Jury refuses new hearing on King murder

MEMPHIS (Reuter) - A grand jury refused to grant a hearing on Tuesday to a lawyer who says he has evidence that James Earl Ray was not involved in the 1968 murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Ray is serving a 99-year sentence for the killing.

Wayne Chastain, acting on the instructions of Ray's lawyer, Bill Pepper, had applied for a hearing before a grand jury in Tennessee in which he would name a retired American businessman who claims to have hired the man who killed King. But Mr Chastain says that a foreman for the Shelby County grand jury denied his request.