A former Alabama state trooper, James Bonard Fowler, admitted Monday to having shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965, an incident that, until now, has remained unresolved. Jackson's mysterious death inspired the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches.
Fowler claims that he did not murder Jackson in cold blood or with racist sentiments, assuring that Jackson had lunged for his sidearm and that he had acted strictly in self-defense. For the crime of manslaughter, Fowler is currently looking at a six-month sentence in state prison.
We don't believe him.
Fowler commits to having no guilty conscience about the incident, sticking to his guns about merely acting in self-defense. Granted, self-defense is a reasonable cause for retaliation, and if a cop's life is in danger, we can expect him to use his sanctioned weapons with appropriate discretion.
But if he acted in self-defense, an action for which he claims to be justifiably unapologetic, why not come clean about the incident 45 years ago? It seems that he would have had a better chance of getting away with it back then.
Now, almost five decades later, when there are absolutely no chances of collecting physical evidence or accounts of witnesses, it seems a bit slanted to open the case again with the only account being from the killer who claims to be innocent.
Six months in prison also seems inconsistent with the story and the crime. If he acted in self-defense, he should have received no sentence, and if he was guilty of manslaughter, then six months in federal prison seems too lenient.
But a police officer who essentially fueled a monumental civil rights march will probably not last long in prison, even if he is 77 years old.
There is not much more to say, either in defense of Fowler or for reaching ultimate justice for Jackson.
Obviously, Jackson cannot give us his testimony. But it seems that Fowler's mistake in having admitted his responsibility in Jackson's death 45 years after the incident will only win believability for the other side of the story.
But maybe he did overreact in self-defense, panicking and jerking an itchy trigger finger at a man who was truly going to steal his gun and kill him. Seeing all the fanfare for the late Jackson probably made him uneasy in coming out to admit that it was all a big accident.
Unfortunately, despite all probabilities and despite our reasonable suspicions against Fowler regarding the 1965 incident, nobody besides Fowler will ever know what really happened; we have to take anything he says as the one and only account of Feb. 26, 1965, and it depends completely on his preference for truth or dishonesty.
It always hurts to exhume issues that have their neatly laid places in the past, but at least the Jackson family members might have some satisfaction in either believing Fowler or knowing that their kin's killer is going to prison.
