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Brian Cabell: Quick guilty verdict in Birmingham church bombing trial

Brian Cabell

Brian Cabell is a CNN correspondent based in the network's Atlanta-based national bureau.

Q: What was the scene in the Birmingham courtroom when the guilty verdict was read?

Cabell: Inside the courtroom there was a stunned silence, I think, on the part of many. We had not been expecting a verdict anywhere close to this early. The jury members came back with very somber looks on their faces. One juror was sniffing back some tears. The jury foreperson, a woman, struggled to get through reading the verdicts. She had to catch herself a couple of times, and when she sat down she let out a huge sigh of relief seemingly, pulled off her glasses and held her forehead. As for Tom Blanton, the defendant, he just stared in stony silence when the verdicts were read. Outside, it was a bit of a frenzy for the media, because again, we were caught off guard. We didn't expect anything this quick. We thought it would go until at least the next morning and here the jury was, after two-and-a-half hours saying he was guilty on all four counts of first degree murder.

VIDEO A biracial jury convicts Thomas Blanton Jr. in the 1963 bombing deaths of four girls in a black Birmingham church. CNN's Brian Cabell reports Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)  ALSO • Birmingham church bombing chronology   LEGAL RESOURCES Latest Legal News Law Library FindLaw Consumer Center Select a topic Bankruptcy Discrimination Divorce Estate Planning Landlord-Tenant Personal Injury Taxes   MESSAGE BOARD The state of race relations

Q: Why did it take 38 years for Blanton to come to trial for this crime?

Cabell: That's a complicated question. Back in the '60s-- '63, '64, '65-- the FBI accumulated a lot of evidence; however, there was some concern that it wasn't enough evidence to convict a white man in Alabama in those days. Further, there were concerns that local law enforcement was infiltrated by the Ku Klux Klan and that would compromise the investigation. Decisions were made high up that there just simply wasn't enough evidence to take any of these suspected bombers to court in Alabama in either federal court or state court back in those days. As it turns out, one of the four suspected bombers was tried in state court in 1977 and was convicted. There were three other suspects, however, that were not tried until just recently. One of them died in 1994 without having been charged, and then there was supposed to be two finally being charged this year, but one of them was recently dismissed from the case for being mentally incompetent. So that left only this one man, Tom Blanton. All the evidence is from 35 years ago or so. It was just decided back in those days that they didn't quite have enough evidence to convict a white man for killing black people in 1963.

Q: On what grounds will Blanton appeal?

Cabell: His attorney hinted at three possible avenues for appeal. First, there were some secret audio tapes that were played in court that were the most damning evidence against him. The attorney will argue that those tapes should not have been admitted into evidence. Secondly, the attorney wanted a change of venue early on. That was denied. His attorney, John Robbins, felt that Blanton could not get a fair trial here in Birmingham because the city had known about this bombing for years, and in a sense, wanted to clear the tarnish from the city, as it were. Third, there was the composition of the jury. The jury ultimately consisted of 11 women and one black man. And in a case where you have four girls killed in church, as the attorney put it, that's not the kind of jury you want trying this case. And most important, he thought, was that there were no white men on this jury. There was one black man and 11 women, and that, he said, was not a jury of Tom Blanton's peers. Those are three possible avenues. He seems to feel that the strongest case he could make would be with the audio tapes. The audio tapes apparently would not have been admitted if it would have been held back in the 1960s, but Alabama laws have changed since then. They were admitted in the year 2001. The judge decided to admit them. But that will probably be the main factor.

Q: Being at the trial, was there anything else of note?

Cabell: One thing that struck us when we came here for opening statements was that in spite of the fact that people in Birmingham knew about this case, the courtroom was maybe half full. It was not a case that really captured the imagination of this city. Among white people that we talked to, we were told that it is an old case, we should really forget about it. Let's not bother these people anymore, let's not dig up these old memories. Among blacks, they told us generally that this was a case that needed to be tried and one of them specifically said, if it was your daughter who had been killed back in 1963, you would certainly want to see justice take its course. So clearly now justice has taken its course, and I'd say that Birmingham right now is pleased that this case is finally behind them. They would like to put the memories of the church bombing behind them as well, but it is a memory that will forever be associated with Birmingham and may have been the single most heinous crime of the civil rights era.

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