United States v. Seale

United States v. Seale is a federal criminal case in the United States, in which Ku Klux Klan member James Ford Seale was prosecuted and convicted for his role in the racially motivated murders in 1964 of two black teens.

The case was procedurally unusual in that it was initiated in 2007, and it was unclear whether the statute of limitations had expired due to revision of the governing criminal statute in the interim. The trial court ruled against Seale on the issue, which was affirmed by an evenly divided appellate court. The appellate court then took the highly unusual step of seeking certification of the legal question to the Supreme Court of the United States, seeking guidance on whether the revisions retroactively changed the applicable limitations period. The Supreme Court dismissed the certification without comment.

The case has its beginnings in the 1964 kidnapping of two black teenagers. After they had been beaten, they had weights attached and were thrown into the Mississippi River to drown. After an investigation, James Ford Seale and another man, allegedly members of the Ku Klux Klan, were indicted for the murder. The charges were dropped because, it was later alleged, the police were colluding with the Klan. Nevertheless, the House Committee on Un-American Activities called Seale to testify and placed its belief that he had committed the crime in its records. Seale then dropped off the radar, and was thought dead until 2005. In 2007, he was indicted by the federal government for the crime.

The federal kidnapping statute doesn't specify a time limit on prosecutions, so the general limits of 18 U.S.C. §§ 3281 and 3282 supply the time limit on prosecution, if there is any. There is no time limit on a capital crime (section 3281), but non-capital crimes are subject to a five-year statute of limitations (section 3282). Seale moved to dismiss the indictment on the theory that the latter applied to him. Although kidnapping was a capital offense in 1964, Congress detached the death penalty from it in the mid-1970s in response to United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 (1968), and Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). This should be given retroactive effect, Seale contended, making his offense subject to section 3282's five year limit, and the indictment accordingly untimely. The district court rejected this argument. The case proceeded to trial, the jury found Seale guilty on all counts (helped, no doubt, by an FBI agent's testimony that Seale had admitted the crime after his arrest), and three life sentences ensued.

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