Long Time Comin'

By Rogelio Solis, AP

It’s been in the news yesterday and today: James Ford Seale, a Ku Klux Klansmen, was sentenced [finally!] in Mississippi for his role in kidnapping, torturing, and murdering two young African American men in 1964. The FBI investigated this at the time and arrested several men including Seale but the local authorities never prosecuted the case.

One of Seale’s cohorts ratted him out in recent years and was granted immunity. [I feel so conflicted about granting immunity. This other criminal walks!] Seale and his fellow gangsters kidnapped these young men, tied them to trees, and beat them. Then tied weights around their bodies and dumped them in the Mississippi River while they were still alive!!

Yes, yes ... another example of “Home of the brave”.

“This may be one of the most horrific crimes in my 31 years as a prosecutor, throwing these young men into the river while they were still alive," said U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton of Jackson.

The slain youths were Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. Only 19 years old! The hero of all this is Moore’s brother, Thomas, who has pushed for justice in his brother's case since 1998.

The case was reopened in 2005 after Thomas Moore, a retired 30-year Army veteran and the brother of Charles Moore (one of the 1964 victims), returned to Mississippi with filmmaker David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a search for justice in the case. There they met up with Donna Ladd and photographer Kate Medley from the Jackson Free Press, an alternative newsweekly in Jackson, Miss. During several days of reporting, the CBC and the Free Press discovered simultaneously from locals that Seale had not died, as had been reported to gullible press by Seale's family members. The discovery helped to re-energize interest in the case after Moore and Ridgen visited U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton on the same trip, and Lampton pledged to re-open the case.

There's that "gullible press" again. Gullible with an agenda.

To read the entry in Wikipedia, click here.

Seale got three life terms in prison.

Judge Wingate said that he took into account Seale’s advanced age and poor health, but added, “Then I had to take a look at the crime itself, the horror, the ghastliness of it.” Seale will serve his sentence at a medical facility.

Some folks might think this is cruel to send a 72-year old man to life in prison. Not me. Not for this guy. Did he take one moment to think that he was robbing those young men of their entire lives?

Throw him in the clink.

Stumble It!