him pretty well are on the same side." Cheatham, a member of the white Citizens Council, was asked if he would like to see Rowe as a defendant with Wilkins. "Very, very much so," he replied. Said Lee, a former member of the white Citizens Council: "I agree."

Said Foreman McMurphy: "It was just different sets of eyes looking at the same evidence." One juror made it plain that the panel was less than impressed with the defense counsel's closing tirade. Said Farmer Edmund Sallee: "I think a great many of us were insulted to a great extent, and he must have thought we were very, very ignorant to be taken in by that act."

Imperial Klonsel Murphy, however, was eminently satisfied. "I'll say to you I did a good job!" he crowed. "I tried the case on my art of crossexamination, but next time a full-scale hearing will be laid on the line. I'll blow that Government case out of the water!" State attorneys said that Wilkins will stand trial again in September.

*The gun was not dusted for fingerprints, said a state attorney, because several people had handled it, and because the handle has ridged plastic grips that do not retain prints.

*New York City Attorney Arthur Spingarn, 87, is Jewish, white, and president of the N.A.A.C.P.

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