45-year-old civil rights slaying still awaiting a trial in Alabama 3 years after indictment

45-year-old civil rights slaying still unresolved

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — It took more than four decades for a former Alabama state trooper to be indicted on charges that he gunned down a black demonstrator during a civil rights protest. Now a three-year delay for the trial has both sides fearing that elderly witnesses could die before they can testify.

A grand jury indicted James Bonard Fowler on May 9, 2007, on charges that he killed Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965 in Marion. No trial date has been set due in part to disagreements between the prosecutor and judge.

The 76-year-defendant says the case has left him broke and uncertain about his future. The victim’s daughter, Cordelia Herd Billingsley, wonders if she’ll ever fill the gaps about what happened to her father when she was 4 years old.