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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Free At Last Black Man Maintains Killing White Officers In ‘58 Was Self-Defense

New York Times

On the last of his 13,695 days in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Moreese Bickham went to a funeral.

While his fellow inmates shoveled clumps of mud on Edward Gleim’s simple gray coffin, Bickham peered deep into the grave and marveled that he, too, had not finished his time at Angola beneath a white stone cross marked only with his name and prison number.

“It’s kind of a mystery to me,” said Bickham, a black man who was convicted for killing two white policemen in 1958. “It’s a memory that will follow me the rest of my life, that I’m standing over a man that wasn’t as fortunate as me. I’m 78 years old, been locked up 37 years. I see all my friends pass away. Why would I keep hanging around? The Lord just ain’t ready for me.”

About 10 hours later, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Bickham, known to everyone here as Pop, walked out of Angola’s gates escorted by the warden, Burl Cain. He turned to wave farewell, crouched down to touch a finger to the dirt, and kissed it. “This is the ground I longed to get on,” he said. “Home, sweet home.”

From 1992 to last November, Gov. Edwin Edwards, who left office this week, pardoned or reduced the sentences of 66 murderers, according to a study by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. Bickham was one of the lucky ones. Last March, Edwards commuted his sentence from life to 75 years, giving him the immediate possibility of parole.

Responding to opposition from the families of the two murdered police officers, the parole board denied Bickham’s application. But with the accrual of good time - one day subtracted from his sentence for every one day served - Bickham’s sentence was compressed to 37 years and six months, a term that ended at midnight Tuesday.

The victims’ families remain upset. “My father and the other gentleman, they’re not getting out of the grave, so I think he ought to have to stay there,” said J.D. Gill, 72, the son of Officer Gus Gill.

Bickham chose not to remain in Louisiana a moment longer than necessary. After his release, Michael Alcamo, his lawyer, and David Isay, a radio producer who first brought the case to public attention, drove Bickham more than two hours to Tylertown, Miss., where he grew up.

They spent the night at the home of a local preacher, who arranged for a reunion Wednesday morning of friends and family members. Old men and women streamed into a living room that was thick with the smell of bacon and biscuits. Despite the passage of time, Bickham recognized many of their faces immediately.

Early in the morning of July 12, 1958, Moreese Bickham and his girlfriend, Florence Spencer, got into a fight at Buck’s Bar in Mandeville, La., an area where Jim Crow segregation prevailed and the Ku Klux Klan was active.

Gill broke up the dispute and told Spencer he would drive her home. Soon Bickham and the officer were arguing, with Bickham saying he wanted a ride to the home he shared with Spencer.

Bickham maintains that Gill called him a “nigger” and threatened to kill him. Spencer testified at the trial that the police officer told Bickham, “I will take care of you later on.”

Bickham went to his brother-in-law’s house to retrieve a single-barrel shotgun and some shells. His brother-in-law testified that Bickham told him he was going to “kill Gus Gill - he has messed with me one time too many.”

Bickham denies saying that and maintains that his brother-in-law was intimidated by the Klan into testifying against him.

Prosecutors said Bickham returned to his house and waited to ambush Gill and another policeman, Jake Galloway, when they arrived to confront him.

Bickham maintains that when the officers arrived in his front yard, he raised the shotgun above his head and snapped it open to show them it was not loaded. One of them then shot him in the stomach, he said. He fell to the ground, loaded his weapon, and killed them in self-defense.

An all-white jury gave Bickham the death penalty for murdering Gill.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, Bickham’s sentence was commuted to life without parole. He lingered until Isay and Alcamo, both of New York City, adopted his cause and convinced Camille Gravel, a former executive counsel to Edwards, that Bickham deserved clemency.

And so for Bickham, there was subliminal meaning in the spiritual that the inmates sang on Tuesday while burying Gleim, a 46-year-old murderer who died of a heart attack after serving 15 years of a life term.

“I’m free, praise the Lord, I’m free,” they harmonized. “No longer bound. There’s no chains holding me. My soul is rested. It’s such a blessing. Praise the Lord, hallelujah, I’m free.”