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DALLAS (AP) — The capital murder trial ol a 25-year-old state parolee charged with killing a prominent local civil rights leader and his wife is the first in Dallas County involving black victims, officials say.Kenneth Dewayne Thomas, charged with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Fred Finch Jr., 66, and his wife Mildred, 64, faces death by lethal injection if convicted in his trial that was scheduled to begin today.State District Judge Ed Kinkeade, who will preside over the trial, said the case already has generated an unusual amount of community interest.Thomas is in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center in lieu of $100,000 bail. He absconded from a halfway house for problem parolees before the elderly couple was found dead and was arrested several days later.The couple was found stabbed repeatedly on March 16 in their home. More than 3,500 people — from blue collar workers to prominent attorneys — attended their funeral.Finch, a Harvard Law School graduate who opened a law firm in the 1950s, was one of the first black attorneys in Dallas to establish his own practice.He was an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in the early 1960s, when the organization was involved in a school desegregation battle involving what was then the Carrollton Independent School District.Mildred Finch, a mathematics instructor at El Centro College, was two months away from retirement when she was killed.Prosecutors and defense attorneys say they believe it is the first capital murder case that has come to trial in the county involving blackvictims.The jury selection process could take as long as six weeks, said visiting Judge Tom Ryan.A tip from a confidential informant, who called two days after the slayings, led police to Thomas and his younger brother, Lonnie Charles Thomas, 22, who also has been charged with murder in connection with the slayings.Police said they searched the Thomases’ home and discovered hats, suits and shirts monogrammed with the initials F.F.Defense attorneys have filed motions seeking to suppress the evidence gathered at the house, saying that it may have been obtained during an illegal search.The defense also has filed a motion seeking the name of the confidential informant.Ryan is expected to rule on both motions at a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Newspaper Details
Big Spring Herald
Big Spring, Texas, US
Mon, Sep 29, 1986
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
NA, NA 05 Jul 2023
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