Klansman Guilty in 1963 Alabama Church Blast 
Wed May 22, 4:47 PM ET 2002

By Karen Jacobs 

BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) - An Alabama jury on Wednesday found a former Ku Klux Klansman guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of four black girls killed in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, one of the most shocking crimes of the U.S. civil rights era. 

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 	Family: 'Justice Has Finally Come Forth' (AP) 
Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, was sentenced immediately to life in prison for his role in the Sept. 15, 1963, attack on the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which was a meeting place for black civil rights protesters. 

Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, all 14, and Denise McNair, 11, died in the blast. 

Cherry, a retired truck driver from Texas, had steadfastly denied any involvement in the crime. He reacted angrily to the verdict, which was announced after a week of testimony and on the second day of deliberations by a racially mixed jury. 

"These witnesses have lied all through this thing," Cherry told Jefferson County Circuit Judge James Garrett. "They got (lead prosecutor) Doug Jones on their side. Well, I told the truth." 

Cherry, who did not testify during the trial, was escorted out a back door of the Birmingham court by his defense team and a court officer shortly after the verdict. It was not immediately clear whether he intended to appeal his sentence. 

Outside, relatives of the four victims of the bombing expressed satisfaction with the verdict. 

"There is justice somewhere and, right or wrong, it catches up with you," Eunice Davis, a sister of Wesley, said with tears in her eyes. 

Prosecutors said the verdict would help free Birmingham from the shame of its segregated past. 

The bombing, which occurred just days after Birmingham's public schools had been integrated, symbolized for millions at the time the extent of racial hatred and resistance to civil rights in the Deep South. 

"It means hopefully that no one looks at Birmingham in the black and white images, but in the bright sunshine we've gotten now," Jones, who also successfully prosecuted Thomas Blanton Jr. last year for the bombing, told reporters. 

Prosecutors had argued that Cherry was among a small group of Klansmen who planned and then carried out the bombing to intimidate the civil rights movement and keep Birmingham's stiffly enforced segregation laws in place. 

The government's case hinged upon eyewitness testimony, secret FBI (news - web sites) recordings of an alleged accomplice and Cherry's own reported boasting of his participation in the years after the bombing. 

Cherry's ex-wife, Willadean Brogdon, was one of the prosecution's key witnesses. She testified that her former husband told her he lit the fuse of the dynamite that exploded under a stairwell of the church. 

But Cherry's attorney, Mickey Johnson, described the case against his client as riddled with inconsistencies and based on the false testimony of informants and other witnesses who lacked credibility. 

Johnson, who in closing arguments described his own client as a "cockroach" for his racist beliefs, pleaded with the jury to avoid reaching a verdict based on emotion or racial sensitivity. The jury was made up of nine whites and three blacks. 

Cherry was the last of the bombing suspects to go to trial. Blanton, also a former Klansman, was found guilty last year by a Birmingham jury and is serving four life sentences. 

Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, the suspected ringleader of the group, was convicted in 1977 and died in prison eight years later. A fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without being charged.