ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MANNING, S.C.
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE SOUTH CAROLINIANS tied a 9-year-old black child to a tree and fired a shotgun past his face. They'll be eligible for parole in six to eight months.
A white couple who tied a 9-year-old black boy to a tree and fired a shotgun past his face received two-year prison sentences Monday.
The boy and his parents said they thought the sentence handed to Benjamin and Betty Mims was too lenient.
``I think they should have had more - five to 10 years,'' said Dwight Miller, who now is 10. ``What they did to me was wrong.''
The Mimses could have received up to 10 years for aggravated assault and battery. They were acquitted Nov. 22 on another charge, second-degree lynching, the state's term for mob violence.
They could be eligible for parole in six to eight months, prosecutors estimated.
Dwight said the Mimses tied him to a tree, beat him and fired a shotgun at him Jan. 5 after accusing him of stealing from a truck.
The boy, who lives across the road in the rural New Zion community, said he had come over to play with the couple's 9-year-old son and 13-year-old niece, but that the children also turned on him.
The boy said that Benjamin Mims and his son, Benji, both fired the shotgun past his face.
Prosecution witnesses asked Circuit Judge Thomas Cooper to give a stiff sentence to help heal racial divisions.
``You can't heal the wound until you clean it,'' Bishop John Hurst Adams of the African Methodist Episcopal Church said at the sentencing hearing.
Defense witnesses denied the Mimses felt any racial hatred and urged leniency because the two are in poor health and must care for their children.
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Benjamin and Betty Mims stand by their attorney,by CNBErnest Finney, as their sentence is handed down.