Brian Jones: “I rise to speak on a matter of both personal and national importance. As many folks know by now, a defining moment in my…”

“I rise to speak on a matter of both personal and national importance. As many folks know by now, a defining moment in my career as a prosecutor was bringing to justice two former Ku Klux Klansmen for the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. That act of domestic terrorism, and that is exactly what it was, killed four innocent, beautiful little girls. As one of their mothers, Miss Alpha Robertson, described, ``It sounded like the whole world was shaking.'' There is no doubt it did. The whole world shook as people asked: How could this happen in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave? Despite the feeling that the whole world shook--and indeed the horrific crime did add momentum to the civil rights movement--the criminals responsible for the murder of those four little girls were not brought to justice for decades. The first came in 1977, 14 years after the fact, by my friend and former Alabama attorney general, Bill Baxley. It would be 24 and 25 years later, in 2001 and 2002, that my team of Robert Posey, Jeff Wallace, Don Cochran, Bill Fleming, Ben Herren, and I completed that journey. The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was but one of many civil rights-era crimes that have gone unsolved. Solving and successfully prosecuting an almost 40-year-old case was no easy task, and the effort involved a team of both Federal and State law enforcement. Media coverage also contributed to some key breaks in that case.…”