Word: reeb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...have the facts." After four days of testimony last week, the all-white jury concurred. It took just 95 minutes to acquit three white fellow citizens of the murder of James J. Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston who was clubbed to death in the Alabama city last March after participating in civil rights demonstrations...
Weak case or not, McLeod's assistant, Virgis Ashworth, handled-the prosecution vigorously and intelligently enough to give the defendants some bad moments. His best witnesses were two other white Yankee ministers who were beaten along with Reeb after the trio left a Negro cafe. Both the Rev. Clark Olsen and the Rev. Orloff Miller identified one of the accused, Elmer L. Cook, 42, as among their assailants. "There is no question in my mind," Olsen persisted under tough cross-examination by Defense Attorney Joe T. Pilcher Jr., "that Mr. Cook is the one who attacked...
Severe Handicaps. But there was considerable doubt that Cook had struck Reeb. And there was no direct evidence at all to seriously incriminate the other two defendants, William Hoggle, 37, and his brother Namon, 31. The lack of testimony was no fault of Ashworth's. He worked under handicaps far more severe than those that usually bedevil
...Defense Attorney Pilcher hinted darkly that Reeb did not die simply from his wounds. The civil rights movement wanted headlines, he contended, and there was "a motivation on the part of certain civil rights groups to have a martyr." Pilcher could produce no hard evidence that "they willingly let him die," and Ashworth riddied the claim with objections. But Pilcher had made his point...
...brother, William Stanley Hoggle, 36; and Elmer L. Cook, 41, who has a record of 26 arrests since 1948 and has been fined at least 13 times on an assortment of assault and battery convictions. A fourth man, R. B. Kelley, 30, who was arrested with the others after Reeb was fatally clubbed and signed a statement for police, was not indicted. The others are expected to be tried in October. Hearing the case, in all likelihood, will be Circuit Judge James Hare...