Mississippi Burning Sheriff Drops Lawsuit

In 1988, the film "Mississippi Burning" dramatized the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and portrayed a corrupt local sheriff involved in the killings. Neshoba County's real former sheriff, Lawrence A. Rainey, who had been indicted in the original case but acquitted in 1967, claimed the movie defamed him and filed a lawsuit against the studio.

When Orion Pictures' lawyers responded, they argued they could prove in court that Rainey had in fact been an accessory to the murders depicted in the film. Facing the prospect of that evidence being laid out at trial, Rainey quietly dropped his defamation suit.

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