US:Jury selection began yesterday in the trial of James Seale (71), allegedly a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, for kidnapping, torturing and killing two black teenagers in Mississippi more than 40 years ago.
The trial is the latest in a succession of Jim Crow-era cases that have been reopened across the south in recent years, highlighting the failure of state authorities to pursue racially motivated crimes against African-Americans.
Seale and an alleged co-conspirator, Charles Edwards, were arrested soon after the murders and, according to an FBI case file, admitted their involvement. Mississippi state authorities dropped all charges, however, and the case was not reopened until 2000.
"We're at the doorstep of justice," said Thomas Moore, the brother of one of the victims, Charles Moore.
Moore and his friend Henry Dee, both 19 years old, were hitch-hiking near their home in Meadville, in the rural, southwest of Mississippi when, according to prosecutors, Seale picked them up. With other Klansmen following in a vehicle behind, Seale allegedly took the teenagers to a nearby forest where they were beaten.
Prosecutors say the Klansmen believed that Moore and Dee knew something about gun-running in the area and attempted to beat information out of the boys. In fact, the teenagers knew nothing about the guns and had no involvement in civil rights protests that were sweeping Mississippi at the time.
Still alive, they were stuffed into the trunk of a car and driven 75 miles before being weighted down with a motor engine and some old rail tracks and dumped into the Mississippi river, where they drowned.
Their bodies were found on July 12th, 1964, during a massive manhunt for the killers of three civil rights activists whose murder by Klansmen later formed the basis for the film Mississippi Burning.
Seale and Edwards were arrested a few weeks later and according to the case file at the time, an FBI agent told Seale that he knew he had abducted Moore and Dee and dumped them in the river.
"You didn't even give them a Christian burial," the agent said. "We know you did it. You know you did it. The Lord above knows you did it."
According to the file, Seale replied: "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it." Edwards admitted he took part in the beatings but said the teenagers were still alive when he left.
The FBI passed the case on to state authorities, which, despite the alleged admissions by Seale and Edwards, dropped the charges.
Asked at the time by a local paper if he had anything to do with the crime, Seale replied: "I ain't in jail, am I?"
More than 300 potential jurors in Jackson, Mississippi, have answered a questionnaire that probes their attitudes to race and asks if they or their relatives have ever belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.
Seale has pleaded not guilty to federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges, which could lead to 60 years in prison and his lawyer, Kathy Nester, has warned that the jurors' questionnaire could provoke "racial hysteria".
"It goes beyond playing the race card. It puts the whole deck into play," she said.
Federal prosecutor Paige Fitzgerald said the questions were necessary and claimed that one reason it has taken so long to reopen the case is that potential witnesses are afraid of reprisals from the Ku Klux Klan.
The breakthrough came after Canadian journalists working with Thomas Moore uncovered new evidence about his brother's death and Edwards agreed to testify against Seale as part of an immunity deal.
"My thing is, Charles Moore and Henry Dee wasn't bothering anybody. And for them to be butchered, tormented, hassled and drowned in the river - it was pretty bad," Moore said this week.
"The last thing that I'm going to do when I leave Mississippi, I'm going to go to that cemetery, that Mount Olive Cemetery. I'm going to tell Charles Moore, 'I told you that I'd see it to the end."