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Grand jury won't indict in Till killing

JACKSON, Miss. - All but closing the books on a crime that helped give rise to the civil rights movement, a grand jury has decided not to bring new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was beaten and shot after whistling at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta.

The district attorney in Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to punish the boy for what was considered a grave offense in the segregated South.

The grand jury issued a "no bill" Friday, meaning it found insufficient evidence, according to documents made public Tuesday.

Federal authorities decided last year not to prosecute, saying the statute of limitations for federal charges had run out. Mississippi authorities represented the last, best hope of bringing someone to justice. No one has ever been convicted in the slaying.

"You're looking at Mississippi. I guess it's about the same way it was 50 years ago," said a disappointed Simeon Wright, 64, a black man who heard his cousin whistle. "We had overwhelming evidence, and they came back with the same decision. Some of the people haven't changed from 50 years ago."

Till, a 14-year-old boy visiting from Chicago, was kidnapped from his uncle's home and killed after he whistled at Donham.

Three days later, his mutilated body was found in the muddy Tallahatchie River, weighted down with a cotton gin fan. The body was identified only by a ring he was wearing.

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and a photograph of Till's disfigured face in Jet magazine had a powerful effect on public opinion, letting the world see what was happening in the South.

Roy Bryant, Donham's husband, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury in 1955. The two men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine. Both are now dead.

The FBI reopened the case in 2004 but decided in 2006 not to press charges. The case was turned over to local prosecutors, with the FBI suggesting they take a closer look at Donham. Some witnesses said a woman's voice could be heard at the abduction scene.

Donham, who remarried, is now 73 and has declined interviews. A telephone number for her was disconnected Tuesday.

FBI reopens rights cases

WASHINGTON - The FBI has reopened investigations of about a dozen decades-old suspicious deaths, officials said Tuesday amid a Justice Department focus on cracking unsolved cases from the nation's civil rights era.

The high-priority cases, which FBI director Robert Mueller described as numbering between 10 and 12, are among an estimated 100 that investigators nationwide are looking at as possible civil rights-related murders.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales acknowledged that many of the cases may be beyond the boundaries of what the federal government can legally prosecute. But they "remain on our radar," he said.

Addressing civil rights violators, Gonzales said: "You have not gotten away with anything - we are still on your trail."

Mueller said the FBI began re-examining its case files over a year ago amid of spate of civil rights cases that investigators and prosecutors successfully solved.

[Last modified February 28, 2007, 05:45:48]