Yesterday Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon announced that he is rescheduling Edgar Ray Killen's trial from April 18 to June 13 (via Neshoblog). "I'm concerned with his ability to come to court," Gordon said.
And besides there's a lot of stuff to do before Killen goes to trial.
Gordon said, in addition to the defendant's condition, a lot of other things need to be done, including arranging hotel rooms for witnesses and having jury questionaires filled out, returned and reviewed by attorneys.
We wouldn't want all those professionals on the court staff and in the lawyers' offices to have to work too hard. District Attorney Mark Duncan isn't too worried, though. He told Judge Gordon,
"We'll be ready unless something unforeseen happens."
When Killen was arraigned in court in January, there was a bomb threat that cleared out the Neshoba County Courthouse for thirty minutes. At the time I emphasized how such incidents are part of a long history of domestic terror that is geared towards subduing African Americans. Such terror has always served an equally important purpose: to scare whites out of acting justly.
I'm beginning to think Judge Gordon was the intended audience of that bomb threat, as much as anyone else was. I know, I know . . . It might have just been a senseless prank. Somehow I doubt it, and regardless of who made the threat there does seem to be something making Judge Gordon lose his resolve to hear this case. Or maybe he never had that resolve in the first place. If all this sounds paranoid, let's just start asking questions about why it's taken until 2005 to come even this close to such minimal forms of restitution. But now I digress, since I've already said plenty about that.
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