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The New York Times
Ex-Klansman Is
Sentenced to Life
for Killings in 1964
By JERRY MITCHELL and
BRENDA GOODMAN, From nytimes.com on the Web, August 25, 2007
JACKSON, Miss., Aug. 24 —
Calling the crime “unspeakable because only monsters could inflict this,” a
federal judge on Friday sentenced a former member of the Ku Klux Klan to three
life terms in prison for his role in the 1964 kidnapping and murder of two black
teenagers in Mississippi.
The case was one of several that focused a spotlight on white supremacist
violence during the civil rights era.
The victims, Henry H. Dee and Charles E. Moore, both 19, were hitchhiking in
Meadville, Miss., when a group of Klansmen, including James Seale, picked them
up and took them to a wooded area, where they were beaten and their weighted
bodies thrown into the Mississippi River. Both young men drowned.
Their bodies were not recovered until later that year in a high-profile search
for three civil rights activists whose deaths generated widespread revulsion
against the racial violence in Mississippi.
“The pulse of this community still throbs with sorrow,” Judge Henry T. Wingate
of Federal District Court said as he imposed the sentence, which will
effectively keep Mr. Seale, who is 72 and has cancer, behind bars for the rest
of his life.
Judge Wingate asked Mr. Seale, who was shackled and dressed in an orange
jumpsuit, if he wished to comment, but Mr. Seale declined. His lawyer,
Kathy Nestor, said her client planned to appeal his conviction on kidnapping and
conspiracy charges.
The main prosecution witness, a former Klansman who was granted immunity,
testified at Mr. Seale’s trial that the defendant had told him he killed Mr. Dee
and Mr. Moore. Mr. Seale was not charged with murder.
At Friday’s sentencing, Mr. Moore’s brother, Thomas, of Seattle, who has pushed
for justice in the case since 1998, was given the opportunity to address Mr.
Seale.
“When you took away Charles Moore, you took away my best friend,” Thomas Moore
said. “I cried when I thought about how hard they suffered at your hands.”
Mr. Dee’s sister, Thelma Collins, said her brother’s killing “hurt us so bad I
had to get a psychologist.”
At a news conference after the sentencing, Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim
said that some 100 cold cases from the civil rights era were awaiting
investigation and possible prosecution, including 30 in Mississippi.
Judge Wingate said that he took into account Mr. Seale’s advanced age and poor
health. “But then I had to take a look at the crime itself, the horror,
the ghastliness of it,” he said, adding that he would agree to the defense
recommendation that Mr. Seale serve his sentence at a medical facility.
Jerry Mitchell reported from Jackson, and Brenda Goodman from
Atlanta.
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