The recordings primarily contained racist sentiment. Most significantly, one recording from the car raised the subject of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. In the recording, the men spoke of it with approval. Blanton began to say something that sounded as if he were about to implicate himself and Cherry by bragging, but Cherry, who was less acquainted with the informant, sharply cut him off by saying, "Now, this good ol' boy doesn't need to know about that!" and laughed. Burns also reported unrecorded references made by Blanton and Cherry to their involvement in the bombing. Video Also presented at Bobby Cherry's trial were videos showing explosives in the same quantity as had been used in the bombing being used to destroy a car in a field. The violent force of the explosion evident in the video was designed to counter the defense's suggestion that, though they claimed that Cherry was not involved, the purpose of the bomb may have been to scare the church congregants, not to kill or injure them. Prosecutors also "showed the jury a videotape of a white mob beating local civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth when he showed up to register his children at the all white Phillips High School." At one point, the prosecutors "froze the film as a grinning, slender white man with a bulbous nose, wavy hair and a cigarette dangling from his mouth — unmistakably a grinning young Bobby Frank Cherry — was seen slamming his fist into the minister's head after pulling what appeared to be a set of brass knuckles from his back pocket." Conviction During the trial, Cherry smiled and looked amused. He could be seen joking with his lawyers and several supporters, not appearing to believe that the legal system which had protected him up to that point would ultimately send him to jail. He was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry attempted to appeal, but in October 2004, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction. The court rejected Cherry's claim that a delay of 37 years between his commission of the crime and his indictment in 2000 had resulted in an inherently unfair trial. During his prison sentence, Cherry repeatedly claimed to be the victim of a malicious false campaign against him and he said that he was a "political prisoner" who was denied proper treatment.