After twenty ballots, an all-white jury convicted Hubert Strange on December 2 for the random murder of Willie Brewster on the way home from a July 1965 white supremacy rally, at which Connie Lynch and J. B. Stoner had praised the Liuzzo ambush as a model extermination. Stoner, who served as defense counsel for Strange, denounced the jury as “white niggers.” Civil rights supporters celebrated in the Anniston courtroom by tearing up leaflets that protested an expected acquittal.