The conviction of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen for his part in the murders, forty-one years ago, of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner reminds me of a story told in the Ken Burns documentary, Baseball. The first Commissioner of Baseball was a former federal judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis:

As a judge, he had once sentenced an aging bank robber to fifteen years in jail.

“Your honor,” the man said, “I’m 72 years old. I can’t serve that long.”

Landis replied, “Well, do the best you can.”