By Doug Miller

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says it has concluded reinvestigations into 56 of 109 cold cases involving Civil Rights-related murders dating back to the 1940s, and acknowledges that for a variety of reasons – including the deaths of suspects and witnesses and the destruction of evidence – most of them are unlikely to result in prosecutions.

In a second report to Congress following an initial document delivered a year ago, the DOJ identified the only two racially motivated killings it has successfully prosecuted since beginning its Cold Case Initiative in 2006, plus 54 matters the department decided to close after what it called “significant investigation and review.” The vast majority of the unprosecuted cases involved suspects who no longer are alive, according to the report.

“In others,” the report continued, “there is insufficient evidence to establish that a racially motivated homicide occurred.” Investigations revealed that some deaths involved accidents, for instance, as well as suicides, heart attacks and homicides committed for non-racial reasons.

The two cases that were successfully prosecuted involved the 1966 murder of Ben Chester White, an elderly African-American farmer, by Mississippi Klansman Ernest Henry Avants, and the 1964 killings of black teenagers Charles Moore and Henry Dee by James Ford Seale and other Mississippi Ku Klux Klan members.

The Southern Connection

Both the 2009 and 2010 reports were submitted as part of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which directed the DOJ and the FBI to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of Civil Rights-era homicides. The agencies identified 122 slayings dating from July 1946 to March 1968 that qualified as race-related murders, nearly all of which occurred in the South. A third of the killings took place in Mississippi.

“It has become apparent,” the report concedes, “that most of these cases will not result in prosecutions. Subjects die; witnesses die; memories become clouded; evidence is destroyed. Justice in few, if any, of these cases will ever be reached inside of a courtroom.”

“Observers involved in civil rights work today acknowledge the passage of time has undermined the process of investigation in many of these cases, but are nonetheless dismayed. John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, “This failure of justice to redress a time of terror will make our truth and reconciliation that much harder.”

Given the obstacles in pursuing criminal investigations in most of the remaining unsolved murders, the report explains that the DOJ’s efforts have shifted to what it termed “outreach” activities. “This year,” it states, “the department conducted significant outreach to interested community groups, law enforcement organizations, academic communities and the media.” The document also highlights the agency’s focus on locating victims’ next of kin, explaining the facts of the case pertinent to them and delivering official notification that the matter has been closed.

For the first time, a detailed list of victims was made public with the report. As of the date of its delivery to Congress, the deaths of 62 victims out of 122 remain unsolved. Cases involving 49 of the originally identified 122 victims were closed in the first five months of this year alone.

No remaining cases currently fall under the authority of federal statutes, according to the report, but several have been identified as potentially actionable at the state level, one of which involves charges against James Bonard Fowler for the 1965 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Ala. The killing of Jackson, an unarmed civil rights protestor, was one of the events that triggered the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.

Fowler, an Alabama state trooper at the time of the slaying, was charged with Jackson’s murder in May of 2007. His October 2008 trial date was vacated and no new date has been set.