Posted on 08/24/2007 12:16:48 PM PDT by SJackson
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced Friday to three life terms in prison for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi.
Seale, 72, was convicted in June on federal charges of kidnapping and conspiracy in the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, two 19-year-olds who disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964.
The young men's bodies were found two months later in the Mississippi River.
Seale showed no emotion as U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate read his sentence.
Wingate told Seale the crimes committed 43 years ago were "horrific" and "justice itself is ageless." He denied a defense motion to allow Seale to be free on bond while his case is appealed.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Don't tell that to these folks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1885178/posts
Or maybe they thought murder was O.K. because it was "just a cop" who was murdered.
The [federal] Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. So in 1964, the death penalty might have been illegal.
I once worked in a place where I was asked to transport (in my POV!!!) an insane woman who had killed her husband.
My supervisor told me “She didn’t kill him. She just stabbed him and he bled to death.”
Maybe they could work a similar punishment out for this guy. Not execute him by hanging, just let him exercise by climbing rope that has been tied to his neck. Or swimming, but to be sure he doesn’t escape, shackle him to 100 lbs of heavy chains.
No, there was a campaign to murder police officers, blow up gov’t buildings, burn ROTC buildings, etc. Whenever one of the criminals would surface, the claim that is was so long ago blah, blah blah is carried out by the left. What he did was wrong and he should be punished, but if he had been a black panther that had killed a police officer or a white radical that had killed someone when they bombed a building the media would have led the charge for getting them off
The above posts are the reason that I will continue to be proud member of FreeRepublic.
Gee! Freepers are really harsh with this guy. However, the left (including BO) fail to note this when the harshness is, justifiably, pointed in the other direction.
As a ‘minority’ I’ve found that the vast majority of FR just don’t like racists of any stripe.
You're right, though there are exceptions that prove the rule. Don't tell Bill O'Reilly though.
How about.
This is a farce... period...Not Justice.
Witnesses for the defense are dead.. senile?..
The Defendant easily could be in a diminished mental state himself unable to sufficiently aid in his own defense..
Go back far enough and you can make up any crap you choose.. Who can refute it?..
This is wrong no matter how much we dislike the guys ideology and beliefs.
There is no way this 40 year old case is rock solid. If the evidence were it would have been brought 30 years or more ago.
W
There was plenty of contemporaneous evidence, the local prosecutor opted not to file charges in 1964, not the only time that happened.
There's no indication the evidence was made up, the kids are dead, one of his cohorts testified, and a jury convicted him. That's how it works.
Clearly you feel there needs to be a statute of limitations on crimes like murder. How long should it be?
How old must someone be to be considered in a diminished mental state? Seale is 71, older men run for the Presidency.
Agreed, that would have been justice.
Exactly. As you already know, and as the left and Bill O'Reilly haven't figured out, racism is "collectivist" thinking at its worst. True conservatives eschew racism as antithetical to our most revered beliefs.
Would you feel the same if the victim had been a member of your family?
>Waiting for the first post to claim that this all happened so long ago and that it is needlessly cruel to put someone so old through this,<
I’m glad to see that they finally got him and that he didn’t get a ‘time served’ sentence. Let’s hope that some lifers hang the old bugger so he can feel the terror.
Ummm let's see, that's a toughy. Could it be the same party that totally dominated MS for a century after the civil war and held every office higher than dogcatcher for all that time? Could it be the same party that for decades filibustered every attempt by Congress to guarantee voting rights to minorities? Or maybe the same party that fought desegregation of schools, lunch counters, drinking fountains, buses and trains, theaters, rest rooms, etc, for decades?
Nah, I didn't think so, I must have been thinking of those eeeviiil racist Republicans.
Justice delayed *is* justice denied - but better late than never.
Let’s also not forget that his own accomplice ratted him out, the witnesses were NOT dead, and IIRC, he was examined for diminished capacity and found to be competent to stand trial.
It should also be mentioned that the area was KKK/Democrat (much the same thing at the time) controlled until very recently.
It only took another 26 posts.
I feel about this guy as I would any Nazi War Criminal, I don’t care if they are a hundred years old, they do not deserve to spend the rest of their days on their own terms.
A murderer walking around free for 43 years isn't justice.
Finally locking the SOB up is.
Witnesses for the defense are dead.. senile?..
Who knows? After all, the defendant faked his own death once to evade justice. Who's to say who is dead and who is to say who is magically feigning senility just in time for trial?
The Defendant easily could be in a diminished mental state himself unable to sufficiently aid in his own defense..
Wow. That's a real shame. And also completely irrelevant.
I'll also point out that he just turned 71. He isn't that old.
Go back far enough and you can make up any crap you choose.. Who can refute it?..
What is irrefutable:
(1) People who knew the defendant personally - his own friends - identified him on the scene in 1964. Oh, and that scene contained the bodies of two real human beings. They really existed. They weren't made-up or crap.
(2) The defendant has no alibi whatsoever for the time he spent kidnapping, torturing, transporting and murdering those men. He did not show up for work. He did not show up for Sunday services. He was nowhere to be found.
(3) He was an active member of the WK-KKK - an organization that openly advocated violence.
(4) He testified on behalf of the KKK before Congress in 1966 where he was asked to account for his whereabouts on that weekend and if he ever met the victims. He smiled, puffed on his cigar, smiled again, and invoked the Fifth Amendment.
(5) The initial investigation by the FBI presented evidence to the local DA, who was a friend of the defendant's father. On the same day that the FBI presented the evidence, the DA made a motion to dismiss it and he found a local judge who was friendly with both himself and the defendants father to dismiss the indictment pending his own investigation into the matter. He never bothered to follow up or do any investigation of any kind. How was he able to examine all the hundreds of pages of evidence thoroughly, write up a motion to dismiss and get it dismissed all within a couple of hours?
(7) The evidence the FBI took is still valid and the jury is still entitled to consider it - which it did.
This is wrong no matter how much we dislike the guys ideology and beliefs.
Well, I know I at least despise this snake's twisted worldview. And finally evaluating evidence that was covered up by a corrupt DA and a corrupt judge isn't wrong at all. It's the only right thing to do.
There is no way this 40 year old case is rock solid. If the evidence were it would have been brought 30 years or more ago.
The evidence was rock solid and it was brought 42 years ago. And it was quashed by corrupt officials.
Finally, justice has caught up to this dirtbag. The trial was eminently fair and based on hard evidence.
May he rot.
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