NATION : Beckwith Arrested for 2nd Time
te supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for a second time in less than two weeks today on a warrant stemming from the 1963 slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
In a move intended to speed his transfer from Tennessee to Mississippi, Beckwith, 70, was arrested on a murder warrant, and an extradition hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
He had been arrested Dec. 18 on a fugitive warrant from Mississippi, where he has twice been tried for the murder of Evers. The arrests followed a new murder indictment returned by a grand jury in Hinds County, Miss.
Evers was field secretary for the NAACP when he was killed in front of his Jackson, Miss., home on June 12, 1963.
Both of Beckwith’s previous trials were heard by all-white juries and ended deadlocked. The charges were dropped in 1969 but the case was reopened amid charges of jury and evidence tampering.
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