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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/us/03seale.html
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday said it would not
review a case arising from the 1964 kidnapping and killing of
two black teenagers along the Mississippi-Louisiana border, an
episode that continues to stir legal debate as it stokes
memories of the ugliest racism.
The court declined to take the case of James F. Seale, a cancer-
stricken former Ku Klux Klan member now in his mid-70s, who was
convicted more than three decades after the deaths of Charles E.
Moore and Henry H. Dee. Mr. Seale is serving a life term for
kidnapping and conspiracy, and the Supreme Court’s action on
Monday means his conviction stands.
The victims were 19 when they were abducted, tied to trees,
whipped and thrown into a Mississippi River backwater on May 2,
1964. Horrible as they were, the killings did not attract much
attention, because only weeks later they were overshadowed by
the infamous killings of three civil rights workers in
Philadelphia, Miss., the case depicted in the movie “Mississippi
Burning.”
The Supreme Court had been asked by the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to decide whether too much time
had passed between the crime and Mr. Seale’s arrest in early
2007 for him to be prosecuted on a federal kidnapping charge.
Over the objections of Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin
Scalia, the court turned down the Fifth Circuit’s request.
Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Scalia, asserted that the
case “presents us with a pure question of law that may well
determine the outcome of a number of cases of ugly racial
violence from the 1960s,” and as such should be heard by the
court.
And it may yet be, Mr. Seale’s lawyer, Kathy Nester of the
Office of the Federal Public Defender in Jackson, Miss., said on
Monday.
While Ms. Nester called the Supreme Court’s decision
“disappointing,” she added, “However, the question of whether
the government’s prosecution violated the statute of limitations
remains alive and can be presented again after the remaining
issues in the case have been resolved by the Fifth Circuit.”
One issue, besides the statute of limitations, is the testimony
by an expert witness that the bones of the victims indicated
they were still alive when they were thrown into the river, Ms.
Nester said, asserting that the science upon which the witness
relied is in doubt.
No matter what happens next, Mr. Seale’s case will endure in
memory for its elements of gothic mystery and horror.
As federal agents pieced together the case, Mr. Moore and Mr.
Dee were suspected by some Mississippi Klansmen of trying to
foment a Black Muslim rebellion. Mr. Dee worked at a lumberyard,
while Mr. Moore was home from Alcorn A&M College, now Alcorn
State University.
Abducted by Klan members in southwestern Mississippi, they were
questioned and beaten, then apparently taken into Louisiana,
where they were tied to an engine block and thrown into the
river with tape over their mouths. Parts of their bodies were
found weeks later.
Mr. Seale, who was a truck driver, and another Klan member were
suspected of the crime early on, but they faced virtually no
danger of prosecution from the local authorities of that time.
In 2000, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., took a fresh look
at the case. It found documents indicating that the beatings
might have occurred in the Homochitto National Forest, giving
the Justice Department reason to claim federal jurisdiction.
But Mr. Seale had dropped out of sight. Newspaper reports said
he had died, much to the disappointment of Mr. Moore’s brother,
Thomas, who went to Roxie, Miss., in July 2004 with a filmmaker
to make a documentary on the killings.
When Mr. Moore lamented to a local man that it was too bad Mr.
Seale had died, the man replied: “He ain’t dead. I’ll show you
where he lives.”
So Mr. Moore and the filmmaker drove to a nearby house, where
they saw an old man lounging out front.
“James Ford Seale!” Mr. Moore called from the road. “Why don’t
you come out and talk to me?”
The man ran inside. But, as it turned out, he could not outrun
the past. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had reopened the
case in 2000, determining that the best chance for conviction
was on a kidnapping charge. Mr. Seale was arrested early in
2007, and convicted that June of kidnapping and conspiracy.
But the law had changed. In 1964, federal kidnapping was an
offense punishable by death if the victim was harmed, and as
such had no statute of limitations. The Supreme Court overturned
that death penalty provision in 1968, and the broader issue of
capital punishment itself was in doubt for much of the 1970s.
And in 1994, kidnapping that results in the loss of life was
once again made punishable by death.
“But for more than two decades in between, Seale’s crime was not
punishable by death,” Justice Stevens noted on Monday, saying
that the Supreme Court should have decided whether Mr. Seale’s
case was subject to a five-year statute of limitations.
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit overturned Mr. Seale’s
conviction in September 2008, declaring that the statute of
limitations had expired between the crimes and his arrest. But
the full circuit deadlocked, 9 to 9, which left standing the
original ruling by a federal trial judge that the statute had
not expired.
The case now goes back to the Fifth Circuit. |
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