Reaching Back: Introducing the Emmett Till Unsolved Crime Rights Act

[WSJ_law_blog]

Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago whose body was found in the Tallahatchie River near the Delta community of Money, Miss., on Aug. 31, 1955. (AP Photo)


Over the past four nights, the TV One channel, in a documentary series called “Murder in Black and White,” has examined four cases of racially motivated murders that took place in the South of the 1940’s and 50’s.

One of the most infamous examples of racially-motivated murder (which is not featured in the series) is the 1955 torture and murder of Emmett Till, a 14 year-old from Chicago who, while visiting family in Mississippi, supposedly made the fatal mistake of whistling at a white woman. Now, over half a century later, Till’s name has been exhumed for use in The Emmett Till Unsolved Rights Crime Act, recently signed into law by President Bush, which gives new authority to the DOJ and FBI to reopen, investigate and prosecute unsolved Civil Rights era crimes. Here’s a report from the NLJ.

The Act, writes the NLJ, directs the attorney general to designate a deputy chief in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division to be responsible for investigating and prosecuting violations of criminal civil rights statutes in which the alleged violation occurred before January 1, 1970, and resulted in death, and to designate a supervisory special agent in the Civil Rights Unit of the FBI to investigate those alleged violations as well.

The AG also has authority under the act to award grants - $2 million annually - to state or local law enforcement agencies for the investigation and prosecution of such cases. Congress appropriated $10 million in general funding each year for the act, with all of its provisions to sunset in fiscal year 2017.

According to this story in the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press, Mississippi currently doesn’t have any active civil-rights cold cases, but Mississippi AG Jim Hood supported the bill nonetheless. “The public needs to know that the state and the federal government did everything we could,” Hood added. “In the future, 50 years from now, people will be able to look at that list of people who died and know that, at least, someone looked at it with the assets and abilities to thoroughly review it . . . Let’s get it answered for the victims. It’s what they deserve.”