LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – It may have taken 43 years, but a civil…

LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – It may have taken 43 years, but a civil rights-era killing of two black men in Mississippi has resulted in a guilty finding by a federal jury of a former Ku Klux Klansman charged with kidnapping.

Reuters report that a federal jury deliberated just two hours before convicting James Seale, who was also charged with conspiracy in the killings of 19-year-old Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore who were kidnapped while hitchhiking.

According to the indictment and testimony, they were taken to a national forest and Seale trained a shotgun on the teenagers while his companions beat them.

They then stuffed Dee and Moore into the trunk of a car, drove them to an offshoot of the Mississippi River, attached heavy weights to them and threw them alive into the water from a boat, prosecutors said.

The jury made clear neither of the kidnapped men was “returned unharmed,” a statement that may increase a sentence whose maximum amounts to a life term on each count.

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