Paige M. Fitzgerald
Deputy Chief in Charge of the Cold Case Initiative
Paige M. Fitzgerald
Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice
US Government
Paige M. Fitzgerald, Attorney at Law
Paige Fitzgerald has a law practice in Washington (DC)
Lawyer Paige Fitzgerald has experience representing clients
in various areas of Law.
Three Brandon , Miss.
WASHINGTON—Joseph Dominick, 21, from Brandon, Mississippi,
pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Mississippi, to one
count of conspiracy to commit federal hate crimes in connection with his role
in the assault of African-Americans in Jackson. Defendants Deryl Paul Dedmon,
20; John Aaron Rice, 19; Dylan Wade Butler, 21; William Kirk Montgomery, 23;
and Jonathan Kyle Gaskamp, 20, all from Brandon June 26,
2011 .
FBI says end near in civil rights-era prosecutions
Published November
06, 2011 Associated Press
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
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. Indiana
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 Chicago
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.
That morning, just a few miles away, four black girls had
died when a KKK bomb exploded at the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church Docena-Sandusky Road
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.
Farley and Sims were arrested and charged with first-degree
murder. Sims, an Eagle Scout, claimed that his eyes were closed when he shot,
and that he was only trying to scare the other boys. After a jury convicted
Sims of second-degree manslaughter, Farley pleaded guilty to the same charge.
Each was sentenced to seven months, suspended.
James Ware received his letter in late March.
Despite the light sentences, the two men could not be
retried in state court ("jeopardy has attached"), and a five-year
statute of limitations precluded federal civil rights charges against anyone in
the case, the letter said.
James Ware never accepted that the shooting was an accident.
But he had long ago accepted the apologies of Farley and Sims, and had
considered the case closed.
If nothing else, the renewed investigation rescued Virgil
from obscurity, he says. "I don't see what else could be done. He got full
recognition. That's what I wanted for him — to be known about."
But to some families who have waited decades for justice,
the FBI's letters have brought no peace.
When lounge manager Jasper Greenwood went missing in Vicksburg ,
Miss. June 21, 1964 , his family immediately suspected foul play.
The FBI was told that Greenwood
By the time his body was found eight days later on a road
outside Vicksburg
Linda Galvin, Greenwood
But according to the FBI's letter to the family, agents had
interviewed funeral home director W.H. Jefferson in 1964, and he "denied that
he thought the hole had been caused by anything other than 'nature' ..."
The bureau obtained a copy of the Vicksburg Police Department's report, which
concluded that Greenwood had suffered a fatal heart attack while meeting with a
married woman on the local "lover's lane."
Family members have suggested that Greenwood Mississippi Greenwood
None of that satisfies Greenwood Jacksonville , Fla.
The families of Adlena Hamlett and Birdia Keglar also have
lingering doubts.
Hamlett, 78, was a retired schoolteacher and one of the
first blacks to register to vote in Tallahatchie County ,
Miss.
The women died on Jan.
11, 1966 , as they were returning home from a secret meeting in Jackson
Keglar's granddaughter, Nina Zachery, 76, wept as she
described seeing the body at the funeral home. Keglar appeared to have been
decapitated.
Zachery was told that the driver of the car, Grafton Gray,
supposedly played dead and could hear the women being tortured. "When my
family members would try to talk to him, he would not," she recently told the
AP.
The FBI tracked down the wreck's lone survivor, backseat
passenger Richard Simpson, a white activist from Massachusetts
"The impact caused the hood of (the) car to break loose
and move through the windshield, fatally injuring" Hamlett and Keglar, the
FBI determined.
On a gloriously sunny spring day this year, two FBI agents
appeared at 79-year-old Lila Hamlett's door in Kansas City ,
Mo.
Dated May 27, it said there was "insufficient evidence
to indicate that a racially motivated homicide occurred."
The agents asked if Hamlett had any questions. She had lots,
but she didn't bother asking. If the letter was intended to provide closure, it
failed.
"It's just an unsolved case," she says.
"Whatever it was, it'll never be revealed now. And I just have to accept
it."
Some families' refusal to accept what seems like solid
evidence is understandable to Patricia A. Turner, a professor of
African-American studies and the vice provost for undergraduate studies at the University
of California Davis
The black community hasn't forgotten longtime FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover's reluctance to investigate civil rights violence, or his
attempts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., she says. And when you consider
episodes such as the Tuskegee experiments, in which scientists allowed black
men with syphilis to go untreated so they could study the effects, it's easy to
believe the government is capable of doing — and covering up — just about
anything, she says.
"And certainly anything related to something as major
as a death, the family members are going to have come up with a narrative, a
story that fits their understanding of the world and who has power in it — and
who doesn't have power in it." says Turner, author of the 1994 book,
"I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American
Culture."
Activists were elated when the initiative was launched,
reviewing the old cases. But much of that joy has since faded.
Lawmakers had promised annual funding over a 10-year span:
$10 million per year to the FBI, $2 million for state and local law
enforcement, and more. But only a fraction has been appropriated.
"It hasn't lived up to its potential," says Sykes.
"I'm disappointed."
So is Juanita Evangeline Moore.
Her father, Harry T. Moore, organized the NAACP's Brevard
County , Fla. Cape Canaveral
until their activism got them fired.
On Christmas Day 1951 — which was also the couple's 25th
wedding anniversary — a bomb went off beneath the floor in their bedroom. The
blast collapsed the front end of their modest frame house; their daughter Annie
Rosalea, who was in the next room, found them lying at the bottom of a crater,
covered in debris.
Harry Moore died on the way to the hospital. His wife died
nine days later.
The FBI investigated at the time, but no one was charged. A
state investigation launched in 1991 turned up little new evidence. In 2004, Florida
The FBI closed its second investigation into the case in
mid-July. In a letter to Moore
"Therefore, we have no choice but to close our
investigation," Fitzgerald concluded.
Moore, who believes the FBI knew about some of these people
years ago, says, "They have waited too long and they have bungled the
investigations."
She chokes up as she recalls returning home from Washington ,
D.C.
"I hate all white people," she spat. Harriette
Moore chided her.
"She said, 'Evangeline. You can't do that. It would
make you ugly, and you've always been my beautiful daughter. I don't want to
ever hear you say that again.'"
"God," she says, "has already judged
them."
___
Associated Press Writers Jay Reeves in Birmingham ,
Ala. Atlanta
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