A team looking for evidence of a black teenager Emmet Till Lynch in the basement of a court in Mississippi finds an unpaid decree accusing a white woman in a 1955 kidnapping case. And the victim's relatives are finally asking the authorities to arrest her almost 70 years later.
Carolyn Bryant Donam's arrest warrant — "Mrs." Roy Bryant "in the document-found last week by a searcher in a boxed file folder, Le Flor County Circuit Clark. Elms Stockstill told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
The document was kept in a box by 2010, but he said there was no other indication of where the decree dated August 29, 1955 was.
"They were lucky enough to narrow it down in the 50's and 60's," said Stockstill, who certified Warrant as genuine. The
search group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two relatives of Till. And her daughter, Teri Watts. Relatives arrest Donam, who was married to one of two white men at the time of the murder, just weeks after Till was kidnapped, tortured, killed and abandoned in the river from his relatives' house. For this, the authorities want to use the decree.
"Provide her and charge her," Teriwats told AP in an interview.
Keith Boshan, whose documentary filmEmmet Lewistil's secret storywas made prior to the new Justice Department's investigation, which ended free of charge in 2007, was also part of the search. He said there was enough new evidence to sue Donam.
Donam filed a lawsuit in August 1955 for accusing 14-year-old Till of making improper steps at the Mississippi Money family store. Till's cousin, who was there, said Till whispered to the woman. This is an act that flew in the face of the social norms of the Mississippi racial discriminator era.
Evidence shows that a woman, perhaps Donam, identified Till in the man who later killed him. At the time, her arrest warrant for Donam had been released, but Reflor County Security Officer told reporters she didn't want to "abuse" the woman because she had two young children to take care of. rice field.
Donam, now in her 80s and recently living in North Carolina, has not publicly commented on her call for prosecution. However, Teri Watts said the Tills believe that the decree accusing them of kidnapping Donam is new evidence.
"This is what Mississippi needs to move forward," she said.
Dewain Richardson, a district lawyer with an office to sue the case, declined to comment on Warrant, but said it was impossible to sue in December on the Till case from the Justice Department. I quoted the report.
Reflor County Security Officer Ricky Banks, contacted by AP on Wednesday, said, "This is the first time I've learned about Warrant."
The bank, which was seven years old when Till was killed, said when a former local attorney investigated the case five or six years ago, "nothing was said about the decree." ..
"Get a copy of the Warrant, get a DA, and see if you can get an opinion on it," Banks said. Banks said he would have to talk to a law enforcement officer in the state where Donam lives if Warrant could still be offered.
Arrest warrants can become "obsolete" over time and changes in circumstances, even if 1955 was a law professor at the University of Mississippi. One Ronald J. Riklak said the security officer agreed to serve it.
However, he said, when combined with new evidence, the original arrest warrant could be "absolutely" an important stepping stone to establish a possible cause for a new prosecution.
"If you go in front of a judge, you can say,'Once the judge decided there was a possible cause, and more information is available today,'" Rychlak said. Mr. says.
Till from Chicago visited a relative of Mississippi on August 24, 1955, when he entered the store where 21-year-old Donam worked. Till's relative, Wheeler Parker, who was there, told AP that until then he whispered to the woman. Donham testified in court that Till also grabbed her and made lascivious comments.
Two nights later, Donam's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Appeared and was looking for a young man. Till's brutal body, weighted by fans, was pulled from the river in another county a few days later. His mother's decision to open the casket so that Chicago mourners could see what happened helped revitalize the civil rights movement of the building at the time.
Brian and Miram were not guilty of the murder, but later admitted to the murder in a magazine interview. Both men were nominated in the same decree accusing them of kidnapping Donam, but authorities did not pursue the case after their arrest.
Wright testified in a murder trial that a person with a "lighter" voice than a man identified Till in the pickup track and the kidnapper took him away. Other evidence in the FBI file shows that at the beginning of the same night, Donam told her husband that at least the other two black men were not the right people.
