U.S.

Former KKK Leader Convicted

August 21, 1998 / 4:49 PM EDT / AP

A former Ku Klux Klan leader was convicted Friday of ordering the 1966 firebombing death of a civil rights activist. Four trials in the 1960s had ended in deadlocked juries.

The jury deliberated just over two hours before convicting Samuel H. Bowers, 73, of arson and murder in the fiery death of Vernon Dahmer. Prosecutors say he was killed for his efforts to help blacks to register to vote.

"Take him away," Circuit Judge Richard McKenzie said after the jury foreman announced the verdict, which carried an automatic life term.

There was no immediate indication as to whether Bowers would appeal.

Members of the Dahmer family, including his widow, Ellie, hugged after court was dismissed.

"These tears that I am shedding, I am shedding for Vernon, because I know he is looking at us today," Mrs. Dahmer said. "This is a happy moment for all of us." Earlier this week, she gave emotional testimony of how their home was set afire in the middle of the night and how her husband died in her arms hours later at a hospital.

Authorities said Bowers would immediately be moved to the state penitentiary at Parchman. He did not comment as he was led from the Forrest County Courthouse.

Forrest County District Attorney Lindsay Carter said Bowers appeared to expect the conviction. Bowers showed no emotion as it was read.

"Before the jury came out, he started emptying his pockets, took off his watch in anticipation of what was going to happen," Carter said. "I think he knew what was coming."

Earlier, however, a smiling Bowers walked into the courthouse media room and posed for pictures with members if the defense team.

Prosecutors say Bowers dispatched two carloads of his White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to Dahmer's Hattiesburg area home and business.

Dahmer remained in his burning home, holding off the Klansmen while his family escaped out a back window.

Travis Buckley, Bowers' lawyer, argued that his client was being retried to further the political ambitions of state Attorney General Mike Moore, a potential candidate for governor.

"I say to you, Mr. Bowers is being sacrificed to the media," he told jurors.

The four previous trials for Bowers included at least two before all-white juries. By contrast, the jury at new trial had six whites, five blacks and one Asian-American.

While Bowers was not convicted in the Dahmer case until now, he eventually served six years in prison for one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era: the 1964 "Mississippi Burning" slayings of three civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney.

Today's verdict was the second time in recent years that prosecutors in Mississippi won a conviction involving the decades-old killing of a civil rights activist. In 1994, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers Beckwith had been tried twice before, but, as with Bowers, hung juries had set him free.