Mississippi: Delayed Justice

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Byron de la Beckwith was a happy man in 1964 when two different all-white juries deadlocked on whether he was guilty of shooting black civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss. But Beckwith's tribulations are far from over: last week the avowed white supremacist and former fertilizer salesman, now 70, was arrested in Tennessee and charged once again with the 1963 killing.

The case was revived after more than a quarter-century by Jackson's daily Clarion-Ledger, which last year ran a series of investigative stories on Beckwith's earlier trials. That prompted Hinds County district attorney Ed Peters and assistant D.A. Bobby DeLaughter to re-examine the 1964 proceedings. From then on, as DeLaughter puts it, evidence began "falling into our laps."

Evers' widow Myrlie produced a 1,500-page transcript of the earlier trials, though prosecutors had previously said that all known copies had disappeared. Then Beckwith's long-missing rifle mysteriously turned up in the garage of DeLaughter's father-in-law. Finally, two black witnesses are expected to place Beckwith in the vicinity of the shooting. Beckwith is fighting extradition to Mississippi. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 22.