Getting your player ready...
WASHINGTON — The sexual- assault conviction of a civil- rights leader is about to be erased from the books.
James L. Bevel died last December at age 71, two months after a judge imposed a 15- year sentence for repeatedly having sex with his daughter but also after his attorney had filed an appeal. The law in federal court, and most states, is clear: If a defendant dies while his appeal is pending, the entire case is dismissed as if it had never happened.
The idea behind abatement, as it’s called, is that a case being appealed isn’t final. The defendant could still be cleared upon a higher court’s review.
Bevel, a Christian minister, worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
