Nation IN BRIEF : MISSISSIPPI : Stage Set for Trial in Evers Slaying

A white supremacist accused of assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 lost a court battle to get the murder charge thrown out, setting the stage for trial next month. Byron De La Beckwith, 71, had asked a judge to let him go free because of deteriorating health and memory. But Hinds County Circuit Judge L. Breland Hilburn in Jackson, Miss., refused that request. Hilburn postponed the trial date to at least Sept. 21. The judge also ruled that Beckwith’s trial will be held in DeSoto County, in a northern corner of the state. The jury will be selected from nearby Panola County, which is about 48% black. Defense attorneys asked Hilburn to move the trial outside Hinds County, which is 51% black, saying the media had prejudiced potential jurors. Evers, field secretary of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, was shot and killed in his driveway by a sniper’s bullet. Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 for the slaying. All-white juries were unable to reach verdicts and the charge was dismissed in 1969. In 1990, a grand jury indicted Beckwith again after new evidence surfaced.