4 Near-Surface Geophysics and Geoarchaeology: Methods and Mapping
We invite abstracts that will highlight applied methodologies and mapping projects, including near-surface geophysics (e.g., GPR, resistivity, magnetometry), remote sensing (e.g., drones, LiDAR), or comparisons in GPS accuracy and precision (e.g., GNSS, N-Trip, RTK)
Monday, 9 March 2026
9:30 AM - 11:00 AM
RCC, 106
NEW EVIDENCE - SAME VERDICT - GUILTY AS CHARGED!! THE MICHAEL DONALD MURDER TRIAL
Paper number: 4-6
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Authors
Abstract
Michael Donald, a 19 year old black male, was randomly abducted in Mobile, Alabama on Oct. 17, 1981 and taken to a site across Mobile Bay where he was beaten and murdered. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan, Francis Hayes and James Knowles, and an accomplice, Benjamin Cox, were charge with the murder and were subsequently found guilty in 1983. Hayes was executed in 2000 and the others are currently serving life sentences. Despite the fact that justice was apparently served, it is ironic to note that all three perpetrators were nearly successful in having important mineralogical and palynological evidence disregarded because of errors that were made in: (1) the selection of inappropriate statistical analytical procedures used to associate the defendants with the crime site and (2) the interpretation of collected evidence from soil and clothing that linked all three to the actual crime scene. Two of the defendants, however, to avoid a possible death sentence, pleaded guilty, admitting to the crime and identified Hayes as the chief perpetrator. Ironically, additional conclusive evidence of the three men's guilt was available that was never actually presented during the trial. This evidence existed in the form of pollen analyses that conclusively tied the three men to the crime scene and totally negated their alibi that they had never been to the crime site!
Following the conclusion of the criminal trial, the mother of Michael Donald successfully filed a civil suit in 1987 against the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and a jury awarded her $7 million, plus the Klan's National Headquarters building in Tuscaloosa, and other miscellaneous Klan property. This was the largest legal blow ever rendered against the Klan and left the organization "effectively bankrupt" in the State of Alabama!
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 1
doi: 10.1130/abs/2026SE-411564
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