
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 16, 1994                   TAG: 9404180149
SECTION: NATIONAL/INT                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MEMPHIS, TENN.                                LENGTH: Short

RAY GETS OK TO TRY TO PROVE INNOCENCE

After 25 years, the confessed killer of Martin Luther King won a judge's permission Friday to call witnesses and put on evidence in court to try to prove his innocence.

James Earl Ray has been trying unsuccessfully to take back his guilty plea and go to trial since shortly after he confessed in 1969 to murdering the civil rights leader April 4, 1968.

Criminal Court Judge Joseph Brown rejected Ray's latest plea for a trial but agreed to let his lawyers question witnesses and put on other courtroom evidence to prepare an appeal of that rejection. ``What's it been going on? A quarter of a century so far? A few more months won't hurt one way or the other,'' Brown said. ``Let the historical record be cleared up.''

Such a process will not overturn Ray's conviction or free him from prison, where he is serving a 99-year sentence. But it will give him his first chance since his guilty plea to compel witnesses to testify and to have that testimony under oath.

Brown said he hopes to help clear up questions, including claims of a conspiracy, that have festered since King was felled by a rifle slug on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Records of the U.S. House Committee on Assassinations that looked into King's murder and concluded in 1978 that Ray was the killer but may have been helped by others. The committee's records are sealed until 2029.

by CNB