May 22, 2002 Posted: 3:54 PM EDT
(1954 GMT)
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (CNN) -- The latest
chapter in U.S. civil rights history was concluded
in an Alabama courtroom Wednesday when a jury found
a former Ku Klux Klansman guilty of first-degree
murder in a 1963 church bombing that killed four
African-American schoolgirls.
Bobby Frank Cherry, who maintained his innocence
all the way to the verdict, was sentenced to life in
prison.
The jury of six white women, three white men and
three black men deliberated for a total of seven
hours Tuesday and Wednesday before returning its
verdict. Cherry, 71, could also could have been
found guilty of second-degree murder or
manslaughter.
"The whole bunch lied all the way through
this thing. ... I don't know why I'm going to jail
for nothing. I haven't done anything," Cherry
told the judge after the verdict was read.
Circuit Judge James Garrett immediately sentenced
Cherry, and said, "Good luck, sir" before
Cherry was led from the courtroom.
Cherry was charged with four counts of murder and
four counts of arson in the slayings at the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. He
was accused of helping a group of Klansmen plant a
bomb that exploded on September 15, 1963, as
worshippers arrived for services.
It killed 11-year-old Denise McNair and
14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and
Cynthia Wesley.
Prosecutor Doug Jones called Cherry and his
alleged co-conspirators "the forefathers of
terrorism" in closing arguments Tuesday.
"Bobby Frank Cherry is a murderer who has
lived among us, " Jones told the jurors,
referring to the 39 years since the crime that
Cherry has lived as a free man.
Two other men have been convicted in the bombing.
Robert Chambliss, known as "Dynamite
Bob," was convicted of murder in 1977 and died
in prison. Ex-Klansman Thomas Blanton Jr. was
convicted of murder last year and was sentenced to
life in prison. A fourth suspect, Herman Cash died
in 1994 without being charged.
Cherry was to have gone on trial with Blanton,
but Cherry's trial was delayed over questions about
his mental competence.
Referring to the previous convictions, defense
attorney Mickey Johnson argued, "We are not
going to let the state convict purely on guilt by
association."
Johnson admitted that his client's former
membership in the Ku Klux Klan was a strike against
him, but he urged jurors had to look beyond that in
weighing their verdict.
The key defense witness Saturday was 78-year-old
Mary Cunningham, an informant for the FBI in the
1960s, who denied information in a 1964 FBI memo
that quoted her as saying she had seen Cherry plant
the bomb at the church.
"I did not make that claim. ... I didn't do
it. I didn't see it," Cunningham testified.
Witnesses for the prosecution included family
members who said Cherry had talked about being
involved in the bombing.
