Some 12 years after Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter became more famous than former Hinds County district attorney Ed Peters as the result of a Hollywood decision to rewrite a little history for a movie, Peters and DeLaughter are once again getting ready for their close-ups.

The Rob Reiner film “Ghosts of Mississippi” debuted at a gala Jackson premiere to 2,500 viewers at Thalia Mara Hall on Dec. 12, 1996. It was one of the social events of the decade.

Byron De La Beckwith, the former fertilizer salesman convicted of civil right leader Medgar Evers’ murder after escaping justice for three decades, was sitting in a jail cell one block east of Thalia Mara Hall in the Hinds County Jail while the stars were walking the red carpet down the street.

Peters got second billing



“Ghosts of Mississippi” was a dramatization of the decisive 1994 Medgar Evers murder trial starring Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods and Alec Baldwin. The movie, directed by Reiner and produced by Fred Zollo, was partially filmed in Jackson. One of Mississippi’s most beloved writers, Willie Morris, was a consultant on the film.

Baldwin played the part of then-Hinds County assistant district attorney DeLaughter, who prosecuted Beckwith. Woods, in an Academy Award-nominated role, played Beckwith. Goldberg played Myrlie Evers, the widow of the slain civil rights leaders and a national civil rights figure in her own right.

And in a secondary role, Craig T. Nelson – star of the sitcom Coach – played Peters – what little time the character of Peters was onscreen.

On the evening of the premiere, DeLaughter, Reiner and Baldwin got standing ovations from the crowd – glowing from the klieg lights and more limos than most Mississippians had ever seen at one time. After the screening, Reiner’s Castle Rock Entertainment threw a party at Crechale’s. DeLaughter and Baldwin were the stars.

Peters, DeLaughter’s boss, was not – and there was friction over in 1996. Why?



Credit where credit due?



In the penultimate moment in the actual Beckwith trial, Beckwith’s alibi witness was discredited in a withering, dogged cross-examination by Peters. But in Reiner’s film, that pivotal questioning of former Greenwood police officer James Holley was performed by DeLaughter.

“The most dramatic thing that happened in the trial was Ed Peters’ cross-examination of James Holley,” screenwriter Lewis Colick, who spent three months in Mississippi researching the case, told The Clarion-Ledger on Dec. 8, four days before the premiere. “And we gave it to Bobby DeLaughter.

In that same story, Peters griped: ” At first, it didn’t bother me. I always thought of movies as fiction anyway, and Bobby (DeLaughter) told me he had protested. Then I talked with Rob Reiner, who told me the purpose of the movie was to record history. So you are recording history, but the moment everybody considers to be the turning point of the trial you’re giving to someone else?

The latest drama that will pit Peters and DeLaughter on different sides of the same sets of facts in the “Scruggs II” case – with federal prosecutors now in control of the “script” – is for infinitely higher stakes than face time with Alec Baldwin or a walk down the red carpet. And this time, Peters is likely to get top billing.



Contact Sid Salter at (601) 961-7084 or e-mail ssalter@clarionledger.com. Visit his blog at clarionledger.com.