Their Sheriff then, our Sheriff now. Nothing has changed.
Jury Selection in Old Miss. MurderBy EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 30, 2007; 6:32 PMJACKSON, Miss. -- The first day of jury selection in the case of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman charged in the 1964 deaths of two young black men brought a Faulknerian cast of characters to a federal courtroom Wednesday.
Mississippi's rural roots and modern anxieties were on display as the judge and lawyers winnowed the pool to 55 people, from which lawyers hope to pick a dozen to decide whether James Ford Seale, now 71, took part in abducting and killing Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The two 19-year-olds were beaten and dumped, still alive, into the Mississippi River.
Seale, who has denied membership in the Klan, faces up to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy in the latest of more than a dozen civil rights-era cases that have been prosecuted across the South since the early 1990s.
U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate is keeping jurors' names a secret at the request of prosecutors who said some might fear to serve in a case involving the Klan.
One potential juror from rural southwest Mississippi said one of her cousins is married to one of Seale's cousins.
"That makes me nervous, even though I don't know him personally," the woman said nodding toward Seale.
Among the 20 other people dismissed from the initial group of 76 potential jurors were a one-armed chicken grower who said he needs to tend to his poultry to pay his bills, and a young woman in a Confederate battle flag T-shirt.
Seale, having changed out of his orange jail jumpsuit into khaki pants and a light blue dress shirt, listened quietly in court through wishbone-shaped earphones to amplify the sound because of his hearing problems. When he left, his jail jumpsuit was topped by a bullet-resistant vest.
He faces potentially damaging testimony from a man also charged back in 1964.
Moore and Dee were hitchhiking May 2, 1964, when carloads of Klansmen were chasing rumors of a possible armed insurrection by black people in the area.
The two were driven to the Homochitto National Forest and beaten, then stuffed into a trunk and driven more than 70 miles to the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, according to court records. They were weighted down with engine parts and dumped into the Mississippi, still breathing.
Their bodies were found about two months later, when authorities were conducting an intensive search for slain civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, who disappeared from central Mississippi's Neshoba County on June 21, 1964.
Seale and reputed Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards were arrested in 1964 in the deaths of Dee and Moore. But the FBI was consumed by the "Mississippi Burning" investigation of the three civil rights workers, and the Dee-Moore case was turned over to local authorities, who threw out all charges against Seale and Edwards.
The Justice Department reopened an investigation in 2000. The FBI closed the case again in 2003 only to reopen it in 2005.
Edwards has been granted immunity and is expected to testify for the prosecution.
Thomas Moore and two of Dee's sisters
-- Thelma Collins, 70, of Springfield, La.; and
-- Mary Nell Byrd, 61, of Natchez, Miss.
sat near each other in the courtroom Wednesday.The three spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday in Jackson during an interview arranged by Canadian Broadcasting Corp. documentary maker David Ridgen.
Since 2005, Ridgen and Thomas Moore have pushed federal officials to reopen the case.
Ridgen's film, "Mississippi Cold Case," is to air June 9 on MSNBC.
Collins and Moore said they're prepared for any verdict from the jurors.
"I just have it in my heart that they're going to do the right thing," Collins said.
Moore has already planned what he'll do after the trial, regardless of the outcome.
"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 (would) see it to the end.'"