JACKSON, Miss. — The state judge who presided over the “Mississippi Burning” trial in 2005 has died.
The state Administrative Office of Courts says retired Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon died Thursday at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson. He was 84. A cause of death was not immediately available.
Gordon sentenced Edgar Ray Killen to 60 years in prison after a mixed-race jury convicted the reputed former Ku Klux Klan leader of manslaughter in the 1964 kidnap-slaying of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County.
The cold case’s revival marked the first time state prosecutors had brought charges against anyone in what the FBI called the “Mississippi Burning” investigation.
Killen was convicted 41 years to the day after the killings of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. The 91-year-old remains in prison.
