ATLANTA – Mississippi’s attorney general has challenged a judge’s decision to grant bail to former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, who was freed from prison Friday, less than two months into his 60-year sentence.

Killen was convicted in June of three counts of manslaughter in the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner.

In an emergency petition to the state Supreme Court, submitted Monday night, Attorney General Jim Hood argued that Killen, 80, remains a violent and dangerous man.

Mr. Hood said that a Killen relative made death threats against Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon and that an anonymous caller threatened to bomb the courthouse. He also described a threat Killen made over the telephone in 1974, and a more recent threat to a jailer after his conviction.

James McIntyre, Killen’s attorney, said Mr. Hood was inappropriately raising new charges. McIntyre said he expects Killen to remain free until the Supreme Court reaches a decision on his appeal, which he said could take a year or more.

“It’s always a victory for any lawyer to get their client out of jail, whether temporarily or permanently,” Mr. McIntyre said. “Many people are delighted to see him released.”

Killen’s release came as a blow to advocates who spent years pressing the state to try someone for the three murders. His trial was the most recent – and, many suspected, the last – in a line of high-profile civil rights cases that have been reopened by a state eager to shake off its reputation for racial strife.

With national attention on Neshoba County, the jury split on the charge of murder but found Killen guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. A day later, with the admonishment that “each life has value,” Judge Gordon imposed the maximum possible sentence of 60 years.

Killen, confined to a wheelchair since breaking his legs in a logging accident, was sent to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility for what many regarded as a de facto life sentence.

But Judge Gordon on Friday said that he had no choice but to free Killen on bail during the appeal process. He said defendants in Mississippi are entitled to bond unless they are guilty of child abuse or murder, or unless the state has proven they pose a danger.

Judge Gordon set Killen’s bail at $600,000, which was met five hours later by neighbors and friends who put up their property as collateral.

Mississippi law allows judges to grant appeal bond when the convicted person has established that he or she poses no risk, but the law uses vague language, allowing bond “when the peculiar circumstances of the case render it proper.” Phillip Broadhead, a clinical professor in the criminal appeals program at the University of Mississippi, said Judge Gordon had “plenty of discretion.”

“The judge always has wiggle room,” Mr. Broadhead said. He added that it is “very rare to see an appeal bond set in this serious of a case.”

The decision infuriated members of the Magnolia Bar Association, an association of black lawyers and judges who charged in a statement that “the 60-year sentence handed down by Judge Gordon meant absolutely nothing – it was a sentence that Judge Gordon delivered in a harsh, stern voice before the national media.”

“Underneath that stern voice … we believe that Judge Gordon knew that Edgar Ray Killen would walk away a free man again,” read the statement, which called for the Mississippi Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

Mr. Hood, who was not present at Friday’s bond hearing, made the case in his emergency petition that Killen was dangerous and a flight risk.

He described a 1974 phone call in which Killen told a woman, referring to her husband, “He’s going to crawl ’cause I’m ready to give him anything he wants. Would you be satisfied with him if somebody would bring him home where you wouldn’t recognize him for a week? I want that revenge. I like revenge.” Killen was convicted of telephone harassment in the case.

Mr. Hood’s petition also described a death threat made by “a relative of Edgar Ray Killen” against Judge Gordon. Mr. McIntyre said Mr. Hood was referring to Killen’s 64-year-old brother, who scuffled with cameramen at Killen’s arraignment in January.

J.D. Killen, who lives in the town of Bailey, said he never threatened Gordon.

“It’s not my job to say when a person’s life is over,” he said. “God almighty put it in Job 14:5. He’s the one that says when people go.

“They’ve been after the whole family,” he said. “They don’t want us to rest.”