MISSISSIPPI: Guilty

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Guilty Still paralyzed by a bullet in his spine, Negro Sharecropper Thomas Harris raised himself painfully from his stretcher and pointed at the defendant. It was 25-year-old Windol Whitt, he swore, who had stood at the back door of his house with a shotgun the night three of his children were murdered and another wounded by three drunken white hoodlums. By Mississippi law, that was all the prosecutor had to prove. Last week an all-white jury in the little town of Kosciusko (pop. 4,291) brought in the verdict.

Bushy-haired, gum-chewing Windol Whitt was found guilty of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment. His brother and one other companion are still to be tried for the same crime.