An Eye For An Eye

    On the 41st anniversary of the killings, ex-KKK member, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights activists, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. The jury began its first full day of deliberation Tuesday and took only 5 1/2 hours to convict the former Ku Klux Klan leader. Killen will be sentenced Thursday and is facing up to 20 years in prison for each of the three manslaughter convictions. He left the courthouse in his wheelchair, with his oxygen tube, poor old man, but somehow still found the anger and the strength to take a swipe at one of the cameras recording his ignominy. People inside the courtroom cried, and others outside cheered at the news of the conviction.
   It's a step forward, but it does not go quite far enough. The sentencing will tell more. Killen is an old style, bible-thumping preacher himself. If anyone would, he understands an eye for an eye. Forget the "poor old man" crap. Remove the oxygen tube, take him out of the wheelchair, and send him to meet his maker from a nice, comfy seat in the electric chair. Little enough to pay for the three lives that he stole.