There is an important flaw in that logic as well; the defendant was only sued for $100, which he was ordered to pay. "[11], Responding to a bar discipline complaint filed regarding the contempt incident, Brown declared himself unable to adequately defend himself as a result of health issues including type II diabetes, hypertension, and stress. Drupal theme by ThemeSnap.com, That is why he could never have been a major drug dealer. (Credit: State of Tennessee, Earl Warren/AP Photo), Coretta Kings specific belief in Rays innocence is a little tougher to explain. The verdict did convict Loyd Jowers and "other parties known and unknown" for their parts in the vast US government conspiracy to assassinate King. Starting with his contribution to the presidential campaign of Wallace, Ray developed a strong animosity towards Martin Luther King Jr. Although it is possible to live in the same prison with someone for 10 years and never speak to him, it is still an intimate atmosphere. [2] He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law. The 12-person jury verdict unanimous exonerated the "patsy" James Earl Ray for any role in the assassination of MLK. As a former judge here, we have a rule in the 30th Judicial Districtit says every single Magistrate Referee has to be unanimously approved by every Circuit, Chancery, and Criminal Court Judge. . In the hours and days after the Tucson shootings, the left wing media in America attempted to blame the Tea Party and right wing rhetoric for the deaths of six and the injuries of thirteen. ''. All the seven prisoners who escaped from the prison were recaptured within two days and sent back to the prison. From 1961 through 1965 I used a substantial amount of amphetamine, and so did many of the people I associated with, and I never bought any from James Earl Ray. In renouncing his guilt, Ray raised the spectre of a conspiracy behind Kings murder but offered scant evidence to support his claim. What Political Party was James Earl Ray part of? HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. He is a male registered to vote in Wayne County, Michigan. In her autobiography, Coretta Scott King wrote how glad she was that both Dexter and young Martin Luther King, III, had a chance to go with their father on . In my interviews with him, I've found him to be eerily unflappable. Ray had seven siblings. James Earl Ray confessed to shooting King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. In order to hang onto your drugs, people had to know that you would kill them without hesitation. Kershaw and Ray approached the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and got approval for the conduct of ballistics tests. Dexter King, son of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., meeting with James Earl Ray the man who confessed to killing King. and condition of the Q64 bullet. In that speech, none other than Robert Byrd pointed to the Memphis riots and the violent consequences as a warning to Johnson not to allow the marches King was planning on Washington in the coming weeks. When authorities caught him in London, hed been planning to travel to Rhodesia, a former African state ruled by a white minority in present-day Zimbabwe. If it hadn't been for the two escape attempts, Ray would almost certainly have been paroled by the time he actually did escape. rear of a roominghouse at 422 1/2 South Main Street, Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray purchased the rifle that was used to shoot Dr. King and transported I know they interviewed some inmates, but they did not interview the people most likely to know something (and also the most likely to tell them to go to hell). Whatever noble goals King proclaimed, the subversive company he chose to keep severely neutralizes any good he may have aspired to and creates serious doubts about the sincerity of his stated mission. In fact, King's family was as convinced of Ray's innocence as the families of Nicole and Ron were convinced of Simpson's guilt. When James Earl Ray bought the rifle that killed King, he mentioned that he was going hunting with his brother. Although Benny was eventually released from prison and returned to work for the engineering firm he'd been employed by at the time of his arrest in Canada, interest in him by then had died out, and the book was never published. Declassified FBI Paper Reveals Martin Luther Kings Sexual Aberrations, Martin Luther King Day Based on MLKs Image, Not Reality, Martin Luther King: The Celebration of a Myth. Each year, the third Monday in January is a celebration to commemorate the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr., the tireless civil rights activist who was gunned down in Memphis, TN, in 1968. Kershaw made Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. Somehow, Ray managed to escape from prison on two different occasions. Stoner had trouble getting into the case, however, because no mainstream lawyer wanted anything to do with him. In prison I knew men who would stab you to death over a carton of cigarettes, or for even a slight insult. The date was November 9, 1963. I first met Benny Edmondson at the Algoa Reformatory in 1956, where he was teaching typing at the school. After the assassination, King's family did not trust the findings of the FBI, which had harassed the civil rights leader while he was alive. He paid for a nose job in cash. Guys told me he would hound you relentlessly if you owed him a quarter, but he wouldn't threaten you with violence. The manhunt was the most expensive and biggest for the FBI (at that time). Ray, who was on escape from a Missouri prison in 1968 claimed, however, that he had gone to a service station to get a tire repaired when the shot was fired. it from Birmingham, Ala., to Memphis, Tenn., where he rented a room at 422 1/2 South Main Street, and moments after the assassination, he dropped In 1997, Kings son Dexter met Ray in prison and asked him whether he had killed his father. In 1999, James Earl Ray was found innocent of killing Martin Luther King Jr. in the same way O.J. I spent virtually all of 1962 in solitary. 15. He did not want to be buried in the USA because he considered that the American government did not treat him fairly. After he was recaptured, Ray hired attorney Jack Kershaw to promote his claim that he was not the person who actually shot King. On January 26, 1976, Time magazine devoted four pages to the King assassination, drawing heavily on material from McMillan's book, which was scheduled for publication later that year: In 1963 and 1964 Martin Luther King was on TV almost every day, talking defiantly about how black people were going to get their rights, insisting that they would accept with nonviolence all the terrible violence that white people were inflicting on them, until the day of victory arrived, until they did overcome. There were no cellblock TVs in Jefferson City in 1963 and 1964. When the day came, Ray walked up to the bread box, got in, and asked a guy named Don to cover him. [22] He was released from protective custody at the Shelby County Corrections Facility the morning of September 1, 2015. The explanation is much simpler. In no uncertain terms, Byrd was calling on Johnson to stop Kings march on D.C. Read More:People died for your right to vote. But within a few days of confessing, Ray began to claim his innocence, arguing that that he had been set up by a man he knew only as Raoul. It was Raoul, Ray said, who had directed him to buy the gun and the binoculars, and rent the room across the street from the motel. Four days after that, Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead. The same NSRP member said there were plans to kill Martin Luther King. James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to assassinating King, was renting a room above Jower's establishment and was allegedly an unwitting scapegoat. King family never believed that Ray was the actual murderer. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at wmass@thenewamerican.com. Jimmy Carter, in full James Earl Carter, Jr., (born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia, U.S.), 39th president of the United States (1977-81), who served as the country's chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. He was a founder and the long-time chairman of the National States' Rights Party as well as the publisher of its newsletter, The Thunderbolt. But within Martin Luther Kings family, there remains a persistent belief that Ray is innocent, and was set up to take the fall. Some people had trouble, for example, believing Ray had arranged his international escape all by himself, since he had a track record of getting caught for more minor crimes. In the five decades since Martin Luther King Jr.was shot dead by an assassin at age 39, his children have worked tirelessly to preserve his legacy, sometimes with sharply different views on how best to do that, an article in the March 30 Washington Post said. [3], After graduating from law school, Brown moved to Memphis, Tennessee to work as an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation. Of the 2,500 men in the prison, fewer than 20 had ever tried to escape from inside the walls. A consequence of Kings alleged involvement in those riots was that it caught the attention of some powerful politicians. He was a skinny guy with sandy hair and a cultured, slightly arrogant manner. William Francis Pepper (born August 16, 1937) is a U.S. lawyer formerly based in New York City who is most noted for his efforts to prove government culpability and the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Pepper has also been trying to prove the innocence of Sirhan Sirhan in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. When I got out the third time, I worked in the Tag Plant. George M. Camp, head of the Missouri prison system, wrote to Cleaver, saying: My findings are that there is nothing whatsoever to substantiate any conclusion that James Earl Ray financed either his escape or his activities after his escape through any means while he was an inmate at the Missouri State Penitentiary. "Somebody's gotta get him," Ray would say, his face drawn with tension, his fists clenched. He believed that King was a serious threat to the dominance of white people in the USA and wanted to stop him through any means. One of the most intriguing aspects of the New Times article on James Earl Ray/Jerry Ray/J.B. His fathers name was George Ellis Ray and his mothers name was Lucille. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. But almost immediately after her husbands assassination, she suspected that the FBI, which had investigated the murder, was involved in it. He decided to assassinate him to stop blacks from getting equal status to the whites. All three bore the fingerprints of an escaped convict named James Earl Ray. The shot that killed Dr. King was fired from the bathroom window at the However, the assessment of King got even worse. Could Chinas Petroyuan Give Rise to a New World Energy Order? Later in life his pleas for a trial were encouraged by some civil-rights leaders, notably the King family. During this period James Earl Ray was most noticeable as a guy who rented out magazines on the yard. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison. James Earl Ray From the viewpoint of a man who served time with Ray in prison, then went on to become a journalist, . The first time I saw James Earl Ray, he had just arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Ray confessed to the crime on March 10, 1969 and received a 99-year prison sentence, which increased to a 100-year sentence after he briefly escaped in 1977. Brown was sentenced to five days in jail,[7][15] but was later released on his own recognizance. After several days, the prison officials concluded that Ray had actually escaped, and they put out an alarm. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. Ray was born in Alton, IL,in 1928, the son of working class Scots-Irish parents. After buying the rifle, he came back to Atlanta where he came to know that King was planning a return trip to Memphis, Tennessee. King is aware of the possibility of violence because one of his aides proclaimed recently to the press, Jail will be the safest place in Washington this spring.. Ten years after his death, Rays brother John Larry Ray wrote a book along with writer Lyndon Barsten called Truth At Last: The Untold Story Behind James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. James Earl Ray was the assassin of American Baptist minister and civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray was born in on March 10, 1928 in a poor Irish-American family of Alton, Illinois, and was raised a Catholic. In March 2014, Brown won the Democratic primary for the position of Shelby County district attorney. No one else I knew did either. and chemically, revealed the presence of lead from a disintegrating James Earl Ray (born 1965) is listed at 42036 Queen Anne Ct Northville, Mi 48167 and has no known political party affiliation. James Earl Ray was an American assassin convicted for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. After his conviction, he spent all his life in prison. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. He was of Irish, Scots, and Welsh ancestry. An international manhunt led to his capture in June 1968 at Heathrow Airport in London, where he was caught carrying two fake Canadian passports. [4] By 1978, Brown became the first African-American prosecutor in Memphis, and he later directed the Memphis public defender's office. James Lawson, a Memphis pastor and civil rights institution who helped mentor King, said he began visiting Ray in the Memphis jail in 1969 when Ray complained about being held in solitary. Mr. Kershaw was a Tennessee lawyer who argued that James Earl Ray, convicted in the 1968 assassination of the Rev. (Several authors have said it was "common knowledge" in Jeff City that you could go to England and acquire an ID the way Ray did. Shortly after Ray pled guilty to the King murder, Clay Blair's book The Strange Case of James Earl Ray was published. In September 1961, I tried to escape and pulled six months in E-Hall, a 100-year-old building whose third floor was for solitary confinement. But what do you know about James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King? . The 12-person jury verdict unanimous exonerated the "patsy" James Earl Ray for any role in the assassination of MLK. He simply hounded you (not that Ray was a coward, or afraid to fight, but he wasn't the type to start the fight). King vs. Loyd Jowers and conspirators unknown. As noted, the committee concluded that James Earl Ray was the assassin of Dr. King. Most recently, after Ray's death in . 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