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- THE WEEK, Page 18SOCIETYBRIEFS
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- LONG TIME COMING
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- A limit was placed on civil rights leader Medgar Evers' life;
- a bullet in the back saw to that. Three decades after his
- slaying, though, there's no limit on justice. The Mississippi
- Supreme Court has cleared the way for a third trial of white
- supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, 72, in the assassination of
- Evers on June 12, 1963. Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 by
- all-white juries, which deadlocked. Beckwith's wife Thelma wept
- at the news of the new trial. So did Evers' widow Myrlie.
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- TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
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- Republican Governor John Ashcroft of Missouri has commuted
- the life sentences of two women, Helen Martin and Becca Hughes,
- both convicted of murdering abusive husbands. Ashcroft said he
- commuted the sentences because the women were convicted before a
- 1987 law allowing the "battered-spouse syndrome" as a defense.
- They are now eligible for parole, but probably neither will be
- released for over a year. Critics say Ashcroft should release
- the women now.
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- SO SUE ME
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- When the Treasury Department ordered chess genius Bobby
- Fischer to obey U.S. sanctions and forgo a $5 million match in
- Yugoslavia last fall, Fischer, the sole American-born world
- chess champion, delivered an unambiguous reply: he spit on the
- department's letter. He also won the match. Now that a federal
- jury has issued a warrant for Fischer's arrest, the misanthropic
- grandmaster continues his defiance, telling a Belgrade newspaper
- that he will play additional matches there.
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