Request for a Reprise

What are cannons, or bombs, or clash ing of swords?

For death is more certain by witnesses' words.

--John Gay (1685-1732) The answer that Gay advocated in The Beggar's Opera was to nail witnesses' lips together so that they could not testify. That advice was not lost on the formidable Percy Foreman when he set out to defend the assassin of Mar tin Luther King Jr. Foreman's way of doing that -- to avoid having to argue be fore a jury against the damaging ev idence marshaled against James Earl Ray -- was to make a deal with Prosecutor Phil M. Canale Jr. for a negotiated guilty plea. The result turned Ray's trial in Memphis into a formality that left unanswered questions of whether a conspiracy existed to murder King.

In court, Ray appeared to accept Fore man's advice, but he did not take long to change his mind. "He told me he was sorry he had pleaded guilty," Shelby County Sheriff William N. Morris Jr. said last week. Morris had spoken to Ray on the morning after he was sen tenced to a 99-year term in the state penitentiary in Nashville. Ray told him:

"Oh, I'm planning to come back." In deed, almost as soon as Ray had be come a prisoner, he wrote to Judge W. Preston Battle asking for a new trial.

Jail house Lawyer. Ray said that he was firing Foreman -- to which the attorney retorted that his connection with the case had ended the moment that Ray was sentenced. Ray also indicated his intent to alter his plea to not guilty, even though conviction by a jury for murder in the first degree could land him on Nashville's Death Row.

Ray's original plea of guilty means that his sole recourse to obtain a new trial is through a writ of habeas corpus. He told the judge that he would soon be filing such a petition. "I understand this man's a pretty fair jailhouse lawyer," Battle noted. Ray may also receive professional help. Last week he wrote to his previous defender, Arthur J. Hanes. Then Lawyer J. B. Stoner of Savannah, Ga., a lifelong anti-Negro and anti-Semitic agitator, announced that he would represent Ray in several libel suits.

Not Surprised. The judge was not very surprised by last week's doings. Even before Ray's letter was delivered, Battle apparently anticipated that the case would drop back into his lap. Fiercely uncommunicative about Ray, he continued to guard his tongue. A misplaced word might oblige him to disqualify himself and subject another judge to the ordeal that Battle has endured since he was assigned to try Ray last July 20. Said Battle: "I would not do that to anyone."

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