CHAMBLISS JURY WAS STUCK AT 11-1 TILL FINALLY: GUILTY by Ron Casey Birmingham News - Nov. 19, 1977

The trial was over. Crowds of spectators and newsmen filed from the courtroom, some rushing for telephones, others smiling or tight-lipped in disbelief. A group of deputies encircled Robert E. Chambliss, who had just been convicted of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and, as they had several times before, led him off to jail. But this time, he apparently was going to jail for the rest of his life.

Chambliss, 73, was convicted by a jury on a charge of first degree murder in the death of Denise McNair, one of the four victims of the blast. The vote was 11 to 1 for conviction almost as soon as the jury went behind closed doors about 4:30 p.m.Thursday to decide Chambliss' fate. The one juror reportedly was still holding out, undecided, when the foreman knocked on the door about 9 p.m.

Thursday and told the bailiff the jury was ready to call it quits, to go to the motel and to bed. It wasn't until about 10:30 Friday morning the mind of that juror was made up. When a poll was taken shortly after the foreman read the verdict, all 12 men and women answered their vote was "guilty."

BAXLEY DECLARES FOUR MEN ARE STILL SOUGHT IN CHURCH BOMBING Birmingham News - Dec. 29, 1977 A 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan member has been convicted of murder in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, but Alabama's attorney general says he's still seeking up to four men involved in the blast that killed four girls.

Appearing on NBC's Tonight Show, Bill Baxley told Wednesday of his seven-year search for Robert Chambliss who was convicted of murder last month. "I was in law school at the time (of the bombing) and it was a traumatic experience to me that such a horrible thing happened in my state," Baxley said, "I thought that someday I might have a chance to do something about it." He was elected attorney general in 19970. "In early 1971," he said, "we started the investigation and spent a couple of years tracking down the wrong people. It took a long time to get the FBI reports.

We got them late in 1975." Baxley told television host Tom Snyder, "I was frustrated at some points and very angry at the FBI. But looking back on it I can understand a little bit their hesitancy.

They had some informants they had to protect. "They'd had some bad experiences in the South of information being leaked back to the very people they were investigating. Even after we convinced them we were after justice, there were bureaucratic problems." Baxley said he has been getting hate mail since the Chambliss conviction, but that more of it came from California than from Alabama.He also said he has gotten extradition papers signed by the governor of Georgia to bring to trial J.D. Stoner on charges of bombing another black Birmingham church in 1958.

No one was injured in that explosion. But he added that even with the papers, "we can't get him out of Cobb County.

He went to court in Marietta and got a judge to issue an order preventing them from sending him back. If he can't get Stoner extradited, Baxley said, "we'll send our warrants to every surrounding county and confine him to that county for the rest of his life." Baxley, in his late 30s, has completed two terms as attorney general and under Alabama law, cannot run again.