◆ SpookStack

- LL judas said Jacobsen (nicky dese _ the other hand, -stone building that had become a rallying point for blacks ~ i ri i) Sig ; = cabsen’s puilay plea in the Connally ca ich he was the key witness, jonis deal with the prosecutors was the basis of Consall’s defense and of his acquittal Jast year jn tis trial for bribery. The jury, apparently dazzled by the parade of promincni character wilnesses in Connally’s | behalf, and unable to take the word of Jacobsen, the beneficiary of that agreement (o drop the Texas bank in- | cictment, let Connally go free, - : Now Jacobsen has ‘been convicted of ‘bribing ‘John B. Connally, who was found not guilty of accepting that bribe. Laymen often have a bard time with legal logic, and this is @ prime example of it. The Jacobsen- Connally case isa particularly puzzling one because ibe judge. who sentenced Jacobsen on August 20 went out of his way w a bankrupt with a sick wife—" - to castigate Jacobsen (no hence @ Sentence o oly pro—Years’ probation). The " fo serve time in + jail for the admitted cyime of bribing. Connally ‘who, on bE that money. (it . As inngcent, pi king: Thirteen years ago. next ‘month, on “September 15, "1963, “an explosion triggered by fifteen sticks of dynamite ripped . through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, TL. Veet beens” sanine nlee in the “henwn ana. Als. ioe blzsi opened gaping Guiting the drive to desegregate the city’s schools. About 2C9 people had crowded into the church that Sunday, znd within minutes of the explosion angryy ‘bleeding and confused blacks poured out of the sanctuary, Twenty per- sons were injered. Jn the church's basement, the bodies of four black girls (three were 14 years old and one was 41$ were found buned under debris. The girls bad just heard a Sunday School Jesson on “The Love That For- gives” and were changing into their choir robes when the bomb went off. So ferocious was the explosion that ‘one of the victims was decapitated, Another bad an apple- size hole gouged into the back of her. head. It was Prob- zbly the most vicious crime of the civil nights era in the South, mn Pt. Aud it remains s unsolved. Paradoxically, the public’ has been told again and again that 2 solution to the case is at hand. “State investigators,” Gov. Geor Pge Wallace boasted j just two weeks after the bombing, “expect to break the Birmingham church case within tbe uext few liours.” In 1964, a high FBI oficial oremised that “we'll solve this case if it takes ten years.” Two years later, Reader's Digest, in an extremely fiatter- ing article on the FBI, reported: “They [FBI agents] Bel Corawell is a reporter for the Biemingham Post-Herald. I THE ATION! September 4, 1976 o dsahe 22d beak RSA Ta Po ’ DAF — i pucLOS f was always hard Yerstend why the high-rolling Connally would hav. asked so much for what he must have regarded as chicken feed.) Here ends this tale of “white-collar crime,” except for a brief reflection on equality under the Jaw. One must wonder, in view of the light sentence to Jacobsen for . bribing the Secretary of the Treasury (who was not bribed), how many John Smiths and Does who are found guilty of similar crimes get the same merciful treatment from the.bench. So many of the Watergate cases ended with judges banding down light sentences accompanied by pleties on how the disgrace was almost punishment ennotroh (Remember’ former Atty: (en 'Dirheard Wletn SAV EM Ce eae hasiaaaiatiomiediatiel . wh ee nite La a, mt ili- : dienst?) *: Rostra Me iv Rae h ” The high and the mighty seem too often to be let down: easily; while ordinary people take the hard falls in our - ~ courts,-and that is no way to. advertise that justice still has eyes that are blind to person, > place, “and privilege. - _ Natorally, 3 J ohn B. 3. Connally. would agree with that.*’- wh ee . et fee? have’ put the finger on 1 ithose “yesponsible ‘for | the bombing of a Birmingham Negro church in which four small ‘girls © _were killed: Director Hoover ordered them to keep build- . Ing the case until it is so stronp that no jury in the land could refuse to convict. So, ever since, wherever the ‘Killers have pone, agents have haunted them, watching ~ for chances to add more evidence against them.”. Thus, Alabama’s present Atty. Gen. Bill Baxley sounded vaguely like a broken record last February when he stated that he knows the names of the “fiends” responsible for the bombing and added, “some people in Jefferson ‘County [in which Birmingham is located] ought to be pretty nervous right now.” But wading through the hyperbole and empty ‘prom ’ Ises, one pains a very different impression.-The facts are: no one has ever been arrested or tried for the bombing, not a shred of evidence has ever been presented to 2 grand jury ‘about the bombing and, despite a recent flucry _ of publicity about 'a new investigation, the solution to the case is apparently no nearer today than it was thirteen years ago. Attempts to solve it have been hamstring by incompetence, indifference and petty feuds among politi- “cians (notably George Wallace) and law-enforcement ‘officials. The bickering continues to this day. It is, as one police officer who has follow en ¢ mace enuc a carey Pouce oihcer whe Bas oiowed the £ase says, a stil; damm story.” : - oo, ' - } . . . . . . wot: ° . . ° - * we a oo: The bumbling and stumbling bezaa almost as soon as the smoke around the church had cleared. The FBI rushed twenty-five bomb experts and agents to the scene, and a Justice Department spokesman vowed the investigation (EQ 165