A black Louisiana man who spent almost 40 years behind bars for killing two alleged klansmen who came to his home has died.
Moreese Bickham was 98. He was from Mandeville, La., but spent his post-prison years in Oakland, Calif. He died on April 2.
Bickham's case made national news in 1996, when the then-78-year-old walked out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola after Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards commuted his life sentence to 75 years, making him eligible for parole. Good behavior compressed the term to 37.5 years.
Bickham maintained that two police officers who showed up to his door in Mandeville, La., were members of the Ku Klux Klan and that they threatened his life, forcing him to shoot and kill them. Law enforcement supporters and family members of the victims opposed Bickham's release.
While at Angola, Bickham, a Navy veteran who served at Pearl Harbor, became ordained as a minister and tended to rose bushes in the courtyard near his cell block, according to The New York Times. When he left prison, he said regretted the killings but was not sorry for his prison experience. "I don't have one minute's regret," he told the news organization.
"Everyone he met was touched by his courage and his sense of good humor and serenity about what had happened to him," Michael Alcamo, a New York-based lawyer who represented Bickham pro bono, told USA TODAY.
The great granddaughter of one of the officers killed told USA TODAY in an e-mail that she found Bickham's self-defense claim believable.
"There were no eyewitnesses," Stacy Gill, great granddaughter of Police Officer Gus Gill, said. "It was 1958. Even without possible racism involved, it seems to me that there should have been reasonable doubt. I don't think he should have been sentenced to death or life in prison, but what I think can't change what he endured."
Bickham's prison stay was the longest of any inmate at Angola who did not commit a crime while incarcerated, according to the Times.
The case dates back to the Jim Crow era. Bickham was a 41-year-old man with no criminal record living in rural Mandeville, Alcamo said.
He got into an argument at a bar with his live-in girlfriend, Florence Spencer, and Gill offered to drive her home, according to the Times. Soon after, Bickham and Gill got into an argument and Gill called Bickham a racial expletive and threatened to kill him, the Times reported Bickham testified at trial.
Later, when Gill and Police Officer Jake Galloway showed up at Bickham's home, one of them shot Bickham in the stomach and Bickham testified he shot the officers in self defense, the Times reported.
Prosecutors maintained Bickham waited at home to ambush the officers. An all-white jury imposed the death penalty.
"The prosecutor later said he lay in wait for these two deputies to turn up," according to Alcamo. "There's nothing from the facts of the trial that indicated anyone would lay in wait in those bushes."
When Bickham, known as "Pop" at Angola, walked out of prison, he touched the soil and kissed it, The New York Times reported 20 years ago. "This is the ground I longed to get on," the Times quoted Bickham as saying at the time.
But there were some who were offended by Bickham's release.
"It's too bad Gill and Galloway couldn't look forward to spending the rest of their lives with their grandchildren," the New Orleans Times-Picayune quoted Tom Buell, Mandeville's police chief back then, as saying. "We're opposed to his release and we're upset by it, but there's nothing we can do about it and there's nothing that the families can do."
Gill was 68 at the time of the killings and Galloway was 74.
Bickham enjoyed his post-prison life, Alcamo said.
"He did a lot of fishing, spent time with his family, did some campaigning against capital punishment," the lawyer said. "He had a good sense of humor about it all. I think he spent some time writing his memoirs."
"Mr. Bickham's choice to live a good, positive life in both captivity and freedom is what makes me admire him," Stacy Gill said. "He did not suffer in bitterness. He lived in faith and positivity. I was very sad to hear of his passing. I am grateful that he was able to live 20 years in freedom, and I offer my condolences to his family. May he truly rest in peace."
