2002 – In Birmingham, AL, a jury convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder in the 1963 church bombing that killed four girls. Convicted in May


Former Klansman guilty of murder

  • BY DAVID HANCOCK

In the final trial stemming from one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era, a jury convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder Wednesday in a church bombing that killed four black girls in 1963.

The 71-year-old Cherry faces an automatic sentence of life in prison. The jury of nine whites and three blacks deliberated less than a day before returning the verdict after a weeklong trial marked by witnesses with admittedly faded memories and haunting images from the nation’s segregationist past.

CBS News producer who was in the courtroom for the verdict said that Cherry reacted emotionally to the verdict. Asked by the judge if he had any comment, Cherry stood, pointed at prosecutors and said: “This whole bunch lied all the way through this thing.”

Source: cbsnews.com

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