The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the manslaughter convictions of Edgar Ray Killen, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, in the killing of three civil rights workers in 1964.

Mr. Killen, 82, was convicted in June 2005 in the deaths of the workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. He was sentenced to three consecutive 20-year prison terms.

In his appeal, Mr. Killen had argued that in the 1960s he would not have been convicted by a jury of his peers of any crime under the evidence presented in 2005.