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Marion, Ala. A tentative early January trial has been set for a former state trooper facing murder charges in the 1965 shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson.
Perry County District Attorney Michael Jackson said Friday the trial of former Trooper James Bonard Fowler could begin the last week of January or during the first two weeks of February.
A pretrial hearing was set for Nov. 8 to hear several motions on the case, including defense requests that the case be dismissed because key witnesses have died, a challenge to the composition of the grand jury that indicted Fowler and a request that the case be heard in another county.
“We want the trial set as soon as we can,” Jackson said. “We’re dealing with something that happened 40 years ago, and we’ve got a lot of old people involved in this situation. So time is a factor.”
Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot on the night of Feb. 18, 1965, in the Perry County seat of Marion during a fight that erupted after street lights went out during a civil rights march near the courthouse. Jackson died eight days later, his death one of the causes behind the subsequent Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.
Fowler, free on $250,000 bond, has expressed regret for the shooting, calling it accidental. He also has said he fired in self-defense when Jackson, 26, tried to take his gun. Jackson’s relatives have said he was shot while trying to defend his mother and grandfather.
Fowler, who was indicted in May, has filed a plea of not guilty to first- and second-degree murder charges.
Andrea Hopkins, Reuters, July 24, 2007
Seventeen-year-old Quantae Williams doesn’t understand why the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his school district’s racial diversity program.
He now dreads the prospect of leaving his mixed-race high school in suburban Louisville and returning to the poor black downtown schools where he used to get in fights.
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“Everything is mixed, we get along well. If I go where all my friends go, I’ll start getting in trouble again,” Williams said as he took a break from his summer job sorting clothing donations for poor families.
Last month’s 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court struck down programs that were started voluntarily in Louisville and Seattle, using race as a factor to determine public school placements. The court’s decision has left schools across the country scrambling to find a way to protect diversity in their classrooms.
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But with the old rules overturned, many parents, students and officials worry that gains in diversity may be lost for good.
BUSING HARDSHIP
“I know (the busing) is a hardship sometimes for a few parents but in the long run their kids are going to school with a multitude of different types of kids and I think that’s society, that’s how we should be raised,” said Traci Priddy, president of the Jefferson County Parent Teacher Association.
The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority declared that taking race into account to integrate a school is just as bad as using race to segregate one. Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s sole black member, agreed.
Under Jefferson County’s voluntary program, racial guidelines were used to keep black student enrollment at most schools between 15 percent and 50 percent. That often meant busing black kids to suburban schools and trying to lure white students to downtown schools by creating “magnet” programs with exceptional math, computer, language or arts departments.
Some schools remain majority black, however, and some parents resented having their children bused to a lower-performing school in the name of racial diversity.
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SEEKING ALTERNATIVES
Jefferson County School Board Chairman Joe Hardesty said the community was disappointed with the ruling but hopes to come up with a new way to protect diversity without mentioning race—perhaps by considering income or home addresses.
The fact that many U.S. schools remain starkly divided by race despite integration attempts is mostly the result of America’s starkly divided neighborhoods, said John Powell, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Ohio.
He said many blacks are shut out of better white neighborhoods by systemic housing discrimination and since U.S. school funding is based on local tax receipts, poor neighborhoods beget poor schools.
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Using income levels as an end-run around the race question has been implemented in some 40 districts across the United States, with mixed results. In small districts, all the children might be poor, making integration impossible.
The threat of lawsuits has convinced other schools to give up on diversity altogether—a prospect Hardesty rejects.
“The board is not interested in a plan that would resegregate our schools but obviously we have to work within confines of the decision that we have,” he said.
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http://grades.betterimmigration.com/delegation.php3?District=AL
http://profiles.numbersusa.com/profile_state.php3?District=AL
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa)… A-
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Mobile)… A
Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Mobile)… B+
Rep. Terry Everett (R-Enterprise)… B
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks)… A
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville)… A
Rep. Bud Cramer (D-Huntsville)… B
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Vestavia Hills)… B+
Rep. Artur Davis (D-Birmingham)… D
Autopsy raises questions in civil rights-era killing at Marion
| 7/11/2007, 10:27 a.m. CDT The Associated Press |
ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) — A forensic pathologist says an autopsy report suggests that a black man shot by a state trooper at a civil rights protest in Marion in 1965 died from botched medical care at a Selma hospital, The Anniston Star reported Wednesday.
The medical issues raised in the newspaper’s report on the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson are viewed by the prosecutor as irrelevant to the murder case against the now-retired trooper, James Bonard Fowler.
But Fowler’s defense attorney said the autopsy shows that medical error led to Jackson’s death, which could be evidence weighing in Fowler’s favor.
Fowler, 73, of Geneva, has pleaded not guilty and contends he shot Jackson, 26, in self-defense.
Dr. Kris Sperry, the chief medical officer of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told the Star that the autopsy report indicates that a “massive infection” occurred when holes in Jackson’s bowels were not properly sutured.
“What is being suggested in the report is that the doctor made a mistake. The holes were not closed properly. In my opinion, had the holes been closed, this would have been a survivable injury,” Sperry said.
Dr. William Dinkins, the attending physician when Jackson was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, signed a death certificate listing the cause of Jackson’s death as “peritonitis,” an inflammation or infection of the abdominal cavity. “Gunshot wound of abdomen” is listed as a condition that gave rise to the peritonitis.
Dinkins, who is now dead, gave an interview in 1979 to a producer of the documentary film, “Eyes on the Prize,” in which he said another physician gave Jackson too much anesthesia during a second surgery and that Jackson died on the operating table, the newspaper reported.
“In my opinion, Jimmie Lee Jackson died of an overdose of anesthesia,” Dinkins is quoted as saying in a transcript of the interview, which was not used in the film. The Star obtained the transcript from the Washington University Film and Media Archive in St. Louis.
Legal experts contacted by the Star said the Dinkins’ interview probably would not be allowed as evidence but the autopsy report might. Sperry said even the autopsy report does not dispute the fact that Jackson needed medical care because he had been shot.
“It’s a tough defense to use, really,” Sperry said. “I mean, if he hadn’t been shot, he wouldn’t have been in the hospital, right? The shooting precipitated the event.”
District Attorney Michael Jackson, who brought the civil rights-era cold case against Fowler, agreed with Sperry’s assessment.
“If he wouldn’t have been shot, he wouldn’t have been in the hospital. What he died of, infection, whatever, it doesn’t change the fact the he was killed for no reason,” he said.
George Beck, Fowler’s attorney, viewed the autopsy as evidence for the defense.
“This report shows there was a botched medical procedure that led to the man’s death,” said Beck.
Judge: Civil rights-era murder case to be tried next spring
| 7/10/2007, 11:12 a.m. CDTBy BOB JOHNSONThe Associated Press |
MARION, Ala. (AP) — A former state trooper charged with murder in the 1965 shooting death of a black man at a civil rights protest likely will be tried next spring, the judge said Tuesday.
Circuit Judge Tommy Jones said he may set a trial date Friday in the case of James Bonard Fowler, 73, accused of fatally wounding Jimmie Lee Jackson when law officers disrupted a protest march in Marion on the night of Feb. 18, 1965.
Jackson’s killing led to historic voting rights protests at Selma. Fowler, a Geneva farmer who has pleaded not guilty and remains free on bond, contends he fired when Jackson tried to grab his gun during a struggle in a cafe, where a number of protesters had fled.
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Beck previously has filed motions to dismiss the indictment and, if a trial is held, to move it from Marion.
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Fowler is accused of shooting Jackson in Mack’s Cafe, where a number of people fled after troopers and other law officers broke up the protest. Witnesses said the officers were (allegedly) clubbing people in an out-of-control attack that continued into the cafe, where they said Jackson was trying to protect his mother and grandfather when he was shot.
Accounts by troopers say the crowd refused orders to disperse and, when the street lights suddenly went out, they were pelted by bricks and bottles.
Fowler has said he was assisting a trooper who had been struck when Jackson hit him on the head with a bottle. He said he fired the gun when Jackson tried to grab it.
Beck said he has asked that the charges be dismissed because some witnesses who could confirm Fowler’s account of what happened that night have died.
“My client is greatly prejudiced by the death of key witnesses,” Beck said.
The district attorney said he feels it’s important for the case to go to trial.
“This is the case that galvanized the civil rights movement on the voting rights issue,” Jackson said.
Jackson said he feels he has enough evidence to convict Fowler, despite the fact that the case is more than 40 years old.
“We have evidence to show this wasn’t an accident, this wasn’t self defense,” Jackson said.
