Supreme Court Declines to Hear 1960s Racially Motivated Murder of Two Black College Students at the Hands of KKK Member James Forde Seale

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up the cause of James Forde Seale, a former cropduster and deputy sheriff in his Mississippi home town of Roxie, who was involved in an infamous racially motivated crime on May 2, 1964, that led to the deaths of black college students Charles Moore and Henry Dee. As a result of the court's action, his conviction will stand. Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia said the court should have taken up the case. They said that it was "an important issue, that may well determine the outcome of a number of cases of ugly racial violence from the 1960s."

Charles Moore, James Forde Seale and Henry Dee (UK Times Online)

A little background on the case:

The FBI accused Seale and other Ku Klux Klansmen of kidnapping two black college students in 1964, beating them in a forest, and dumping them, still alive, into the Mississippi River. Seale and another man were arrested at the time, but local authorities declined to prosecute them for killing the students, Charles Moore and his friend, Henry Dee. Moore's brother, Thomas, helped get the case re-opened, and Seale was re-arrested in 2007, this time on federal charges, and later convicted.

When the crime was committed in 1964, a kidnapping that resulted in harm to the victim was punishable by death. And that is true today. But for more than two decades, violating that law was not a capital offense. There's no statute of limitations for crimes that carry the death penalty, but there is for others.  Accordingly, Seale challenged his conviction, arguing that when the death penalty was taken off the books, only a five-year statute of limitations applied to the crime. Once that period elapsed, he could no longer be charged, even though the death penalty was later revived, he claimed. A federal appeals court disagreed and upheld Seale's conviction, but it urged the Supreme Court to straighten out the law. Today, the justices declined to do so. Source: MSNBC

Justices Stevens and Scalia are right, that this matter will rear its head again in other cases of this nature. The reality is that there are so many other unsolved cases from that dark period in American history and I applaud those who are tirelessly fighting to bring justice to our brothers and sisters who were lynched by the KKK for no other reason but the color of their skin.

Brief Background on the Ku Klux Klan

• The 19th-century Klan was originally organized as a social club by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee. They apparently derived the name from the Greek word kyklos meaning circle.

• It was presided over by a grand wizard in a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclops. Members wore robes and sheets to frighten black people, believed to be superstitious, and to prevent identification.

• The 20th-century Klan was organized in 1915 in Georgia by Colonel William J. Simmons.

• It reached its peak in the 1920s, when its membership across the US exceeded four million.

• To the old Klan's hostility towards black people, the new Klan added bias against Roman Catholics, Jews and foreigner.

• There are an estimated 6,000 members of Klan chapters in the US today.

To read more about Charles Moore as told by his brother Thomas Moore, CLICK HERE.