Byron De La Beckwith and the Thirty-One-Year Wait

Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers in July nineteen sixty-three. He was tried in February nineteen sixty-four. The jury, all white and all male, deliberated and could not reach a verdict. He was tried again in April nineteen sixty-four. A second all-white jury deliberated and could not reach a verdict. He was released. He gave speeches about what he had done. He received a hero's reception at meetings of the White Citizens' Council. He ran for lieutenant governor of Mississippi in nineteen sixty-seven. He finished fifth in the Democratic primary.

For the next twenty-five years, Myrlie Evers, who had witnessed her husband's assassination from inside her house, pressed authorities to reopen the case. She was told there was nothing new. She persisted.

In nineteen eighty-nine, a journalist investigating the case uncovered documents showing that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission had researched members of the jury pool during the second of his two original trials and provided that information to Beckwith's defense attorneys. The state had helped a defendant in a murder trial select a sympathetic jury. This was documented. The case was reopened.

The prosecution located witnesses who testified that, in the years after the hung juries, Beckwith had bragged about shooting Medgar Evers. The prosecution found the riflescope from the murder weapon with Beckwith's fingerprints on it. A new jury, racially diverse, was impaneled.

On February fifth, nineteen ninety-four, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the murder of Medgar Evers. He was sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison on January twenty-first, two thousand one, at the age of eighty.

Myrlie Evers later became the third woman to chair the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She never stopped saying her husband's name. At the nineteen sixty-three trial, the courtroom was segregated, by practice if not by law. At the nineteen ninety-four trial, it was not.