Learning from the Charles Moore and Henry Dee Murders Case

By the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center*

• How US Attorney obtained its indictment against James Ford Seale
• How MS AG could have obtained more indictments in Neshoba

What may have been the key to US attorney Dunn Lampton proceeding to obtain an indictment against James Ford Seale for the 1964 murders of Henry Dee and Charles Moore?

It might be that the U.S. Attorney told Charles Edwards, one of the other living suspects, that he could either be a witness or a defendant. It has been reported that Charles Edwards has not been indicted and that he could be a witness for the prosecution:

No charges are expected to be brought against Edwards, who has been interviewed by the FBI and presumably could become a witness against Seale. (C-L 1/25/07)

Perhaps if Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and Mississippi 8th District Attorney Mark Duncan had used the approach with the other suspects in the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, there would have been more indictments and convictions than only Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen.

In fact, Jim Hood and Mark Duncan may have had an easier task than the one US Attorney Lampton has thus far accomplished. Hood and Duncan had the additional leverage of having the weight of the 1967 federal convictions to help persuade some of the suspects to cooperate. They could have pointed out to those suspects how easy it would be to convict them on state charges since the same evidence had been sufficient to convict them on federal charges related to the case.

It is still not too late for Hood and Duncan to use this approach to try to obtain a more full measure of justice in the Neshoba murders case.

Some family members of the victims of the Neshoba murders wanted an attorney from the Jackson, MS US Attorney's office appointed as a special state prosecutor. This approach was successfully used in Birmingham where US Attorney Doug Jones was a special state prosecutor and convictions of the last two living suspects in the Birmingham church bombing case were obtained in 2002. But Hood and Duncan chose not to appoint a special prosecutor.

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* Full disclosure: I recently joined the board of the ADTJC. ---BG