-Caveat Lector-
{{After J. Edgar closed this case against Blanton, it took 40 years to get
them to reopen it and produce the tape, etc. Attorney General Bill Baxley
has once again expressed his outrage at this. FBI has No comment. But now,
during this Blanton trial, it comes out that the FBI fabricated evidence
against Chambliss in 1977! And the bomb apparently exploded at the wrong
time~~or did it?? So why was the FBI so desperate to convict Chambliss and
refused to do so with Blanton and Cherry? Could this agency have been
behind the bombing in the first place or at least co-conspirator with
Blanton and Cherry? In any event, the FBI has its fingerprints all over the
whole sorry mess. So maybe they have a history of 'assisting' in explosions
ala OK City. Amelia}}
� 2001 Alabama Live, LLC
All rights
reserved.
Blanton case raises new questions about Chambliss' 1977 trial for church
bombing
By JAY REEVES
The Associated Press
5/5/01 12:01 PM
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- The prosecution's evidence against Thomas Blanton
Jr. led jurors to convict the one-time Ku Klux Klansman in the 1963 church
bombing that killed four black girls. But the trial had another, unintended
effect.
It raised questions among some about an earlier conviction in the bombing of
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, that of former Klansman Robert
Chambliss in 1977.
During the pretrial maneuvering in the Blanton case, the government admitted
that a key witness against Chambliss -- his niece -- had been untruthful to
investigators in 1964. But in 1977, the Chambliss jury and his defense
lawyers didn't know of the earlier lie, which could have been used to damage
her credibility.
Testimony and evidence about the bomb itself also varied greatly in the two
trials. In the Blanton case, the FBI acknowledged it knew virtually nothing
about the makeup of the bomb; in 1977, prosecutors attempted to show it was
dynamite rigged to detonate with a fishing bobber.
Chambliss was convicted of murder and died in prison in 1985 proclaiming his
innocence until the end. Known around Birmingham as a vile racist even
before the bombing, he has few, if any, public defenders.
Former Attorney General Bill Baxley, who prosecuted Chambliss, said Friday
he remains "absolutely" confident Chambliss was guilty. "More so than ever,"
he said.
Even Blanton's attorney, John Robbins, avoided direct criticism of the 1977
prosecution, which helped lay the groundwork for his own client's
conviction.
"I know some questionable things came out during the course of this trial
concerning that case, but I'm not here to defend Bob Chambliss," Robbins
said in an interview.
"The jury said he did it," Robbins said. "I respect the jury's decision in
that."
Still, evidence in the Blanton case cast an unflattering light on some of
the most important testimony used to tie Chambliss to the bombing:
--A star witness against Chambliss, Elizabeth Cobbs, was acknowledged by
prosecutors in the latest trial to have been untruthful to investigators
before taking the stand in 1977.
During the trial, she testified that Chambliss, her uncle, had made
incriminating statements about the explosion. "It wasn't meant to hurt
anybody. It didn't go off when it was supposed to," Cobbs quoted Chambliss
as saying days after the bombing.
But jurors in the Chambliss trial didn't know that Cobbs had once claimed to
have seen Chambliss, Blanton and two other Klansmen, Bobby Frank Cherry and
Herman Cash, in a car near the church around the time the bomb was
supposedly planted. She later recanted that statement.
Chambliss' lawyers didn't know about the lie, and neither did jurors. Laws
at the time did not require prosecutors to divulge such evidence to the
defense, and it wasn't until later that Chambliss' lawyers learned of Cobbs'
untruths, which could have impeached her testimony.
Defense attorneys in the case this year cited Cobbs' fabrication in asking a
judge to dismiss the latest charges. Prosecutors acknowledged the falsehood,
but the court refused to dismiss the case.
--Prosecutors in 1977 claimed the bomb was made of dynamite, linking the
explosion to Chambliss at least symbolically because of his nickname:
"Dynamite Bob." There was testimony in both the Chambliss and Blanton trials
from people who said a smell of dynamite hung in the air after the blast.
But Charles Killion, a retired FBI bomb expert who was active in the
original investigation, testified during the Blanton trial that
investigators did not know what kind of explosive was used.
While the bomb was likely dynamite or a material called safety fuse, Killion
testified, it also could have been made of any of a number of other high
explosives including TNT, nitroglycerin or the plastic explosive C-4.
--In the Chambliss trial, the government claimed the bomb was triggered with
a device that included a fishing bobber which was found outside the church
after the blast. The theory meshed with a statement Chambliss once made
about using a bobber to make a bomb trigger called a "drip bucket."
In the Blanton trial, however, Killion acknowledged that a team of
investigators found no bomb components. The FBI never determined how the
explosion was set off, Killion testified.
In an interview last week with The Associated Press after the trial,
Killion, who wasn't involved in the 1977 case, said he never before heard of
a bobber being found outside the church, or the "drip bucket" theory.
The bobber wasn't shown to jurors in 1977; an FBI agent testified it had
been lost.
U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who prosecuted Blanton, said the bobber was
"irrelevant" in the case against Blanton. He said it mattered in the earlier
trial only because of a statement by Chambliss, who once told an
investigator that bombs could be detonated using a device that included a
bobber.
While prosecutors in the Chambliss case went to great lengths to describe
the bomb's makeup, Jones did not offer the Blanton jury any theories about
how the device was made.
"Why would I even guess?" he said in an interview afterward. "The FBI didn't
have anything on it."
Jones and Baxley said such discrepancies between 1977 and now did nothing to
counter another vital piece of evidence against Chambliss: The testimony of
the late Kirthus Glenn, who said she saw Chambliss and Blanton outside the
church the night before the blast.
The jury's decision to convict Chambliss was correct, Jones said. He added:
"It's just a different set of evidence."
A former prosecutor who assisted Baxley with the Chambliss case also
defended that trial as fair in an interview.
"The legal standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. (We) met it in the eyes of
the jury and the appellate courts," said John Yung, a one-time Baxley
assistant.
An activist within the white supremacist movement said the differing
evidence between 1977 and now backs up his long-held claim that whites are
being unfairly prosecuted for civil rights crimes.
"It kind of makes you wonder," said Richard Barrett, attorney for the
Nationalist Party in Learned, Miss. "It's like, `Don't bother us with the
facts."
Chambliss' attorney, Art Hanes Jr., is now a circuit judge in Jefferson
County, where Blanton was tried. He declined comment on the case while
charges are still pending against another ex-Klansman, Bobby Frank Cherry.
Cherry, 71, was indicted last year with Blanton. A judge delayed his trial
indefinitely after two evaluations raised questions about whether he was
mentally competent to stand trial.
A third evaluation requested by prosecutors is expected to be done in about
two weeks, said defense lawyer Mickey Johnson. If the findings agree with
earlier results, Cherry will likely never be tried.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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