Today I caught the tail end of a program on a local community radio (KGNU, program was titled “TUC-time of useful consciousness”, I know, I know) which consisted of a recording of the closing arguments by a lawyer for the King family. Apparently there was a trial in which this lawyer alleged that the King assassination was a conspiracy by the feds, the mob, etc. The defendant was a member of the Memphis police department (dead at the time of the trial). The jury’s decision was in favor of this (apparent) nonsense. I am inclined to disbelieve it, but this is honestly the first time I have heard of conspiracy theories about King’s death (although I am hardly surprised). Do you guys know anything about this?

The ‘invisible hand’ (of the capitalist state) at work… Remember Cointelpro in which the Black Panthers were sysematically executed began not long after this. But honestly I had never given the MLK issue much thought. This is from the first page I googled on the topic:

I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?”

The full piece is found

An evidently credible and informative account of the civil trial.