Federal and state authorities said this week they’re ending the investigation of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” killings, one of the most infamous cases in the violent backlash to the civil rights movement. The investigation into the infamous slayings of three civil rights workers in MS is finally closed, the state’s attorney general said Monday, June 20, 2016, 53 years nearly to the day after the young men disappeared during “Freedom Summer.”The three civil rights workers, part of the “Freedom Summer” program, were abducted, killed and buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County”.
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The U.S. Department of Justice recently presented its findings to Attorney General Hood, who determined based on those findings that there were no other viable prosecutions in the “Mississippi Burning” case or related cases.
In 1967, prosecutors convicted eight defendants for violating the federal criminal civil rights conspiracy statute, namely their right to live. He was charged with three counts of murder and on June 21, 2005 – the 41st anniversary of the murders, he was convicted on three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison – the maximum sentence.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood tells reporters that the investigation into the infamous slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi is finally closed, 53 years nearly to the day after the young men disappeared during “Freedom Summer”, at a news conference, Monday, June 20, 2016 in Jackson, Miss.
“There is no likelihood of any additional convictions”. They were also in Philadelphia, Miss., to investigate a hate crime in a black church there.
Edgar Ray Killen is escorted int o the Neshoba County Courthouse before sentencing 23 June 2005 in Philadelphia, Mississippi. “That’s not to say if new information comes forward we won’t investigate”.
The Justice Department released a 48-page report it prepared on the case.
“While legal and factual impediments sometimes prevent us from bringing cases we wish that we could”, Gupta continued, “the Civil Rights Division remains dedicated to pursuing racially-motivated crimes wherever the facts allow”.
The three men, all civil rights workers registering African-Americans to vote, were ambushed by a gang of Ku Klux Klan members that June night on a rural road.
According to the Justice Department’s report, authorities tried to get Townsend to testify against Harris and Olen Burrage, who owned the property where the three civil rights workers were buried, but Townsend maintained he knew nothing about the killings. “Though the reinvestigation into their heinous deaths has formally closed, we must all honor their legacy by forging ahead and continuing the fight to ensure that the founding promise of America is true for all of its inhabitants”, she added. “I’m assuming, on a best-case basis, that the state of MS state attorney general’s office has pursued evidentiary leads to the best of their abilities at this time”, he said.
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were held for 7 hours in the jail before they were released and told to leave.
Hood said officials had considered possible cases against Jimmy Lee Townsend and James “Pete” Harris. The case is “an opportunity for us to recognize history in the context of the present moment”.
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When Freedom Summer came, these three young men “refused to sit on the sidelines”, Obama said. It was 44 days before their bodies were discovered.
