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High Court declines to hear 1964 civil rights kidnap case
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James Ford Seale
The U.S. Supreme Court declined today to hear the infamous kidnapping case of James Ford Seale. Seale was convicted in 2007 for the 1964 racially motivated kidnapping of two black students who were found dead in the Mississippi River.
The court’s decision to not get involved solidifies Seale’s 2007 conviction. Seale had appealed his conviction saying that the statute of limitations had expired when he was arrested in 2007.
The FBI had accused Seale and other Klu Klux Klan members of kidnapping students Charles Moore and Henry Dee, beating them, and leaving them to die in the Mississippi river.
Seale and another man were arrested at the time of the crime, but authorities chose not to prosecute. The case was re-opened in 2007 with the help Moore’s brother, who helped police zero in on Seale.
At issue in the case was whether or not Seale’s charge of kidnapping was subjected to the statute of limitations for non-capital-offense crimes, which is only five years. Capital-offense crimes, that is, crimes punishable by death, do not have a statue of limitations.
At the time Seale’s crime was committed, the offense was punishable by death. For more than two decades however, the offense has not been a capital one. Seale argued that when the death penalty was taken off of the books, the five-year statue when into effect and once that period expired he could no longer be charged.
A federal appeals court disagreed and upheld Seale’s conviction. Today’s Supreme Court decision is not a ruling on the issue of the statute of limitations, they just simply declined to chime in on the case.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia disagreed with the majority ruling saying the court should have taken the case.
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