The preliminary events in the trial of Klansman Edgar Ray Killen for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are taking place today. The initial jury pool was called this morning. Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi's best reporter and the man who broke the Medgar Evers case into the spotlight, has a chilling report on the process.

This trial will be quite interesting. For one thing, you don't have the compelling evidence that was present in the two high-profile civil-rights reprosecutions from the 1990s in Mississippi (the murders of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer). In the Evers case you had a substantial forensic record and a trial transcript; in the Dahmer case, there was a key witness who came forward. Here, the key witness died a few years ago, and the forensic evidence is basically non-existent, as I understand it.

At leas the trial is in the hands of Judge Gordon. He's a tremendous badass of a judge, with loads of experience in criminal trials. He rarely gets reversed in civil cases, and I personally don't know of a single reversal of a criminal conviction that he presided over. Needless to say, this case is overshadowing our judicial corruption scandal.