James Ford Seale
Encyclopedia
James Ford Seale was a Ku Klux Klan
member charged by the U.S. Justice Department on January 24, 2007, and subsequently convicted on June 14, 2007, for the May 1964 kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two African-American young men in Meadville, Mississippi
. At the time of his arrest, Seale worked at a lumber plant in Roxie, Mississippi
. He also worked as a crop duster and was a police officer in Louisiana
briefly in the 1970s.
Seale was convicted on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy to kidnap two persons, and two counts of kidnapping where the victims were not released unharmed. He was sentenced on August 24, 2007, to three life terms for his part in the 1964 murders of the two Mississippi teens. In 2008, Seale's kidnapping conviction was overturned by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
, before being reinstated by that court sitting en banc
the following year. He was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Terre Haute, Indiana
, where he died in 2011.
movement in the 1960s. Many working class whites feared greater job competition from blacks if integration changed the society and tensions were high over desegregation of schools. The Natchez area became a center of Ku Klux Klan and other segregationist activity, with violence directed against black churches, often used as the center of community organizing, and black activists.
. According to F.B.I.
records, Seale thought the two might be civil rights
activists, especially as Dee had just returned from Chicago
. He ordered them into his car by telling them he was a federal revenue agent, investigating moonshine stills.
He drove them into the Homochitto National Forest
between Meadville and Natchez, having called Charles Marcus Edwards to have him and other Klansmen follow. As Seale held a sawed-off shotgun
on the pair, the other men tied the young men to a tree and severely beat them with long, skinny sticks (called "bean sticks" because they're often used to "stalk" beans in gardens). According to the January 2007 indictment, the Klansmen took the pair, who were reportedly still alive, to a nearby farm where Seale duct-taped their mouths and hands. The Klansmen wrapped the bloody pair in a plastic tarp, put them into the trunk of another Klansman's red Ford (the deceased Ernest Parker, according to FBI records), and drove almost 100 miles to the Ole River near Tallulah, Louisiana
. They had to drive through Louisiana to get there, but the backwater is located in Warren County, Mississippi
.
At the river, the Klansmen took the pair away from shore in a boat, where they tied them to an old Jeep
engine block and sections of railroad track rails with chains before dumping them in the water to drown. Reportedly still alive when put in the river, the young men were killed in Mississippi. According to a Klan informant, Seale said later that he would have shot them first, but didn't want to get blood all over the boat.
The bodies of the pair were found about two months later by US Navy divers who were working on the investigation associated with the disappearance in June of three civil rights workers: James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman
and Michael Schwerner
from Meridian, Mississippi
. The FBI made an investigation of the Dee-Moore murders (they had more than 100 agents around Natchez, trying to reduce violence), and presented their findings to local District Attorney Lenox Forman. FBI agents and Mississippi Highway Patrol officers arrested Seale, then 29, and fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, 31, on November 6, 1964. According to FBI informants, both men confessed to the crime. They were released on November 11, after family members posted $5,000 bond each.
On January 11, 1965, the District Attorney Lenox Forman filed a “motion to dismiss affidavits” with Justice of the Peace
Willie Bedford, who signed the motion the same day. The motions state: “… that in the interest of justice and in order to fully develop the facts in this case, the affidavits against James Seale and Charles Edwards should be dismissed by this Court without prejudice to the Defendants or to the State of Mississippi at this time in order that the investigation may be continued and completed for presentation to a Grand Jury at some later date.” Forman said he dismissed the case because it had been prejudiced toward the defendants, who "put out the story" in Meadville that, after their arrest, they had been "brutally mistreated," as reported in 2005 in an investigation by Donna Ladd of the Jackson Free Press.
, including his father, Clyde Seale, and Charles Marcus Edwards, his alleged accomplice in the Dee-Moore murders. The Klansmen repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment
, while the chief investigator Donald T. Appell and House members placed into the record what they believed the men had done, including kidnapping and murdering Dee and Moore in 1964. According to the hearing transcript, Appell introduced testimony of Alton Alford, a Meadville man, who said that Seale beat him with his shotgun. Appell asked Seale if he was involved in the 1965 death of a Klansman named Earl Hodges, who had fallen out with Seale’s father. Appell accused Seale and Edwards of claiming "false arrest" by Mississippi highway patrolmen to help them escape criminal charges.
Two authors published books on the case: Don Whitehead wrote Attack on Terror: The FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, (1990), which included some of the FBI’s 1960s-era findings on the Dee-Moore murders. Earl Ofari Hutchinson
, in Betrayed: The Presidential Failure to Protect Black Lives, (1996), also wrote about the Dee-Moore case, naming Seale and another suspect as responsible. He called for federal officials to indict the men on kidnapping charges. Hutchinson pointed out that because the crime occurred in a national forest, the federal government has jurisdiction.
veteran, began to work on the case. Then living in Colorado, he wrote to the District Attorney Ronnie Harper "asking him to look into his brother's murder. He agreed." Various media journalists began to look at the story again, including Newsday, 20-20 and Jerry Mitchell
of The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi). On January 14, 2000, Mitchell reported that the murders occurred on federal land. This spurred the FBI to take another look but some of their resources got diverted to the revival of the 1964 Neshoba County investigation of Edgar Ray Killen
.
Contacted by the filmmaker David Ridgen
of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
, Thomas Moore returned to Mississippi on July 7, 2005, to begin shooting the documentary Mississippi Cold Case
, about the events of his brother's murder. Together they began a search for justice in the case. They were also going to be working with the journalist Donna Ladd
and photographer Kate Medley from the Jackson Free Press
, an alternative newsweekly in Jackson, Mississippi
.
On July 8 the two men interviewed the District Attorney Ronnie Harper, who told them that James Ford Seale was alive, although his family members had reported him dead to the media a few years before. The pair confirmed this fact when Kenny Byrd, a resident of Roxie, pointed them toward Seale's trailer. The same morning, Moore and Ridgen met with Ladd and Medley. During this trip, the former Klansman James Kenneth Greer told Ladd and Medley that Seale was living in Roxie, Mississippi
next to his brother.
The discovery of Seale helped to revive interest in the case; Moore and Ridgen visited the U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, who pledged to re-open the case. Two weeks after the trip, Ladd published the first of several articles in the Jackson Free Press about the investigation and the discovery that Seale was alive. Moved by the response of people he talked to, that July Thomas Moore formed the "Dee Moore Coalition for Justice in Franklin County."
Moore and Ridgen returned to Mississippi every few months to continue filming, making nine trips in total for Mississippi Cold Case
; each time they visited Dunn Lampton, where Moore presented more of the data they had found. The Jackson Free Press continued its investigation as well, and has published a package of all of its stories on the case to keep local interest high. At the end of July 2005, the paper published Thomas Moore's response to an editorial that appeared in the Franklin Advocate, the weekly in Meadville, in which the editor said the case should not be re-opened. (Editor Mary Lou Webb did not publish Moore's response.)
activity. Moore was included because he was a friend of Dee.
Seale was arraigned and denied bond because he was considered a flight risk: he owned no property, was a pilot, and lived in a motor home. He and his wife had already left Roxie for a brief time after the reporting team's initial July 2005 visits, according to Roxie residents. Primary testimony was from fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards. After being confronted by Thomas Moore and David Ridgen during filming of a scene in Mississippi Cold Case
, state and federal officials gave him immunity from prosecution to tell the full story of what happened.
Seale was convicted of kidnapping
and conspiracy on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury. On August 24, 2007, Seale was sentenced to serve three life terms for his crimes.
The 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 was imprisoned for a year at a medical facility. The conviction was overturned by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals
on September 9, 2008. The court ruled that the lower court had failed to recognize the statute of limitations for kidnapping had long since expired. Prosecutors asked the appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and the court agreed to do so en banc.
On June 5, 2009, the en banc panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled in an evenly divided decision on the matter, thus upholding the district court's decision. Seale's three convictions and sentences were re-instated. On motion of defense counsel, the 5th Circuit asked the US Supreme Court to review the case. On November 2, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, letting the lower rulings stand.
.
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
member charged by the U.S. Justice Department on January 24, 2007, and subsequently convicted on June 14, 2007, for the May 1964 kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two African-American young men in Meadville, Mississippi
Meadville, Mississippi
Meadville is a town in Franklin County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 519 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Franklin County...
. At the time of his arrest, Seale worked at a lumber plant in Roxie, Mississippi
Roxie, Mississippi
Roxie is a town in Franklin County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 569 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Roxie is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all of it land....
. He also worked as a crop duster and was a police officer in Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
briefly in the 1970s.
Seale was convicted on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy to kidnap two persons, and two counts of kidnapping where the victims were not released unharmed. He was sentenced on August 24, 2007, to three life terms for his part in the 1964 murders of the two Mississippi teens. In 2008, Seale's kidnapping conviction was overturned by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Louisiana* Middle District of Louisiana...
, before being reinstated by that court sitting en banc
En banc
En banc, in banc, in banco or in bank is a French term used to refer to the hearing of a legal case where all judges of a court will hear the case , rather than a panel of them. It is often used for unusually complex cases or cases considered to be of greater importance...
the following year. He was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute is a city and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943. The city is the county seat of Vigo County and...
, where he died in 2011.
Background
Southern Mississippi was an active area of the civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
movement in the 1960s. Many working class whites feared greater job competition from blacks if integration changed the society and tensions were high over desegregation of schools. The Natchez area became a center of Ku Klux Klan and other segregationist activity, with violence directed against black churches, often used as the center of community organizing, and black activists.
Double murder in 1964
John Ford Seale abducted the two young African-American men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, each 19, as they were hitchhiking near Roxie on May 2, 1964. Moore had been a student at Alcorn State CollegeAlcorn State University
Alcorn State University is an historically black university comprehensive land-grant institution in Lorman, Mississippi. It was founded in 1871-History:...
. According to F.B.I.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
records, Seale thought the two might be civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activists, especially as Dee had just returned from Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. He ordered them into his car by telling them he was a federal revenue agent, investigating moonshine stills.
He drove them into the Homochitto National Forest
Homochitto National Forest
Homochitto National Forest is a U.S. National Forest in southwestern Mississippi comprising . In the mid-1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps began reforestation of the area and developing a system of roadways and recreational areas.-Geography:...
between Meadville and Natchez, having called Charles Marcus Edwards to have him and other Klansmen follow. As Seale held a sawed-off shotgun
Sawed-off shotgun
A sawed-off shotgun also called a sawn-off shotgun and a short-barreled shotgun , is a type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel and often a shorter or absent stock....
on the pair, the other men tied the young men to a tree and severely beat them with long, skinny sticks (called "bean sticks" because they're often used to "stalk" beans in gardens). According to the January 2007 indictment, the Klansmen took the pair, who were reportedly still alive, to a nearby farm where Seale duct-taped their mouths and hands. The Klansmen wrapped the bloody pair in a plastic tarp, put them into the trunk of another Klansman's red Ford (the deceased Ernest Parker, according to FBI records), and drove almost 100 miles to the Ole River near Tallulah, Louisiana
Tallulah, Louisiana
Tallulah is a city in and the parish seat of Madison Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 9,189 at the 2000 census...
. They had to drive through Louisiana to get there, but the backwater is located in Warren County, Mississippi
Warren County, Mississippi
-National protected areas:* Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge * Vicksburg National Military Park -Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 49,644 people, 18,756 households, and 13,222 families residing in the county. The population density was 85 people per square mile...
.
At the river, the Klansmen took the pair away from shore in a boat, where they tied them to an old Jeep
Jeep
Jeep is an automobile marque of Chrysler . The first Willys Jeeps were produced in 1941 with the first civilian models in 1945, making it the oldest off-road vehicle and sport utility vehicle brand. It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover which is the second...
engine block and sections of railroad track rails with chains before dumping them in the water to drown. Reportedly still alive when put in the river, the young men were killed in Mississippi. According to a Klan informant, Seale said later that he would have shot them first, but didn't want to get blood all over the boat.
The bodies of the pair were found about two months later by US Navy divers who were working on the investigation associated with the disappearance in June of three civil rights workers: James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman was one of three American civil rights activists murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.-Early life and education:...
and Michael Schwerner
Michael Schwerner
Michael Henry Schwerner , was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among Mississippi African Americans...
from Meridian, Mississippi
Meridian, Mississippi
Meridian is the county seat of Lauderdale County, Mississippi. It is the sixth largest city in the state and the principal city of the Meridian, Mississippi Micropolitan Statistical Area...
. The FBI made an investigation of the Dee-Moore murders (they had more than 100 agents around Natchez, trying to reduce violence), and presented their findings to local District Attorney Lenox Forman. FBI agents and Mississippi Highway Patrol officers arrested Seale, then 29, and fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, 31, on November 6, 1964. According to FBI informants, both men confessed to the crime. They were released on November 11, after family members posted $5,000 bond each.
On January 11, 1965, the District Attorney Lenox Forman filed a “motion to dismiss affidavits” with Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
Willie Bedford, who signed the motion the same day. The motions state: “… that in the interest of justice and in order to fully develop the facts in this case, the affidavits against James Seale and Charles Edwards should be dismissed by this Court without prejudice to the Defendants or to the State of Mississippi at this time in order that the investigation may be continued and completed for presentation to a Grand Jury at some later date.” Forman said he dismissed the case because it had been prejudiced toward the defendants, who "put out the story" in Meadville that, after their arrest, they had been "brutally mistreated," as reported in 2005 in an investigation by Donna Ladd of the Jackson Free Press.
1966 Congressional hearing
On January 14, 1966, Seale was called to appear in Washington before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was investigating Klan activities. Seale was there with nine other alleged Klansmen from the violent White Knights of the Ku Klux KlanWhite Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was considered the most militant as well as the most violent Ku Klux Klan in history. They originated in Mississippi in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Grand Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi was formed in 1964, and it...
, including his father, Clyde Seale, and Charles Marcus Edwards, his alleged accomplice in the Dee-Moore murders. The Klansmen repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. Its guarantees stem from English common law which traces back to the Magna Carta in 1215...
, while the chief investigator Donald T. Appell and House members placed into the record what they believed the men had done, including kidnapping and murdering Dee and Moore in 1964. According to the hearing transcript, Appell introduced testimony of Alton Alford, a Meadville man, who said that Seale beat him with his shotgun. Appell asked Seale if he was involved in the 1965 death of a Klansman named Earl Hodges, who had fallen out with Seale’s father. Appell accused Seale and Edwards of claiming "false arrest" by Mississippi highway patrolmen to help them escape criminal charges.
Two authors published books on the case: Don Whitehead wrote Attack on Terror: The FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, (1990), which included some of the FBI’s 1960s-era findings on the Dee-Moore murders. Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a journalist, author, and broadcaster.Hutchinson is also the author of nine books about the African American experience. He serves as the President of the National Alliance for Positive Action, and is a contributor to The Huffington Post, Blacknews.com and...
, in Betrayed: The Presidential Failure to Protect Black Lives, (1996), also wrote about the Dee-Moore case, naming Seale and another suspect as responsible. He called for federal officials to indict the men on kidnapping charges. Hutchinson pointed out that because the crime occurred in a national forest, the federal government has jurisdiction.
Reopening of the case in 2005
In 1998 Thomas Moore, the older brother of Charles and a retired 30-year ArmyUnited States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
veteran, began to work on the case. Then living in Colorado, he wrote to the District Attorney Ronnie Harper "asking him to look into his brother's murder. He agreed." Various media journalists began to look at the story again, including Newsday, 20-20 and Jerry Mitchell
Jerry Mitchell
Jerry Mitchell is an American theatre director and choreographer.-Early life and education:Born in Paw Paw, Michigan, Mitchell later moved to St. Louis where he pursued his acting, dancing and directing career in theatre. He graduated from the Fine Arts college at Webster University in St. Louis. ...
of The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi). On January 14, 2000, Mitchell reported that the murders occurred on federal land. This spurred the FBI to take another look but some of their resources got diverted to the revival of the 1964 Neshoba County investigation of Edgar Ray Killen
Edgar Ray Killen
Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen is a former Ku Klux Klan organizer who conspired in the murders of three civil rights activists—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner—in 1964....
.
Contacted by the filmmaker David Ridgen
David Ridgen
David Ridgen is an award-winning independent Canadian filmmaker. He has worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, MSNBC, NPR, TVOntario and others.Ridgen co-directed Canadian Images of Vietnam with his brother Robert Ridgen in 1990...
of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
, Thomas Moore returned to Mississippi on July 7, 2005, to begin shooting the documentary Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black youth in 1964 and a brother's quest for justice.-Moore and Dee murders:...
, about the events of his brother's murder. Together they began a search for justice in the case. They were also going to be working with the journalist Donna Ladd
Donna Ladd
Donna Ladd is an American investigative journalist who helped create The Jackson Free Press, an award-winning freely distributed newsweekly...
and photographer Kate Medley from the Jackson Free Press
Jackson Free Press
The Jackson Free Press, referred to often as simply "JFP", is an alternative weekly newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi founded in 2002 by Mississippi native Donna Ladd, author and technology expert Todd Stauffer and a group of young Jacksonians wanting a progressive voice in the state...
, an alternative newsweekly in Jackson, Mississippi
Jackson, Mississippi
Jackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...
.
On July 8 the two men interviewed the District Attorney Ronnie Harper, who told them that James Ford Seale was alive, although his family members had reported him dead to the media a few years before. The pair confirmed this fact when Kenny Byrd, a resident of Roxie, pointed them toward Seale's trailer. The same morning, Moore and Ridgen met with Ladd and Medley. During this trip, the former Klansman James Kenneth Greer told Ladd and Medley that Seale was living in Roxie, Mississippi
Roxie, Mississippi
Roxie is a town in Franklin County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 569 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Roxie is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all of it land....
next to his brother.
The discovery of Seale helped to revive interest in the case; Moore and Ridgen visited the U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, who pledged to re-open the case. Two weeks after the trip, Ladd published the first of several articles in the Jackson Free Press about the investigation and the discovery that Seale was alive. Moved by the response of people he talked to, that July Thomas Moore formed the "Dee Moore Coalition for Justice in Franklin County."
Moore and Ridgen returned to Mississippi every few months to continue filming, making nine trips in total for Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black youth in 1964 and a brother's quest for justice.-Moore and Dee murders:...
; each time they visited Dunn Lampton, where Moore presented more of the data they had found. The Jackson Free Press continued its investigation as well, and has published a package of all of its stories on the case to keep local interest high. At the end of July 2005, the paper published Thomas Moore's response to an editorial that appeared in the Franklin Advocate, the weekly in Meadville, in which the editor said the case should not be re-opened. (Editor Mary Lou Webb did not publish Moore's response.)
Indictment, trial and conviction in 2007
The indictment affidavit filed January 24, 2007, in U.S. District Court in Jackson, charged Seale with two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy. The “introductory allegations” begin: “The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKKK) operated in the Southern District of Mississippi and elsewhere, and was a secret organization of adult white males who, among other things, targeted for violence African Americans they believed were involved in civil rights activity in order to intimidate and retaliate against such individuals.” The document says that Seale and other Klan members suspected Dee of being involved with civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activity. Moore was included because he was a friend of Dee.
Seale was arraigned and denied bond because he was considered a flight risk: he owned no property, was a pilot, and lived in a motor home. He and his wife had already left Roxie for a brief time after the reporting team's initial July 2005 visits, according to Roxie residents. Primary testimony was from fellow Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards. After being confronted by Thomas Moore and David Ridgen during filming of a scene in Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case
Mississippi Cold Case is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black youth in 1964 and a brother's quest for justice.-Moore and Dee murders:...
, state and federal officials gave him immunity from prosecution to tell the full story of what happened.
Seale was convicted of kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
and conspiracy on June 14, 2007, by a federal jury. On August 24, 2007, Seale was sentenced to serve three life terms for his crimes.
The 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 was imprisoned for a year at a medical facility. The conviction was overturned by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Louisiana* Middle District of Louisiana...
on September 9, 2008. The court ruled that the lower court had failed to recognize the statute of limitations for kidnapping had long since expired. Prosecutors asked the appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and the court agreed to do so en banc.
On June 5, 2009, the en banc panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled in an evenly divided decision on the matter, thus upholding the district court's decision. Seale's three convictions and sentences were re-instated. On motion of defense counsel, the 5th Circuit asked the US Supreme Court to review the case. On November 2, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, letting the lower rulings stand.
Death
Seale died in August 2011 at the age of 76 in a federal prisonFederal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is a federal law enforcement agency subdivision of the United States Department of Justice and is responsible for the administration of the federal prison system. The system also handles prisoners who committed acts considered felonies under the District of Columbia's...
.
Representation in other media
- The documentary Mississippi Cold Case (2007) was produced by Canadian Broadcasting Company.