James Earl Ray Pleaded Guilty to Killing Martin Luther King Jr.
On this day · 10 March 1969
On his 41st birthday, an escaped convict admitted to the assassination that silenced America's most powerful voice for civil rights.
On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray stood before the Shelby County Criminal Court in Memphis, Tennessee, and pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader had been shot dead on a motel balcony eleven months earlier, on April 4, 1968.
Ray, a 40-year-old armed robber who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967, accepted the plea on the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, avoiding a possible death sentence. He was sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary, closing the formal case within a single day.
Three days later, Ray recanted, insisting he had been framed.
Ray spent the rest of his life trying to withdraw the plea and win a jury trial he never received. He died in prison in 1998, leaving lingering questions and conspiracy claims, even as members of King’s own family came to doubt his guilt.
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