THE UNSCRIPTED TELEVISION TRIAL
How to reject a jury verdict
Is the task of a thoughtful people.
But, without knowledge, it has no credit,
The masses have a silent steeple.
I had to find another way to get the case heard and began fleshing out the bones of an unscripted TV trial—featuring real evidence, witnesses, a judge, and a counsel before an independent jury. It would be conducted strictly according to Tennessee law and criminal procedure. James liked the proposal from the outset, believing that if he could tell his story to an independent jury, he had a good chance of winning, though material evidence in the files of the federal government was sealed and unavailable to the defense.
In 1992, I signed a contract with Thames Television in London. Former US Attorney Hickman Ewing agreed to be the prosecutor; Marvin E. Frankel, a former federal district court judge, now practicing law in New York, the judge. I would lead the case for the defense. The jury was selected from a pool of US citizens initially secured by a consultant research group. Hickman and I agreed on twelve jurors and two alternates. As the trial approached, however, we were forced to move the jury from one hotel to another after our security people learned that the FBI had wired all of the rooms on the floor where the jury was staying.
In putting forward our case, we intended to go well beyond the actual murder and demonstrate the existence and extent of a cover-up.
The evidence we unearthed strengthened and tied together earlier findings. There could no longer be any doubt the prosecution’s chief witness was drunk and that Dr. King’s room at the Lorraine Motel was switched from one on a secluded ground-floor courtyard to a highly exposed one with a balcony.
Eyewitnesses Solomon Jones, Dr. King’s driver in Memphis; James Orange, SCLA field organizer; and journalist Earl Caldwell said the fatal shot was fired from the brush area, not the bathroom. Reporter Kay Black and James Orange both alleged the brush area had been cut and cleared back the morning after the shooting, possibly along with an inconveniently placed tree branch. I learned from Maynard Stiles, deputy director of the Memphis City Public Works Department in 1968, that the predawn cleanup request came from the Memphis Police Department early on the morning of April 5.
A number of suspicious events were confirmed. The only two black firemen were ordered (the night before the killing) not to report the next day to their posts at Fire Station No. 2 overlooking the Lorraine. Black detective Ed Redditt was removed from his surveillance post about an hour before the event. The MPD failed to form the usual security squad of black detectives for Dr. King. The emergency TACT support units were pulled back and TACT 10 was removed from the Lorraine to the fire station.
Evidence emerged that the CB hoax broadcast, which drew police attention to the northeastern side of the city, had been transmitted from downtown, near the scene of the killing. A former FBI agent confirmed harassment and surveillance of Dr. King by the Bureau, and MPD special services/intelligence bureau officer Jim Smith confirmed that Dr. King’s suite at the Rivermont where he usually stayed was under electronic surveillance by federal agents.
There were increasing indications that members of the Liberto family in Memphis and New Orleans were implicated in the killing. Jim’s Grill owner Loyd Jowers seemed increasingly likely to have played a role. Taxi driver James McCraw’s earlier claim that Jowers showed him a rifle under the counter in his Grill was corroborated by Betty Spates, a waitress at Jim’s Grill who implicated Jowers, her former boss and lover, in the murder, admitting that after hearing what sounded like a shot she saw him run into the kitchen from the brush carrying a rifle. Her sister Bobbi told of having been driven to work by Jowers the next morning. He admitted finding a rifle out back. She also pointed to some sinister activity going on upstairs on the day of the killing and having been told by Jowers not to take food up to the recuperating Grace Walden, Charlie Stephens’s common-law wife. The death of Times magazine stringer and investigative reporter Bill Sartor in 1971 was confirmed to be murder. He was on the trail of the Marcello/Liberto organized-crime connection to Dr. King’s murder.
During the trial, the prosecution made great play of James’s “racism” and that he had supposedly stalked Dr. King. Great pieces of our evidence were excluded. Betty Spates and her sister were too terrified to testify, and John McFerren fled in fear. In my closing speech, I said the prosecution hadn’t introduced a shred of evidence of any motive. I went over the many holes in the prosecution’s flimsy case. These included the failure to match the evidence slug to the rifle at the scene, the fact that none of James’s prints were found in the rooming house, that the state’s chief witness was falling-down drunk, the bathroom was empty just before the shot was fired, and there were three eyewitnesses to activity in the bushes and two eyewitnesses who saw James’s white Mustang being driven away from the rooming house minutes before the shooting.
I then catalogued strange events surrounding the case, including apparent tampering with the evidence slug, the cutting down of the tree and the bushes, the change of motel and room, the removal of security, and the standing down of black officers. Could James alone really have arranged these events?
The program aired on April 4, 1993—the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dr. King’s death. The jury found the defendant not guilty after deliberating for over seven hours.
The silence from media organizations was deafening. No major media had ever provided such a springboard to reopen a case—though, as never before, James’s innocence had been made clear.