

Opponents took up seats normally reserved for inmates’ relatives, and members of the Birmingham NAACP chapter rode to Montgomery on a bus to be there.ĭoug Jones, a former U.S. Inmates do not attend parole hearings under Alabama law, and no one showed up to speak on Blanton’s behalf. “We were at that church learning about love and forgiveness when someone was outside doing hateful things,” she said. The blast killed the 11-year-old McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley.

The automatic review was the first for Blanton.īlanton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Sept. Clair prison, will again be eligible for parole consideration in five years, the board said. Lisa McNair, a sister of bombing victim Denise McNair, was relieved by the decision.īlanton, who lives in a one-person cell and rarely has contact with other inmates at St. The board rejected parole for Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr., 78, who has served 15 years of a life term for being part of a group of Klansmen who planted a bomb outside Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church during the civil rights movement. – The lone surviving Ku Klux Klansman imprisoned for killing four black girls in a church bombing in 1963 will remain behind bars after Alabama’s parole board heeded the victims’ families Wednesday and refused an early release.
