VOA19980318.2300.1376 NEWS TRANSCRIPT The lawyer representing James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of U.S. Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., will not pursue a new trial in the killing. The 70-year-old Ray is in critical condition in a Nashville prison suffering from liver disease and is too ill to take part in a new trial. Mr. Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison after pleading guilty to Dr. King's murder in 1969. Days later he changed his story but appeals for another trial have continuously been denied.