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White-thatched Judge Cox, a native Mississippian and confirmed segregationist, conducted the trial with scrupulous fairness. Reacting angrily to a bomb threat—explosives had been stolen from a Meridian construction company the week before—the judge bundled Price and convicted Defendant Alton Wayne Roberts off to jail without bond. "I'm not going to let any wild man loose on a civilized society," he lectured Roberts. Roberts, a swarthy, former nightclub bouncer, had said earlier that the judge had given a "dynamite charge" to the jury. "Well," Roberts was overheard telling Price, "we've got the dynamite for him ourselves."