FBI says end near in civil rights-era prosecutions

FBI says end near in civil rights-era prosecutions

Every time we think we've seen the last of the trials for civil rights-era atrocities, it seems, prosecutors will parade some stooped, white-haired defendant before the cameras in shackles. Byron de la Beckwith. Sam Bowers. Bobby Frank Cherry. Edgar Ray Killen. James Ford Seale. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and age and infirmity offer no refuge for the guilty, these cases have proved. But if justice has an enemy, it is time. And now, officials are conceding that the spectacle of juries passing judgment on such aging killers is just about past. The Department of Justice, under its 5-year-old "Cold Case Initiative" and the 2007 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, has combed through that dark period of American history, seeking any cases that could still be prosecuted. Isolating 111 incidents involving 124 deaths, investigators have sought to determine whether those who died were victims of racially motivated crimes -- and then whether there's anyone left to charge. In about two-thirds of those cases, FBI agents have hand-delivered letters to next of kin, informing them that the government had taken things as far as they could. In some cases, all of the suspects are dead; in others, suspect individuals have been acquitted in the past and cannot legally be retried. In a few, the agency can find no evidence that a crime was racially motivated -- or even that the death resulted from foul play. "We regret to inform you that we are unable to proceed further with a federal criminal investigation of this matter ..., " a DOJ official wrote to the daughter of Harry and Harriette Moore, who died following the dynamiting of their Florida home six decades ago. "Please accept our sincere condolences on the loss of your parents." Roughly three dozen of the reviewed investigations -- including the oldest, the Florida lynching of Claude Neal in 1934 -- remain open. Although DOJ reported to Congress recently that some state prosecutions are "potentially viable," the passage of time and other "impediments" make the prospect of trials unlikely. "Few, if any, of these cases will be prosecuted," the agency acknowledged. Civil rights activist Alvin Sykes, who did as much as anyone to push for this effort, is disappointed. "I said, 'The American people won't believe you made a full-faith effort if there wasn't a manhunt,'" says the head of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, named for the 14-year-old black boy whose lynching in Mississippi helped spark the modern civil rights movement. "They made some efforts, but they didn't make an outreach, a manhunt." But Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center says it was clear from the outset that "most of the cases that were solvable have been solved." Even without new prosecutions, he says, a page has been turned. "I think there is some utility in closing cases, if for no better reason than to assure the families that what can be done at this late date has been done," says Potok, director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization's Intelligence Project. "These are people who have been completely left out of the justice process for many decades. So the government does owe them a debt of attention. So I wouldn't say that it was a total waste of taxpayer money." During the darkest days of the civil rights struggle, when all-white juries acquitted obvious perpetrators or Southern state officials flat refused to prosecute racial killings, families could still turn to the federal government for some modicum of justice. A few years in prison for a federal civil rights violation was better than no punishment at all. Decades later, when prosecutors in the "new South" began reopening some of those old cases, the Department of Justice again stepped forward. Although the statutes of limitations on most federal crimes had long since run out, the FBI's files were filled with yellowed statements from witnesses or informants, some long dead, that might help locals build a case. These collaborations -- combined with the work of some dogged reporters, activists and persistent family members -- produced some stunning convictions in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. The most recent was the June 2007 conviction of Seale, a reputed former Ku Klux Klansman whom many had believed long dead. A federal jury in Jackson, Miss., convicted Seale, then 72, of kidnapping and conspiracy in the torture and drowning of two black youths in 1964. He was sentenced to three life terms and died Aug. 2 in an Indiana prison. The bureau also "lent its assistance" in the case of former Alabama state trooper James Fowler, who last year pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Feb. 18, 1965, shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson following a protest march in Marion, Ala. Fowler, 77, was sentenced to six months in jail. After Killen was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 in the so-called "Mississippi Burning" case, activists pushed for charges against a list of what they said were viable prosecution targets remaining; this case of three civil rights workers' 1964 murder remains technically open. "I HOPE we're not done," says John Gibson, executive director of the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center. On the still-open list are a couple of cases that fall into a peculiar category: Ones in which someone was acquitted by an all-white jury but has now admitted to the killing. So the possibility of vigilantism is among considerations in deciding when to close such cases, says FBI Special Agent Cynthia Deitle, who until recently was in charge of the cold-case effort. "How does the Department of Justice write a letter that SAYS that?" she asks. "The person that killed your father is very much alive, still lives in the hometown where you live, and admitted doing it ... and there's nothing that we can do or the state can do." In some cases, like the one against Seale, the Department of Justice used non-civil rights statutes -- such as kidnapping resulting in death, or involving killings on federal lands -- to overcome the statute of limitations challenge. But many of those closed seemed already hopelessly cold when the initiative began. The FBI sent an 8,000-page file to Mississippi officials on the August 1955 slaying of Till, the Chicago boy who was tortured and shot for whistling at a white woman. Photos of Till's mangled corpse lying in an open coffin outraged the nation and galvanized civil rights activists. The admitted killers were long dead, but some thought a case could have been made against others who might have played a role before or after the killing. A local grand jury failed to return any indictments, and the case was officially closed in December 2007. Although the Till act does not require it, the FBI has provided detailed reports to the next of kin in cases that were being closed, "in an effort to nonetheless bring some sense of closure to the family members of these victims." Despite a media campaign, the agency has managed to locate relatives for only 95 of the 124 victims. The Associated Press obtained redacted copies of several letters through the Freedom of Information Act. Survivors of some victims agreed to share their letters with AP reporters. Some families are satisfied that the FBI had done all it could do to bring their loved ones' killers to justice. Others, who had allowed themselves to hope, feel violated all over again. James Ware never expected much from the reopening of his brother Virgil's case. On Sept. 15, 1963, the two were on their way home from a junkyard outside Birmingham, Ala. They'd just started a new paper route and were looking for parts to cobble together a second bicycle, with dreams of earning enough to buy themselves a used car. That morning, just a few miles away, four black girls had died when a KKK bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. As they flew down the Docena-Sandusky Road, the Ware brothers -- 16-year-old James pedaling, Virgil, 13, balanced on the handlebars -- had not heard of the bombing and had no idea how dangerous it was to be out that day. Michael Farley and Larry Joe Sims, two 16-year-old white boys, were riding a motorbike down the same road, a miniature Confederate flag flapping behind them, when they came across two friends who said they'd seen a couple of black kids throwing rocks up the way. Farley reportedly opened his jacket to reveal a recently purchased .22-caliber, pearl-handled pistol, saying, "We'll take care of them." As they approached the two black boys, Farley handed the pistol to Sims. Sims fired twice, and Virgil fell. At 64, James Ware's memory of that day is still vivid. "Ware," Virgil gasped as his older brother leaned over him. "I'm shot." "No, you're not," James recalls saying. "Get up." But his brother, wounded in the cheek and chest, never moved or spoke again.