A parole board has decided against freeing a one-time Ku Klux Klansman convicted over a church bombing in Alabama that killed four black girls more than 50 years ago. Blanton, 86, had asked the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to let him die as a free man.
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Klu Klux Klan member Thomas Blanton, now 78, was sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for conspiring to hide bombs in the basement of the all-black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, nearly four decades after the bombing.
“Justice is served”, Lisa McNair, sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, told the Associated Press after the hearing.
1994 – Herman Frank Cash dies without being charged in the bombing.
The possibility of Blanton’s parole was an emotional one for family members as well as prosecutors, who fought for years to put Blanton behind bars.
An Alabama parole board has denied the parole of 76-year-old Thomas Edwin Blaton, Jr. “Thomas Blanton has not served his debt to society”. Denise McNair, 14; Cynthia Morris Wesley, 14; Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Carole Robertson, 14, died; 23 others were injured.
Blanton is the last living person convicted of involvement in the notorious bombing.
The board’s decision was met with applause from a group a NAACP member who attended the hearing, NBC News reports.
“Because he has never shown any remorse whatsoever for taking the lives of those innocent little girls, justice can only be served if Thomas Blanton spends the rest of his life in prison”, unusual continued. “It is very sorrowful and it’s very upsetting to not only me and my family, but this nation”, said Dianne Robertson Braddock, sister of Carole Robertson, in reference to the letter she received alerting her to Blanton’s request for parole. The first conviction in the Birmingham bombing didn’t happen until 1977 when Alabama Attorney General Baxley reopened the case, prosecuting Chambliss. No one spoke on behalf of his release.
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Doug Jones, a former USA attorney who prosecuted Blanton on the state charge, said Blanton shouldn’t be released since he has never accepted responsibility for the bombing or expressed any remorse for a crime that was aimed at maintaining racial separation at a time Birmingham’s public schools were facing a court order to desegregate. He has never accepted responsibility or expressed remorse for the killings. Blanton, who is serving his time at the St. Clair Correctional Facility, will be eligible for parole again in five years.
