An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King FROM THE PUBLISHER
"On the evening of April 4 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis supporting a workers' strike. By the end of the day, top-level army snipers were in position to knock him out if ordered. Two military officers were in place on the roof of a fire station near the Lorraine Motel, to photograph the events. Two black firemen had been ordered not to report to duty that day and a black Memphis Police Department detective on surveillance duty in the fire station was physically removed from his post and taken home. Dr. King's room at the motel was changed from a secluded ground-floor room to number 306 on the balcony. Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim's Grill which backed on to the motel from the other side of the street, had already received $100,000 in cash for his agreement to participate in the assassination. He was to go out into the brush area behind the grill with the shooter and take possession of the gun immediately after the fatal shot was fired. When the dust settled, King had been hit, and a clean-up procedure was immediately set in motion. James Earl Ray was effectively framed, the snipers dispersed, any witnesses who could not be controlled were killed, and the crime scene was destroyed." "William Pepper, attorney and friend of Dr. King and the King family, became convinced after years of investigation that not only was Ray not the shooter, but that King had been targeted as part of a larger conspiracy to stop the anti-war movement, and to prevent King from gaining momentum in his promising Poor People's Campaign. Ten years into his investigation, in 1988, Pepper agreed to represent Ray. While he was never able to successfully appeal the sentence before Ray's death, he was able to build an air-tight case against the real perpetrators. In 1999, Loyd Jowers and co-conspirators were brought to trial in a wrongful death civil action suit on behalf of the King family. Seventy witnesses set out the details of a conspiracy in a plot to murder King that involved J. Edga
FROM THE CRITICS
The Washington Post
William Pepper's An Act of State advances the argument that the assassination of King was, as the title suggests, the product of a national plot involving the highest levels of government, the military, state and federal law enforcement and organized crime. Pepper is in the odd position of having been both an associate of King's and one of James Earl Ray's defense attorneys. Pepper took Ray's case because he believed the convicted killer was a patsy, framed to cover the footprints of various commercial and political interests that stood to benefit from King's death. — William Jelani Cobb
Publishers Weekly
Forget everything you think you know, Pepper insists. James Earl Ray did not pull the trigger. The journalist-turned-lawyer's previous title, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr., was more a prelude to this title than the final word. Twenty years after James Earl Ray was convicted, Pepper set out to clear him; in the process, he brought to light reams of evidence that were ignored in the original trial. The key to his case is Loyd Jowers, a bar owner who claims to have disposed of the murder weapon at the request of a local mob figure. Partially on the strength of the Orders to Kill material, Pepper won the support of King's wife and children, who brought Jowers and "unknown co-conspirators" to trial in a civil wrongful death suit in 1999. Dozens of witnesses contributed to a forceful, detailed case that accused the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Memphis police, and local and national organized crime leaders. After only an hour of deliberation, the jury found for the King family. The accusers, led by Pepper, cried vindication and fully expected to be at the center of one of the biggest news stories of the century. But the trial and the verdict barely registered in the media. Appalled by the silence that followed, Pepper remained determined to bring the details of his exhaustive probe and subsequent civil case to the public, and the result is this exacting book, dense with evidence and analysis of the murder. Pepper sets the tone by recalling the state of civil unrest in this country during the late 1960s and why King's radical activism was such a threat to government and corporate leaders. Simply put, Pepper claims those in power were scared to death of the mass mobilization King's Poor People's Campaign might have inspired. Pepper gradually introduces the vast cast of characters in a dizzying murder conspiracy that winds from a Memphis bar through the shadows of organized crime to the far reaches of national government. He carefully maps each player's place and role in the tangled web and doggedly tries to stick to a straightforward narrative. The number of unanswered questions complicates those efforts, but does not cloud the evidence that Ray was not the shooter. Pepper attempts nothing less than a rewrite of history, and a spurring of further investigation. While his moralizing epilogue on the deterioration of democracy is distracting, it is heartfelt, and honors Pepper's commitment to King's legacy. (Jan. 20) Forecast: With a release timed to coincide with King's birthday and with Black History Month, this embargoed book will find its way onto display tables and hook browsers. Reviews in political weeklies that reassess the trial and evidence could lead to further print coverage, as could the Trent Lott scandal aftermath. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
According to the author, James Earl Ray was neither a racist nor a violent man capable of murdering Martin Luther King. Instead, Ray, who later recanted his admission of guilt, was merely a patsy in a complex plot that included the U.S. government, the Tennessee state government, the Memphis police department, and the U.S. Army working with the Mafia. Pepper (Orders To Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King) served as James Earl Ray's attorney at the time of Ray's death in 1998. The Ray case, reopened in 1999 at the request of the King family, ended in a verdict that recognized a conspiracy beyond Ray but did not conclude that Ray was innocent. Pepper does present some plausible scenarios of the King assassination and its aftermath that he bases on the testimony of many witnesses, but his writing is repetitive and mired in turgid detail. Much of the book is a polemic against Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which makes the case for Ray as the lone gunman. Libraries that own Posner may want to add Pepper's account for balance. Readers will have to choose which theory they believe, with no middle ground found in either book.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Pepper, a lawyer and longtime investigator into the King shooting, musters copious evidence pointing to James Earl Ray's not having acted alone. In the almost 35 years since King was assassinated, Pepper has gathered an impressive array of testimony and evidence that, to even determined skeptics, throws major doubt over the state's case against Ray. There is, most obviously, the verdict against Loyd Jowers in the wrongful-death civil suit brought by the King family. Then there is the avalanche of material-so much that it can tangle itself into a mare's nest in Pepper's rush to get it all down-from the circumstantial to the blatant, implicating the FBI, the intelligence services, and organized crime. And there are all the failures of the state to follow through on any number of leads that may have led to greater understanding of events. Pepper draws all of this information into his presentation, sometimes more and sometimes less cogently, yet the result is to show that something smells rotten in the state's case. Had Pepper stopped there, he would have made his point to fence-sitters. Unfortunately, he feels the need to square the King case with the evils of the "transnational corporate masters" who run the country through the military and the media-"responsible for broadcasting mind-numbing commercialization, and causing the dumbing down of viewers who are constantly exposed to the standardization of thought"-in a screed so aggressively and sanctimoniously trite that even readers who agree with the basic premise will instinctively recoil. In these polemics, Pepper is at his most inconsistent: "The silence from media organizations was deafening," he says of the Jowers verdict, thoughsuggesting later that it was a "mighty Wurlitzer" at "full volume." This tumble from passion to rant hurts Pepper, but the fundamental injustice of the handling of the King assassination survives his missteps.
Home
