Killer of the Dreamer

District Attorney Tom Shriver came into my office and dropped a letter on my desk. “It looks like this guy wants to file a complaint involving your buddy, Mr. John Hooker, Sr. Do you want to investigate it?”

My response was something along the lines of, “Seriously?! Of course!”

His request was not unusual in 1970, as Shriver often asked his assistants to investigate all sorts of cases, ranging from murder to prostitution.1 The year before, Mr. Hooker had worked with us on Nashville’s so-called “Trial of the Century” murder case, State v. William Powell, and Shriver knew that I considered Mr. Hooker a mentor and the “titan” of all lawyers. The letter in question had come from James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray’s notarized “letter of complaint” accused a corrections official, along with well-known attorney Percy Foreman, a.k.a. “The Texas Tiger,” of “making available… information of a personal nature concerning me…which I was required by law to give to the corrections department upon being confined in State prison… which was successfully being used against me in the Federal District Court…in a civil lawsuit.”

Foreman was famous for handling high-profile cases and was retained as Ray’s attorney some thirty-six hours before his trial. From prior chats with Mr. Hooker, I knew that Foreman had asked for his advice about representing Ray. Ray apparently wanted to hire Mr. Hooker, Sr., as well because he thought his son would be governor in 1970 and would pardon him. I later understood that Ray had once complained that John Jay Hooker, Jr., when running for Governor, had “catered to the Negro vote.”

The trial was postponed and, shortly thereafter, Ray pled guilty to a 99-year sentence in order to avoid the death penalty. Almost immediately, even on the ride from the courthouse to the Nashville penitentiary, he voiced his regret and was adamant that there was no conspiracy and tried to withdraw his plea a few days later. Ray was unsuccessful, and the trial court found him guilty of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the wake of this ruling, Ray took it upon himself to appeal the trial court’s decision and to sue his own attorneys in civil court. Judge Morton’s dismissal was affirmed on appeal in a split decision, dismissing Ray’s lawsuit.2

When Ray sued Percy Foreman, along with others, Gareth Aden and Mr. Hooker, Sr. represented Foreman in the trial court and in the Sixth Circuit. Ray claimed that the defendants should be enjoined “from further exposure of the alleged facts surrounding the slaying of Dr. King, insofar as such facts affect the Petitioner or purport to involve the Petitioner with said killings” and sought a declaratory judgment.

The warden of the Nashville prison accommodated my request for a meeting with Ray to begin my investigation into his complaint. In preparation for the meeting, I tried to learn a little about his background.

Ray didn’t come from much. His mother was a known sex worker and all of his brothers had criminal records. He was a petty criminal himself, although he seemed incapable of succeeding in the simplest of crimes. He botched numerous robberies.

Once, in California, he stole a typewriter but dropped his bank book and was captured. He unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Missouri State Prison, failing twice. On the third attempt, he was successful. When running from the St. Louis police, he jumped into an elevator but forgot to close the door and was captured. At gunpoint, he robbed a cabdriver of $11. He was discharged from the army for being “inept.” After a robbery in Chicago, he ran down a dead-end alley and was captured. After robbing a grocery store in Illinois, Ray fell from his getaway car after a sharp turn and was captured. He tried his hand at producing pornography films with his girlfriend in Mexico, but that was also a failure. I found myself thinking how it was so incredible that this excuse of a man could have brought down one of the most admired men in the world. It was clear that Ray was a lifelong loser. He was cunning but not very bright.

He spent years in and out of jail and was on the run from prison at the time of King’s murder. He rented a room directly opposite the balcony outside of Dr. King’s room at the Lorraine Hotel. Ray vowed to finally “succeed” at something. He later escaped from Brushy Mountain penitentiary but was quickly captured.

During my first visit with Ray, the warden allowed me to meet him alone in a small room. I remember thinking that he had shifty eyes, like those of a caged weasel. After going over his complaints, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to talk about the murder. In hopes that Ray would open up about his beliefs, I engaged him in conversation about his early life in Missouri and Illinois. I told him that when I was the acting Director of the St. Louis Job Corps, I often had to drive through East St. Louis. I intentionally mentioned that I never stopped there; East St. Louis was mostly populated by Black Americans and had a very high crime rate at the time. Ray perked up. This statement was enough to start him talking about his racist views, which started years before in his hometown of Alton, Illinois.

While listening to Ray, I remember thinking that any rookie prosecutor could have ripped him apart on the witness stand. I knew a little bit about the facts of the Ray murder case beforehand, including that his fingerprints were found at and around the flop house from which he shot Dr. King. District Attorney Phil Canale had invited prosecutors to Memphis for a review of his evidence. That presentation clearly showed Ray’s guilt. Who might have helped him onto a flight to London on the way to segregated Rhodesia is another story. Two of the facts Canale presented stick out in my mind. First, FBI agents noticed that the side of the bathroom windowsill where he fired the deadly shot had a very small, curved indentation in the wood. They found that it microscopically matched the same curvature of Ray’s rifle stock; he had repeatedly pressed the rifle against the sill as he waited for his moment to fire.3 Second, when Ray ran out of the bathroom and onto the street after he killed King, he not only dropped his rifle, two cans of Schlitz beer, and his Missouri State inmate number, but also multiple bars of motel soap and rolls of toilet paper behind him. It just seemed incredible that a man who had just committed the murder of the century would flee, dropping identification and stolen toiletries alike. Such was an insight into this assassin.

Through the years, Ray had hired several well-known racist attorneys, including Nashville attorney Jack Kershaw. Nashvillians remember Kershaw as the man who built the Confederate Park off I-65, which is crudely decorated with each of the Confederate state flags and, until recently, showcased a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest atop a rearing horse.

Ultimately, Ray’s claims to Shriver were baseless, and we closed the investigation. In a letter, I told Ray, “Section 41-207,4 Tennessee Code Annotated requires the warden to obtain a full and complete statement upon the receipt of the Convict at the Tennessee State Penitentiary… giving a brief history of his past life… Showing where he has resided… the names of post office addresses of all near relatives… and other facts. Further, Section 40-3116 of the Tennessee Code Annotated requires the Court… to transmit to the warden… a short report of the circumstances attending the offense committed, the character of the convict… any record of said convict’s previous felony or other infamous offense conviction which report the warden shall carefully file and preserve.” I concluded that no wrong had been done. In return, and to my surprise, Ray wrote a courteous letter back to me (see page 15).

I would see Ray one more time.

Judge John Nixon tracked me down to a beach where I was vacationing and wanted to appoint me as the court-appointed guardian ad litem of a death row inmate. He said, “Hal, there are some lawyers arguing in my court that their client insists on being put to death rather than live on death row. Another inmate, Mr. Groseclose, represented by Larry Woods and several other attorneys, is seeking to intervene, contending that the execution should be halted until they can produce evidence showing why all executions should be stopped due to the cruel and unusual conditions.” His voice sounded thin and far away – back then, long distance calls had a distinctive sound to them.

I reluctantly agreed to and asked him, “Well, when is my client supposed to be executed?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Next Monday,” he said. I swallowed hard and said, “John (forgetting all formalities at this point) today is Friday, and I’m far away from Nashville... I don’t want to be presumptuous or unethical, but might I assume that you would issue an injunction and stop the execution?” He paused again and softly said, “Yes.”

The lawyers in question believed that Judge Nixon would agree with our contentions if he would tour Unit 6 and see firsthand how incredibly inhumane it truly was. At that time, death row’s “Unit 6” was so horrible that my client was adamantly choosing electrocution over living there any longer. Ray, though not facing electrocution, was also being held on Unit 6. The warden feared that inmates in general population might kill him in order to achieve notoriety, as in revenge, or, in their minds, justice. Judge Nixon agreed. With the U.S. Marshall leading the way, the news media and a gaggle of lawyers in tow, including Dudley West, Larry Woods, Rich McGee, Bill Reddick, Will Campbell, and others, we toured the facility. As we entered Unit 6, Ray’s cell was the first on the left. He kept his back to us from his bunk. I later learned that Ray had told my client, “Don’t trust that damn Hardin. He used to be a prosecutor.”

The incredible, horrible conditions are detailed in Judge Nixon’s ruling, which resulted in Unit 6 being declared unconstitutional and subsequently shut down.5

In the end, Ray never said why he did it, nor did the D.A. or judge ask him about such facts. Ray may have thought that the killing would chill or stop the civil rights movement. Maybe he thought he could get Alabama Governor George Wallace elected president, spark a race war, or finally make himself a hero. Perhaps, in his mind, he would, finally and at last, be a winner.

Like most everyone in the world, I remembered Dr. King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountain” speech on April 3, 1968. The speech was the bright precursor to that terrible next day: Dr. King’s murder at the hands of Ray. I remember hearing gunshots being fired in response to Dr. King’s death by angry protestors from my Vanderbilt dorm room. The sound will forever remain etched in my memory. Looking back, I imagine that Ray must have felt for a moment, amidst the chaos that he caused, that he had finally become the “winner” he wanted to be.

Today, countless bridges, parks, and roads are named in Dr. King’s honor. Each January, we honor him with countless events, parades, speeches, prayers, and sermons. Few, if any, have been more honored. Ray slew the Dreamer, but he could not kill his dreams. Just the opposite. Ray’s violent, hatefilled, racist murder of Dr. King immortalized Ray as the loser in his own story. Indeed, he forever solidified Dr. King’s dreams across the world, but at the heart-wrenching expense of a life too soon snuffed out. n

HAL HARDIN is a former NBA Board Member, US Attorney and Presiding Judge of the Nashville trial courts; and, he has received the trifecta of NBA honors - the Tune, Rutherford, and Norman Awards.

Endnotes

1 See e.g. NBA’s oral histories of Tom Shiver.

2 James Earl Ray v. Percy Foreman et al, 441 F.2d 1266 (6th Cir.1971).

3 The 1968 Select Committee on Assassins voiced their belief that the windowsill evidence was “inconclusive”; Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations Of the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., United States Printing Office, Volume 1, 1-686. 1979.

4 Yes, that’s the way we cited statutes then.

5 Groseclose et al v. Warden Dutton et al, 609 F. Supp. 1432 (Mid. Tenn. 1985); Rehearing denied en banc November 3, 1987, Groseclose v. Dutton, 829 F.2d 581 (6th Cir. 1987).