Until a 1955 warrant is found in the Emmett case, the family is seeking arrest

Jackson, Miss. (AP) – A team searching the base of a Mississippi court for evidence of the murder of black teenager Emmett Dill has found an unlicensed warrant. A white woman was charged in 1955 with kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her after 70 years.

Caroline Bryant Donham’s arrest warrant – “Mrs. Roy Bryant in the document ”- a file kept in a box last week was found by searchers inside a folder, Leflor County Circuit Clerk Elmus told the Associated Press Wednesday in Stock.

The documents have been kept in boxes for decades, but there is nothing else to indicate where the warrant dated August 29, 1955 may have been, he said.

“Between the 50s and 60s they reduced it and got lucky,” Stockstill said, certifying that the warrant was genuine.

The search team included members of the Emmet til Legacy Foundation and two til relatives: Cousin Deborah Watts, chair of the trust; And his daughter Terry Watts. Relatives want authorities to use a warrant to arrest Donham, who was married to one of two whites at the time of the murder, and Dill was interrogated and released a few weeks after the cousin was abducted from his home, killed and thrown into a river.

“Serve it and charge her,” Theri Watts told the AP.

Keith Beauchamp’s documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louise Dill” preceded a revised judicial inquiry that ended without charges in 2007 as part of the search. He said there was enough new evidence to prosecute Danham.

Tonham filed a lawsuit in August 1955, alleging that Dill, a 14-year-old man, had made improper improvements to a family store in Money, Mississippi. One of Dill’s relatives there blew a whistle at the woman, an act that flew in the face of the racist social symbols of the Mississippi era.

Evidence identifies a woman, perhaps Tonham, and the men who killed Dill later. The arrest warrant against Donham was advertised at the time, but the LeBron County Sheriff told reporters he did not want to “harass” her because she had two small children.

Donham, now in his 80s and most recently living in North Carolina, has not publicly commented on his lawsuit calls. But Terry Watts said the Dill family believes the warrant against Donham will be new evidence.

“This is what the Mississippi State needs to move forward,” he said.

District Attorney Divine Richardson, a prosecuting office, declined to comment on the warrant, but cited the December report. Regarding the case, he said that no case is possible until it comes from the judiciary.

Contacted by AP on Wednesday, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks said: “This is the first time I’ve known about a warrant.”

Banks, who was 7 years old when Dill was killed, said “nothing was said about the warrant” when a former district attorney heard the case five or six years ago.

“I will get a copy of the warrant, get it with the DA and see if they can get their opinion on it,” the banks said. Banks said he would have to speak with law enforcement officials in the state where Danham resides if the warrant is still issued.

Arrest warrants may “become obsolete” due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and even if the sheriff agrees to serve in a courtroom since 1955, he cannot go to court, said law professor Ronald J. Snyder. Ricelock said. At the University of Mississippi.

But connected with new sourcesHe said the original arrest warrant could be “absolutely” an important step in establishing a possible cause for a new case.

“If you go before a judge, ‘at one time a judge determined a possible cause, and a lot of information is available today,” Rychlak said.

Dill, from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when Danham, then 21, entered the store on August 24, 1955, where he was working. Wheeler Parker, Dill’s cousin, told AP that Dill blew the whistle at the woman. . Danham testified in court that Dill caught her too and made a bad comment.

Two nights later, Donham’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half – brother, J.W. Milam, Dill’s Uncle Moss Wright’s rural Leflor County home searching for armed youths. Dill’s brutal body was weighed down by a fan and dragged from the river in another district a few days later. His mother decided to open the coffin to see what had happened to the mourners in Chicago, which helped build the building civil rights movement of the time.

Bryant and Milam were acquitted of the murder charge but later confessed to the murder in a press conference. Although the two were named on the same warrant that Danham was charged with kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case following their release.

Wright testified during the murder trial that a man with a “lighter” voice than a man was identified from inside a pickup truck and was abducted by kidnappers. Other evidence in FBI files suggests that tonight’s Danham told her husband that at least two black men were not the right person.

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Reeves reported from Nunon, Georgia.