The Conspiracy to Murder King, Part 1

Percy Foreman Sells out his client

While Lisa Pease and myself were editing and publishing Probe Magazine a small civil war broke out in Tennessee. The occasion for that conflagration was that, at the bequest of the late William Pepper, it looked like Judge Joe Brown was going to reopen the Memphis murder of Martin Luther King. The event that made this a cause celebre occurred on March 27, 1997, and it was broadcast live. In prison, Dexter King visited the alleged killer of his father James Earl Ray. Dexter asked Ray if he killed his father. Ray replied in the negative. Dexter replied that he believed Ray. Then came the capper: “We are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail.” (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 433)

The last statement signaled that the King family, with Pepper representing them, were going to get to the bottom of what really happened to the great civil rights advocate on April 4, 1968. Pepper now moved in court to order that new rifle tests be made on the alleged weapon used to kill King. This was central to the case because previous attempts to match that rifle to the bullet that killed King turned out to be inconclusive. Pepper and Brown looked at this issue as being crucial to whether or not Ray should get a trial. Because, as we shall see, Ray never had a trial.

As John Avery Emison makes clear in his recent book—The Deep State Assassination of Martin Luther King--the idea that Ray was ever an adjudicated killer is a piece of MSM mythology. If there had been a real trial, with the original lawyers representing Ray, the defendant likely would have been acquitted. In fact, this was so likely that it was the reason that the whole Tennessee establishment, plus the national MSM, rose up in 1997 to crush Joe Brown’s attempt to reopen the case, a story we will get to later.

The first attorneys Ray had were Arthur Hanes and his son Arthur Jr. They were so confident they would win at trial that they turned down a plea bargain that would have made Ray eligible for parole in 13 years. In fact, the father and son team were looking forward to a trial since they were confident of gaining an acquittal for their client. (Emison, p. 280)

Ray was being held under onerous conditions in the Shelby County jail. Lights were on for 24 hours per day. In addition, Ray was covered by two surveillance cameras and a microphone, plus two jailers watched him constantly, even when he slept—from inside the cell. (ibid, pp. 281-82) These conditions managed to weaken Ray psychologically.

A dispute between Ray and his first legal team also helped lead to Percy Foreman entering the case. Ray wanted to testify himself. Hanes Sr, did not want this to happen. They felt the state’s case was so weak on its own, that they would easily raise the issue of reasonable doubt. William Bradford Huie, a best-selling author, also agreed that Ray should not testify. Huie had entered the case early and had two articles published in Look magazine and was going to also write a book on the case. Huie entered the scene upon Ray’s extradition from England, where he had been apprehended. Upon his return to Tennessee, Huie agreed to finance Ray’s defense for exclusive rights to his story. With no other funding available, Ray agreed to this arrangement. And if Ray had kept his original legal team, he likely would have had a trial and been acquitted. That is not what happened.

No author in the field has ever examined the role of attorney Percy Foreman in the King case like Emison has. It is unrivaled in depth and breadth; and it is so unblinkered that it ends up being excoriating. Right at the start, Emison accuses Foreman of committing two felony crimes in his representation of Ray.

The first crime was using “coercion and threats to obtain a guilty plea from Ray and to suppress his full and truthful testimony…”. (Emison, p. 246) The author next states that, plain and simple, this act constitutes the suborning of perjury. The second crime by Foreman was that he lied under oath when he testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). That deception concerned the cause of his entry into the case. To put it mildly, with a surfeit of evidence, Emison proves his accusations in both instances. And I have little doubt that Foreman would have been in for a difficult hearing before the BAR over both actions.

In front of the HSCA, Foreman testified that he initially refused to enter the King case. He specifically said he turned it down three times. He added that this began when Ray was arrested in London, and it was initiated through his brother Jerry. (Emison, p. 253) Emison asked Jerry Ray about Foreman’s claim. Jerry said it was utterly false. For one reason, Jerry had no contact with his brother while he was in London, therefore he had no information to share with Foreman or any other lawyer. It was not until five months later, November of 1968, that Jerry contacted Foreman. Jerry then said that it was not until Foreman’s arrival in Memphis on November 10^th that James Earl Ray even knew that Foreman existed. (ibid)

In fact, it was Ray’s assigned British barrister, Michael Eugene, who got in contact with Arthur Hanes to defend Ray upon extradition. He wrote to Hanes through the Alabama Bar Association. (Emison, p. 478) Foreman never produced any such letter from Michael Eugene. In fact, if the HSCA had researched the Memphis papers from that time, they could have confronted Foreman with his own contradiction on the issue. Because back in mid November of 1968 Foreman, for a newspaper interview, had said he talked to the Ray brothers, John and Jerry, only a week earlier about entering the case, and then to James Earl Ray himself when he visited him in jail. (Emison, p. 254)

That story, in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, also undermines another fable that Foreman told about how he got involved with Ray’s defense. He told the HSCA that he received a letter from James Earl Ray about his case. Foreman said under oath that he insisted he would not go to Memphis unless Ray himself wrote him a letter asking him to do so. He added that he got such a letter on November 7th or 8th. (Emison, p. 256)

There was a big problem with this story by Foreman. He could never produce such a letter. His excuse was that he had turned over his files on the matter to an attorney who had since passed on, and the firm had somehow lost it. That story was directly contradicted by both James Earl Ray-- who said he never sent Foreman any such letter--and by Gareth Aden who took over for the original lawyer. Aden said that there was never any question about lost files, and no one—including Foreman-- ever contacted him about recovering any such files. (Emison, p. 258) Finally, if such a letter had been sent to Foreman, why would he not keep a copy? Emison concludes Foreman was being deceptive on the issue. I would have to agree.

Why is this point so important to review? Because, as Emison proves, Foreman sold his client down the river. For a brief period of time, and like Arthur Hanes, Foreman talked about defending Ray and getting an acquittal. In fact, he boasted about this to Jerry Ray in his own hotel room in Memphis upon the lawyer’s arrival. (Emison, p. 275). This attitude did not last, and Foreman never conducted his own investigation or prepared a case for trial.

Instead, Foreman began to badger his client into pleading guilty. The methods he used were highly unethical. He told his client that if he did not plead guilty, the FBI would arrest his father on a parole violation from the thirties. (Emison, pp. 282-83) He also told Jerry Ray that, unless James pleaded guilty, he and his brother John would be arrested for a conspiracy to murder King. Foreman told Ray that he faced the death penalty if he did not plead guilty. (Recall, Arthur Hanes had the prosecution begging for a plea bargain in which Ray would likely be out in 13 years.). As Emison points out, no one convicted of murder had been executed in Shelby County since 1948.

But it was not just the stick that Foreman used. There was also a carrot technique. He told Ray that if he pleaded guilty he could get him a pardon in a couple of years because the likely next governor was a friend of his. Foreman even extended money to Jerry Ray more than once as long as the guilty plea was practiced. (Emison, p. 288) He then said he would adjust his contract with Huie to allow for future compensation to Ray. (Emison, p. 284, p. 288)

Foreman said that Ray was already convicted by the press, and the government had bribed witnesses who could place him at the scene of the crime. Which, as we shall see, Ray was not. But there is an aspect to this that makes Foreman’s actions even more unethical. Foreman told reporter Sidney Zion that the Ray case was the biggest story there was. Foreman added that he would soon give Zion a scoop that would get him a Pulitzer. Zion wrote in the New York Daily News in 1996 that Foreman told him Ray was innocent. That there was a conspiracy to murder King, and that either J. Edgar Hoover or Lyndon Johnson, maybe both, were implicated. Thus, Zion was shocked when Foreman ended up pleading his client guilty. He tried to talk to him about it but Foreman would not accept his calls. (Emison, p. 278)

Under the horrible conditions in prison and the constant pressure by Foreman, Ray relented. But as Emison has pointed out before, and as he hammers home in this book, at the pleading there were two quite provocative responses by Ray. During that very brief event, Ray said that he would like to state that he did not agree with the theories of Attorney General Ramsey Clark or FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about the conspiracy. In other words, Ray was saying he did not agree that there was not a conspiracy. As the author notes, “…if [Judge]Battle had questioned Ray about what his comments really meant regarding conspiracy, it might have blown the guilty plea out of the water.” (Emison, p. 297)

Secondly, the transcript of the proceeding was altered. When Judge Preston Battle asked Ray if pressure of any kind by anyone had been used to make him plead guilty, Ray replied with “Now, what did you say?” In other words, he answered the question with a question. Battle did not follow up on this question and moved on. But even worse, someone later changed the hearing record. In the altered transcript the reply is, “No, no one in any way.” (Emison, p. 293) This is a serious adjustment of fact, because it impacted Ray’s appeals. The state used the altered transcript to say his pleading was not influenced, which it clearly was.

There is one more notable exchange in the hearing. When Battle asked Ray if he was legally guilty of murder as explained by his attorney, the defendant replied with “Yes, legally, yes.” (ibid) Again, we do not know what Ray meant by that.

In short order afterwards, Ray fired Foreman. But not before the lawyer allowed the FBI to question him in his cell without legal counsel. The next month, April of 1969, Foreman wrote an article for Look in which he wrote something shocking: If Ray had not pleaded guilty, he would have had to turn and offer testimony against his own client! (Emison, p. 299)

In addition to terminating Foreman, Ray also wrote a letter to Judge Battle about two weeks later requesting a full trial. Five days after this letter was sent, on March 31, 1969, Battle passed on. He died face down in his file on James Earl Ray. (Emison, p. 383) This was after Battle asked a question in public: How did Ray know the location of where King was staying that day? (ibid, p. 22)

And, as we shall see, Ray could not have known.