Never Too Late
(B.DEL)
It''s never too late to do the right thing: that''s the lesson of the Medgar
Evers murder trial. Black civil rights leader Evers was shot in the back and
killed in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1967. Mississippi juries were unable to reach a
conclusion concerning the guilt of murder suspect Byron De la Beckwith in the
late ''60s. Two trials -- both decided by all-white jurors -- failed to produce
a verdict.
Thirty years later, talented young attorney Bobby DeLaughter reopened the
case. The story of the ensuing trial has been excitingly documented in the
feature film Ghosts of Mississippi.
What the movie lacks, though, is the gritty detail supplied by DeLaughter
himself in Never Too Late.
Readers will thrill to plot twists worthy of a Perry Mason mystery as
DeLaughter searches for the data he needs to establish De La Beckwith''s guilt.
When the murder weapon turns up in the house of DeLaughter''s own father-in-law,
it becomes clear that the prosecutor is being helped by invisible hands. Soon after,
a friend and fellow attorney supplies DeLaughter with the name of an informant
who heard De La Beckwith brag about killing a black man. When this important
witness cannot be located, his phone number is dropped into the prosecutor''s
lap by a journalist.
The narrative''s bounty of historical information provides the backdrop for a
slowly emerging portrait of a true southern gentleman. Mississippi-born and
bred, DeLaughter loves his home state even as he confronts its crimes against
democracy. Mississippi
is no longer the bastion of discrimination it was decades ago, he believes, but
only the successful prosecution of Evers'' murderer will help prove that to the
world.
In pursuing a verdict against De La Beckwith, DeLaughter sustains some
serious personal losses: a failed marriage, a bomb threat. But perhaps the
hardest loss for him to bear is his lifelong dream of being a judge. Those who
watch Ghosts of Mississippi learn that DeLaughter lost a race for the
appeals court bench immediately following the trial. But in the postscript to
his story, the attorney discloses the good news: in 1999 he finally won an
appointment to a county court judgeship. Never too late.
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