Civil trial jury findings that US State Conspiracy killed Martin Luther King should be more widely known

It seems that he was already serving 20 years for armed robbery, but escaped from prison. He was caught trying to leave the country and brought back and charged with the crime. The later investigations by the King family showed that someone else killed King, so that J.E. Ray could not have. He is said to have pled guilty on the advice of his lawyer, even though he was not, in case he was found guilty (despite his innocence), in which case he would risk the electric chair. It doesn't really matter if he was 'guilty of something'; the point is that he wasn't guilty of that crime. Whilst some people might think that his other crimes may have made him fair game, one of the problems with that view is that it means that the real perpetrator escaped. Since the whole thing seems to have been shown beyond doubt to have been a US government organised conspiracy, that makes the crimes against James Earl Ray all the worse - to say the least. J.E. Ray said that he might have inadvertantly done something to help people in his family to assist with the assassination, but that is not what he was on trial for and I don't know any more about that aspect of the story. It seems odd that, even if his brother or other people had been involved partially in the conspiracy and Ray knew something about it, no-one tried to find out more or to convict more people. The state preferred the lone, mad gunman story and the state knew the truth. That's pretty scary, isn't it, because, if the US government conspired to assassinate King and forty years later it hasn't been overturned in disgrace, what does that say about the way we live? From: James Earl Ray Early life James Earl Ray came from a poor family in Alton, Illinois, and left school at age fifteen. He joined the US Army during World War II and served in Germany. He was convicted of his first crime, a burglary in California, in 1949. In 1952 he served two years for armed robbery of a taxi driver in Illinois. In 1955, he was convicted of mail fraud. After an armed robbery in Missouri in 1959, Ray was sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses. He escaped from prison in 1967 by hiding in a truck transporting bread from the prison bakery.[1] Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Main article: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Lorraine Motel, now known as the National Civil Rights Museum, where King was assassinated Martin Luther King was shot and killed by a sniper on 4 April 1968, while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Capture and trial On 8 June 1968, a little more than two months after King's death, Ray was captured at London's Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport. At check-in the ticket agent noticed the name on his passport was on a Royal Canadian Police watchlist. He was using the name of Ramon George Sneyd.[2] At the airport, officials noticed that Ray carried another passport under a second name. The UK quickly extradited Ray to Tennessee, where he was charged with King's murder. He confessed to the crime on 10 March 1969, although he recanted this confession three days later. After pleading guilty he was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.[3] Ray entered a guilty plea on the advice of his attorney, Percy Foreman, in order to avoid a potential trial conviction, which could have led to a sentence of death. The method of execution in Tennessee at the time would have been electrocution. Ray fired Foreman as his attorney and derisively called him "Percy Fourflusher," thereafter. Ray began claiming that a man he had met in Montreal, who used the alias "Raoul", had been deeply involved, as had his brother Johnny, but that he himself had not. Instead he asserted that he did not "personally shoot Dr. King," but may have been, "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a trial. 1977 escape On June 11, 1977, Ray made his second appearance on the FBI Most Wanted Fugitives list, this time as the 351st entry. He and six other convicts had escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee on June 10, 1977. They were recaptured on June 13, three days later, and returned to prison.[4] A year was added to Ray's previous sentence, to total 100 years. Shortly after, Ray testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he did not shoot King. Later developments In 1997, King's son Dexter met with Ray, and publicly supported his efforts to obtain a retrial. Loyd Jowers, a restaurant owner in Memphis, was brought to civil court and sued as being part of a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King. Jowers was found legally liable, and the King family accepted $100 in restitution, an amount chosen to show that they were not pursuing the case for financial gain. Dr. William Pepper, a friend of King in the last year of his life, represented Ray in a televised mock trial in an attempt to get him the trial he never had. Pepper later represented the King family in a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers. The King family has since concluded that Ray did not have anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King.[5] Death Ray died in prison on 23 April 1998, at seventy years of age, from complications related to kidney disease and liver failure caused by hepatitis C. He probably contracted the disease through a blood transfusion given after he sustained a stabbing while at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Ray was survived by seven siblings. His brother Jerry Ray told CNN that his brother did not want to be buried or have his final resting place in the United States because of "the way the government has treated him." Ray was cremated and his ashes were flown to Ireland, the home of his family's ancestors.[6] From: William Pepper "Pepper was the attorney for James Earl Ray, who pled guilty to killing Martin Luther King, Jr.. After conducting his own investigation into the assasination of his friend Pepper agreed to represent James Earl Ray once he had convinced himself that James was innocent. He believes that Ray was framed by the federal government and that King was killed by a conspiracy that involved the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organised crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. Pepper represented James Earl Ray in a televised mock trial in an attempt to get Ray the trial that he never had. Ray was found not guilty. Pepper then represented the King family in a wrongful death lawsuit, King family vs. Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators." During a trial that lasted four weeks Pepper produced over seventy witnesses. Jowers, testifying by deposition, stated that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat and not involved in the assassination. Jowers testified that Memphis police officer Earl Clark fired the fatal shots. On December 8, 1999, the Memphis jury found Jowers responsible and found that the assassination plot included also "governmental agencies." The jury took less than an hour to find in favor of the King family for the requested sum of $100."

I have heard the news today that the deposed Libyan leader has been killed by the rebels in his country, it appears as he was hiding in a drainpipe. If this is true , why could he not have been captured and put on trial for crimes he is accused of ? It is unseemly that Barak Obama should rejoice over this event however it is akin to the alleged unceremonious disposal of Osama Bin Laden and of Saddam Hussein. These events are hardly hallmarks of an enlightened world that supposedly has civilized options

I agree that it is pretty poor that a major documentary failed to mention that a civil trial exonerated James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the assassination and died in prison. This lack of compassion and accuracy erodes the overall value of the film. If, however, you have the background information provided by this article, for example, the documentary on SBS is quite striking and thought provoking. It shows absolutely massive solidarity among US blacks organising for industrial rights. As Geoffrey Taylor reminds us, in his comment above, no less than four assassinations (including King's) of civil rights defenders occurred close together in this period in the United States. With those assassinations it seems that coherent social movements to raise US workers' rights and poor peoples' access to the public wealth also died. Watching these records on film you get the impression of an utterly different country from today's United States, with clear conflicts and clear solutions, bearing more hope of solidarity than now exists. The US today seems like the country of every man for himself, where wealth trumps human rights. These pages get huge amounts of reads on candobetter. It would be great to have some articles from Americans about this time and its consequences.