Former Civil Rights Trial Judge Dies At 84

JACKSON, Miss. (WCBI) – The Mississippi judge best known for presiding over the trial of a man accused of killing civil rights workers has died.

Former judge Marcus D. Gordon died Thursday in a Jackson

hospital.

Gordon sentenced Edgar Ray Killen to a maximum of 60 years in prison.

Killen was tried in 2005 and convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer in Neshoba County during what has

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become known as Freedom Summer.

Gordon retired in March as the longest-serving trial judge in Mississippi.

Judge Gordon was 84 years old.