Judge: Civil rights-era murder case to be tried next spring

Source: Birmingham News/Associated Agencies

Judge: Civil rights-era murder case to be tried next spring
7/10/2007, 11:12 a.m. CDT
By BOB JOHNSON
The Associated Press

MARION, Ala. (AP) — A former state trooper charged with murder in the 1965 shooting death of a black man at a civil rights protest likely will be tried next spring, the judge said Tuesday.

Circuit Judge Tommy Jones said he may set a trial date Friday in the case of James Bonard Fowler, 73, accused of fatally wounding Jimmie Lee Jackson when law officers disrupted a protest march in Marion on the night of Feb. 18, 1965.

Jackson's killing led to historic voting rights protests at Selma. Fowler, a Geneva farmer who has pleaded not guilty and remains free on bond, contends he fired when Jackson tried to grab his gun during a struggle in a cafe, where a number of protesters had fled.
(snip)

Fowler is accused of shooting Jackson in Mack's Cafe, where a number of people fled after troopers and other law officers broke up the protest. Witnesses said the officers were clubbing people in an out-of-control attack that continued into the cafe, where they said Jackson was trying to protect his mother and grandfather when he was shot.




Read more: http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-30/1184080186267080.xml&storylist=alabamanews

The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson
By John Fleming
Editor at large
03-06-2005

MARION, Ala. — In 1965, there was nothing quite so dangerous as a nighttime protest in the Alabama Black Belt. Violence against Civil Rights workers, marchers, peaceful protesters, could flare at anytime in broad daylight. Darkness that year, however, gave cover to hatred and deepened anger.

These were all facts that the 500 or so people filing from the sanctuary of Zion United Methodist Church on the winter night of Feb. 18, 1965, were painfully aware of. Yet they felt they had no choice but to walk into that cold night air and turn toward the city jail half a block away. Inside, locked behind bars, was a young Civil Rights worker, the latest of several hundred people arrested. They planned simply to sing freedom songs to protest his incarceration. But between them and the jail stood a wall of city police officers, sheriff’s deputies and Alabama State Troopers.

As the mass came to a stop before the law enforcement officers, someone switched off the streetlights. In the darkness, came screams and the muffled cracks of billy clubs hitting people. Reporters close in to the town’s square could make out men in uniform first setting upon the peaceful protesters and then chasing them as they fled in all directions. They also saw other white men dressed in casual clothes attacking anyone in their path, Movement activists, peaceful protesters, bystanders and journalists.

A few minutes into the confusion, perhaps 10 Troopers chased a group of protesters into a place called Mack’s Café just off Marion’s city square and directly behind Zion. From that point, nearly all historical accounts and press reports at the time agree the following happened:

As the Troopers entered the café they immediately started overturning tables and hitting customers and marchers alike. In the melee, they clubbed 82-year-old Cager Lee to the floor and his daughter Viola Jackson when she rushed to his aid. When her son, Jimmy Lee Jackson, tried to help his mother he was shot in the stomach by a state Trooper.

Jackson was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in nearby Selma, where for days he hovered between life and death, fighting off a growing infection as a result of the gunshot wound. In the throes of his struggle to live, the head of the Alabama State Troopers, Col. Al Lingo (a man often compared in his viciousness toward the Civil Rights Movement to Birmingham’s Bull Connor) served Jackson with an arrest warrant and the Alabama state Senate formally denounced charges of dereliction by Lingo’s Troopers in Marion.

More:
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-insight-0306-jflemingcol-5c09o1640.htm

Former Trooper's File Lacks Shootings

By PHILLIP RAWLS
The Associated Press
Friday, May 11, 2007; 10:21 PM

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The personnel file of a retired white state trooper charged this week with killing a black man at a 1965 civil rights rally doesn't mention the death at all. Also left out was the killing of another black man a year later that a prosecutor says the trooper also committed on duty.
(snip)

District Attorney Michael Jackson, who is not related to the victim, said that in probing the four-decade-old case, he learned that Fowler also shot a detainee to death in 1966 at the city jail in Alabaster.

According to news reports in 1966, Nathan Johnson Jr., 34, of Birmingham, who was jailed for DUI, grabbed Fowler's nightstick and hit him on the shoulder and arm before Fowler shot him twice in the chest. Fowler was not prosecuted for the shooting and has maintained it was in self-defense, as was Jimmie Jackson's death, he says.

Fowler continued to get "good" or "excellent" ratings every six months, until Sept. 26, 1968, when his supervisor, Sgt. T.B. Barden, accused him of attacking him at the trooper office in Birmingham because of a bad job evaluation.

Reports from other troopers at the scene said Fowler rammed Barden's head into the windshield of a car, breaking the windshield and knocking Barden unconscious. Barden was treated at a Birmingham hospital.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102414.html?tid=informbox

Wednesday, Jul 11, 2007 - 11:00 PM
By Associated Press

ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) - A forensic pathologist said an autopsy report suggests that a black man shot by a state trooper at a civil rights protest in Marion in 1965 died from botched medical care at a Selma hospital.

The article appeared in Wednesday's Anniston Star.

The medical issues raised in the paper's report on the death of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson are viewed by the prosecutor as irrelevant to the murder case against the now-retired trooper, James Fowler of Geneva.

But Fowler's defense attorney said the autopsy shows that medical error led to Jackson's death, which could be evidence weighing in Fowler's favor. ~snip~

http://www.nbc13.com/gulfcoastwest/vtm/news.apx.-content-articles-VTM-2007-07-11-0025.html

Gut shoot a fellow and blame the doctors when he dies ...

the HOSPITAL CARE where they were taken kills them!

Sure hope the jury won't fall for this, no matter who's on the jury. To let the defense win over common sense and decency here would be so wrong. Everyone who heard about this event back then, who participated in the March on Selma after it happened, was surely not living with suspicion the cop didn't do it. Especially considering the cop had killed TWO people by close range gunshots, and had the police department keep all reference to either event completely off his record.

It was open season. They figured it would ALWAYS be open season, that they would always be in charge, one way or another. Hope that jury shows them otherwise.