Now 78 years old, he’s segregated from the rest of the prisoners for his own safety. His petition was denied by an Alabama parole board on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
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Across the country, civil rights activists opposed the parole saying Blanton has served only 15 years of four life sentences. And he had 30 some odd years of freedom.
Blanton is the last surviving KKK member convicted of murder in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. characterized the victims in the church bombing – 11-year-old McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson – as “martyrs” in the struggle for racial justice, and they were the subject of Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls. The four girls had just left Sunday School where the lesson was “A Love that Forgives”.
ELLIOTT: McNair says Blanton might be an old man now but should serve out his time.
“We drove over to a hospital, and we fumbled around, and we found somebody else who had been in the morgue”, he told reporter Michele Norris. He has not admitted guilt. “We are definitely sorry for your loss”, said Walker.
“Blanton has maintained his innocence since his trial in 2001”. He was convicted under 1963 laws which did not provide for life without parole.
“He’s technically being considered for parole but I think to really, realistically be eligible for parole, I think any prisoner has to come forward and talk about what they did, accept the responsibility, reach out and apologize to this community and to these families and he has shown absolutely no inclination to do that”, Jones said. “At the heart of this hearing is four life sentences”, Jefferson county District Attorney Brandon Falls said at the parole hearing.
Groups including the NAACP and the family organization Jack and Jill of America have sent letters objecting to Blanton’s possible release.
Today, the congregation at 16 Street Baptist is still mostly black, but at a recent church service people of different races filled the main level of the sanctuary. So does bombing survivor Sarah Collins Rudolph.
The former USA attorney who convicted him, Doug Jones, opposed the parole request.
November 18, 1977 – Robert Chambliss is convicted of first-degree murder in connection with the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment. Jones considers Blanton a terrorist.
After impassioned comment by a number of people involved in the case, a two-man panel denied the parole.
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Jones, who prosecuted Blanton and Bobby Cherry when the bombing case was reopened in the 1990’s, said he plans to speak in opposition to parole at the hearing.
