Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was granted $600,000 bail which will allow him to remain free while he appeals the manslaughter convictions in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon gave the 80-year-old Killen bond on the basis that he was not a flight risk or a threat to community safety.
'It's not a matter of what I feel, its a matter of the law,' Gordon said, citing past appeals made to the Mississippi Supreme Court on similar grounds.
Killen's family immediately began trying to raise the money needed to free him. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison or 20 years each for the deaths of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
A black jailer testified on Friday that Killen made a remark to him when he was being booked into the jail where he is presently staying. When Kenny Spencer asked Killen if he was suicidal, he told the judge that Killen remarked, 'I would kill you before I killed myself.'
Killen said he did not recall making those remarks and if he did, 'It'd have to be joking.'
Killen's conviction came 41 years to the day after the three civil rights workers were murdered. The incident was recalled in the film 'Mississippi Burning' starring Willem DaFoe and Gene Hackman in 1988.
