Word: beckwiths
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...Jackson cab drivers told how, four days before Evers was ambushed on June 12, Beckwith had asked directions to Evers' home, saying, "I've got to find where he lives in a couple of days." A young woman said that she had seen a car similar to Beckwith's parked near Evers' house 50 minutes before the shooting. But because the bullet that killed Medgar Evers was too badly shattered to produce positive results in ballistics tests, the state never did prove that it had been fired by the rifle in the sweetgum grove...
...When the defense's turn came, Chief Counsel Hardy Lott, a former president of Greenwood's white Citizens Council, which had solicited funds for Beckwith's defense, called 20 witnesses, compared with the prosecution's 36. Two were Greenwood cops who claimed they had seen Beckwith in Greenwood, a fast 90-minute drive from Jackson, shortly before and after the killing...
...star witness for the defense was "Delay" Beckwith himself, who punctuated his testimony with soft "suhs." "Did you kill Medgar Evers?" asked Lott. "No, suh." Was Beckwith in Jackson the night of the murder? "No, suh." At one point, Lott handed Beckwith the Enfield to examine. Beckwith leaned forward in the witness chair, aimed the gun over the jury's heads and pulled the trigger. Said he: "I couldn't say this is my scope or my gun." Anyway, Beckwith added pleasantly, his Enfield with a telescopic sight had been stolen from his car two days before Evers...
...Word of Caution. On crossexamination, Waller brought out Beckwith's militant segregationist sentiments. Beckwith admitted writing a letter to a Jackson newspaper in which he said: "I shall bend every effort to rid the U.S. of integrationists, whoever and wherever they may be." As Waller read the excerpt, Beckwith leaned forward to caution him solicitously: "I want you to understand; and where there is humor intended, I want you to laugh and smile; and where it is serious, I want you to be serious...
After the jury went out, Beckwith's wait was relieved by visits from former Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett and onetime Army Major General Edwin A. Walker. Beckwith seemed deeply moved by their presence. At week's end, Beckwith's lawyers prepared to file a motion to get him out of jail on bond while he awaits a new trial, which will probably come in the late spring...