1955 warrant in Emmett Till case found, family seeks arrest | Hacker News Reader

1955 warrant in Emmett Till case found, family seeks arrest

apnews.com

49 pointsohjeez14 comments

Among the reasons the Emmett Till case gained such prominence was that Mamie Till Mobley, Till's mother, insisted that he have an open-casket funeral, and Jet magazine ran a photo of his corpse on the cover. If you've seen a photo of Till, it's probably of a sharp-dressed youth in a coat and hat, as featured in this AP piece. That's not what was returned to Tills' family.

The question of whether or not to show the harms of unlimited violence are rising again with the proliferation of mass shootings in the US, war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and other forms of violence.

The Bill Moyers link below does show the funeral photo. CW: mutilated corpse.

https://billmoyers.com/content/key-moments-in-the-fight-for-...

The story of Tills's funeral is covered by Smithsonian Magazine here:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/emmet...

The problem with the 'third person in the truck' theory being the woman, is that Milam's brother Leslie also admitted before he died that he was involved in the murder, so you would need to rule out his presence first.

Weird fact: Till's father was executed for rape in 1945, while a USA army soldier in Italy. However it was not until after Emmett's death that the details of the father's death was known, even by his wife.

I believe there was some attempt to retcon this fact into Emmett's behavior; however no-one knew the facts of his execution, outside the army bureaucracy, until well after Emmett's death.

I'm genuinely curious about this. I skimmed the article and didn't see mention of this, but does the statute of limitations apply here?

From the article:

>Arrest warrants can “go stale” due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn’t pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi.

>But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant “absolutely” could be an important stepping stone toward establishing probable cause for a new prosecution, he said.

yes, this needs to be done. I don't understand what the new evidence is though, I skimmed the further linked article

Generally there's no statute of limitations on murder.

This isn’t murder though. It would be perjury or something along those lines.

According to the article, the warrant says kidnapping, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations. However, the district attorney for the case would have to show probable cause to enforce the arrest warrant. There's little chance of establishing that absent rediscovery of evidence or the existence of new witnesses from a crime that occurred nearly 70 years ago. There's also the issue of their being only one living witness relevant to the ordeal. And she is unlikely to say anything even if she were to possess a steel trap of a memory.

Emmett Till was murdered.

Yes I understand, but the perpetrators were acquitted. So how could the woman be found guilty?

> Donham set off the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi.

This is so misogynistic. The responsibility for kidnapping and murder falls squarely on the men who did it.

Blaming a woman for saying she was sexually harassed seems pretty backward.

In addition, consider this was 1950’s rural Mississippi. The power imbalances between husbands and wives would have been huge. Any man capable of such horrific violence to a 14 year old child, would more than likely have been a domestic abuser as well. I really doubt that she had a lot of options for going against her husband.

Uh the warrant was for her role in kidnapping. It’s a bit misogynistic to think a woman couldn’t play a part in a lynching, I’d say. Glad you’re coming up for excuses for some lady you’ve never met before; keeping the system that kept her out of prison alive and well!

She's a Good White Woman who participated in a kidnapping which ended in a gruesome murder. Don't make excuses for that.

> . . . going against her husband.

or father - https://youtu.be/_6qQ7l8pRGo

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