A Dearth of Witnesses

Even before the trial got under way in Selma, Circuit Solicitor Blanchard McLeod admitted: "It is a weak case.

I do not have the facts." After four days of testimony last week, the all-white jury concurred. It took just 95 minutes to acquit three white fellow citizens of the murder of James J. Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston who was clubbed to death in the Alabama city last March after participating in civil rights demonstrations.

Weak case or not, McLeod's assistant, Virgis Ashworth, handled-the prosecution vigorously and intelligently enough to give the defendants some bad moments. His best witnesses were two other white Yankee ministers who were beaten along with Reeb after the trio left a Negro cafe. Both the Rev. Clark Olsen and the Rev. Orloff Miller identified one of the accused, Elmer L. Cook, 42, as among their assailants. "There is no question in my mind," Olsen persisted under tough cross-examination by Defense Attorney Joe T. Pilcher Jr., "that Mr. Cook is the one who attacked me."

Severe Handicaps. But there was considerable doubt that Cook had struck Reeb. And there was no direct evidence at all to seriously incriminate the other two defendants, William Hoggle, 37, and his brother Namon, 31. The lack of testimony was no fault of Ashworth's. He worked under handicaps far more severe than those that usually bedevil

Southern prosecutors trying to convict white men of civil rights murders.

One reputed eyewitness had left the state and refused to appear for the trial. There was no legal means to force his return. Another witness could not be found. A third witness was present and willing to testify. Judge L. S. Moore disqualified him for mental incompetence--he was said to behave oddly, and had been in mental hospitals prior to 1959--but the disqualification was made without benefit of psychiatric testimony. Still another eyewitness, R. B. Kelley, was excused after pleading the Fifth Amendment. Kelley was arrested after the murder but not indicted with the other three.

"Let Him Die." Defense Attorney Pilcher hinted darkly that Reeb did not die simply from his wounds. The civil rights movement wanted headlines, he contended, and there was "a motivation on the part of certain civil rights groups to have a martyr." Pilcher could produce no hard evidence that "they willingly let him die," and Ashworth riddied the claim with objections. But Pilcher had made his point.

The largely white audience applauded the verdict. Then the defendants shook hands with friends and happily posed for photographers. Their elation may have been premature. Cook, the Hoggle brothers and Kelley still face a federal charge of conspiracy to deprive a citizen of his civil rights. Three Alabama klansmen were found guilty on the same charge the previous week in federal court after one of them had twice been tried on murder charges by state juries that refused to convict.

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