Judge from Mississippi civil rights murder trial dies at 79 April 8, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail Retired Hinds County Circuit Judge L. Breland Hilburn, is photographed June 12, 2015, presiding at a trial in Pascagoula, Miss. Hilburn was 79 when he died April 5, 2021, at University of Mississippi Medical Center of complications from COVID-19. Hilburn in 1994 handed down a life sentence to the white supremacist convicted of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers. (Tim Isbell/The Sun Herald, via AP)Tim Isbell/AP JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A private funeral will be held Friday for the Mississippi judge who handed down a life sentence to the white supremacist convicted of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers.