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- y plea in the Connally ca ich he was the k s This deal with the prosecutors was the basi of Condaliys dcfense and of his acquittal Jast year jn Sis trial for bribery. The jury, apparently dazzled by the parade of promincnt 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- . gictment, let Connally go free, Now Jacobsen has been convicted < ol ribiog Yohn B. Connally, who was found not guilty of accepting that bribe. Laymen often have a bard time with legal Jogic, . and this is a prime example of it. The Jacobsen-Connally L. cas¢ isa particularly puzzling one because tbe judge. who ~ sentenced Jacobsen on August 20 went out of his way to castigate Jacobsen (oon 5 barkPt, with a sick wife—- - hence a sentence o! ears” probation). The jedge said Jacobsen oe a dese " fo-serve time in + Jail for the admitted crime [of bribing. Connally | ‘who, on _ the other hand, is inngcenl f Yeki that | money. (it Ee ‘Thirteen years, ago. next month, on Si ‘p , 1963, ‘an explosion tiggered by fifteen sticks of dynamite sipped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, ‘Ala. The blest opened gaping holes in the brown sand- + stone building that had become a rallying point for blacks © auting the drive to desegregate the city’s schools. About 2C90 people had crowded into the church that Sunday, snd within minutes of the explosion angry;’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 11} were fouad buried 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 boinb 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. bead. It was prob- ably the most vicious crime of the civil rights era in the South, ! And it remains unsolved.” : . Paradoxically, the public bas been told again and again that 2 solution to the case is at hand. “State investigators,” Gov. George Wallace boasted just two weeks after the bombing, “expect to break the Birmingham church case within the next few liours.” In 1964, a high FBI oficial promised that “we'll solve this case if it takes ten years.” Two years later, Reader's Digest, in an extremely flatter- ing article on the FBI, reported: “They [FBI agents] Bl Corawell is a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald, damn story.” was always hard Yerstend why the high-rolling Connally would hav. asked so much for what e must have regarded as chicken feed.) . Here ends this tale of “white-collar crime,” except for a brief reflection on cquality 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 pieties on how the disgrace was almost punishment enough. , (Remember former Ay * Gen. Richa @ Klein. » dienst?) *: Betas 5 The high and the mighty seem too often 10 be let down easily) while ordinary people take the hard falls in our -- courts,-and that is no way tq. advertise that justice still has eyes that are blind to person,- place, “and privilege, Naturally, John B. Connally would Bare with that. have’ put the i fger on ‘those responsible “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 strong that no juty in the land could réfuse to convict.’ So, ever since, wherever the . killers have gone, 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 Jast February when he stated that ~ he knows the names of the “fiends” responsible for the bombing and added, “some people in ‘Jefierson County [in which Birmingham is located] ought to be pretty nervous right now.” - But wading through the hyperbole and empty ‘prom- * ises, one gains 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 @ 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 hamstrung 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 followed the case says, “a sorry The bumbling and stumbling begaa almost 2s soon as the smoke around the church had cleared. The FBI rushed twenty-five bomb experts and egents to the scene, and a Justice Department spokesman vowed the investigation ” aux naTion/ September 4, 1978 . a. _ 51. ES (MS