James Earl Ray

James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 – April 23, 1998) was an American fugitive who was convicted of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray, who had planned on living in exile in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), fled to London and was captured there. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful.

While Ray was not formally registered with a political party, his political views were aligned with the segregationist platform. He was a staunch supporter of the segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace and his 1968 presidential campaign with the American Independent Party. Ray died on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70, at the Nashville Memorial Hospital in Madison, Tennessee, from complications related to kidney disease and liver failure caused by hepatitis C, having served twenty-nine years in prison.