04/18/01
CHANDA TEMPLE
News staff write
 

The Alabama Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected lawyer John Robbins' motion to keep secret FBI recordings out of his client's church bombing trial. Robbins now says he might take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would be Robbins' third attempt to keep a Jefferson County jury from hearing the tapes of former Klansman Thomas E. Blanton Jr.

Blanton is accused of murder in the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church explosion, which killed four girls. Opening statements in his trial are set for next week.

Robbins has said the recordings, made with a hidden microphone planted in Blanton's kitchen for seven weeks in 1964, violate his client's right to privacy.

Circuit Judge James Garrett sided with prosecutors last week, ruling that the tapes could be played at trial.

Last week, Robbins appealed to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and the Alabama Supreme Court. However, both dismissed his emergency petitions.

Robbins said if he asks the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the matter, he will do so by today.

"We will continue to fight," he said. "We think we are right on the issue and we will continue to fight."

U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, one of three prosecutors in the case, said Tuesday he believes Robbins "needs just to pursue whatever remedies he feels are appropriate. We also believe the (state) Supreme Court did the right thing by denying that."

Robbins said his persistent appeals are not normal in "your average criminal case. But this is not your normal criminal case."

Only one person has been convicted in the bombing and that was in 1977 when a jury found Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss guilty of murder. He died in prison.

Another defendant, 71-year-old Bobby Frank Cherry, was to be tried with the 62-year-old Blanton next week. However, Garrett postponed Cherry's trial indefinitely after two mental evaluations found he had vascular dementia.

Jury selection in the 37-year-old case started Monday with 92 potential jurors completing lengthy questionnaires behind closed doors and under the eyes of bailiffs. Completed forms will be filed under seal, and lawyers have declined to release a blank questionnaire to reporters. Jones said lawyers wanted to keep even the blank surveys confiden tial to avoid tainting potential jurors.

Potential jurors return to court Thursday, where lawyers will question them privately about their answers and try to determine whom they want to sit on the jury.

Prosecutors and the defense will select 12 jurors and four alternates.

Each side will eliminate 14 potential jurors from a pool of 44 to secure a jury of 16. If any of the 44 must drop our before the elimination begins, one of 48 extras will replace him.

The jury should be selected next week, and quickly sequestered. Opening statements and testimony will follow. The trial could last two weeks.