Grand jury declines to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman whose accusation set off Emmett Till’s lynching

A grand jury in Mississippi has declined to indict the White woman whose accusation set off the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till almost 70 years in the past, regardless of revelations about an unserved arrest warrant and an unpublished memoir by the woman, a prosecutor mentioned Tuesday.

After listening to greater than seven hours of testimony from investigators and witnesses, a Leflore County grand jury final week decided there was inadequate proof to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham on prices of kidnapping and manslaughter.

It is now more and more unlikely that Donham, who’s now in her 80s, will ever be prosecuted for her function in the occasions that led to Till’s lynching.

Till’s cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., condemned the choice as “unfortunate but predictable” in a press release to CBS News. 

“The prosecutor tried his best, and we appreciate his efforts, but he alone cannot undo hundreds of years of anti-Black systems that guaranteed those who killed Emmett Till would go unpunished, to this day,” Parker mentioned in the assertion. “The fact remains that the people who abducted, tortured, and murdered Emmett did so in plain sight, and our American justice system was and continues to be set up in such a way that they could not be brought to justice for their heinous crimes.” 

An e mail and voicemail looking for remark from Donham’s son Tom Bryant weren’t instantly returned Tuesday.

A bunch looking out the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse in June found the unserved arrest warrant charging Donham, then-husband Roy Bryant and brother-in-law J.W. Milam in Till’s abduction in 1955. While the males had been arrested and acquitted on homicide prices in Till’s subsequent slaying, Donham, 21 at the time and 87 now, was by no means taken into custody.

In an unpublished memoir obtained final month by The Associated Press, Donham mentioned she was unaware of what would occur to the 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped, killed and tossed in a river. She accused him of constructing lewd feedback and grabbing her whereas she labored alone at a household retailer in Money, Mississippi.

Donham mentioned in the manuscript that the males introduced Till to her in the center of the night time for identification however that she tried to assist the youth by denying it was him. Despite being kidnapped at gunpoint from a household dwelling by Roy Bryant and Milam, the 14-year-old recognized himself to the males, she claimed.

Till’s battered, disfigured physique was discovered days later in a river, the place it was laden with a heavy metallic fan. The choice by his mom, Mamie Till Mobley, to open Till’s casket for his funeral in Chicago demonstrated the horror of what had occurred and added gas to the civil rights motion.

“No family should ever have to endure this pain for this long,” Parker mentioned in his assertion to CBS News Tuesday. “Going forward, we must keep the details, and memory, of the brutal murder of Emmett Till, and the courage of Mamie Mobley, alive, so that we can reduce racial violence, improve our system of justice, and treat each other with the dignity and respect with which Mrs. Mobley graced us all.”

The U.S. Justice Department final 12 months mentioned it was ending its investigation into Till’s killing.

The Justice Department in 2004 had opened an investigation of Till’s killing after it acquired inquiries about whether or not prices might be introduced in opposition to anybody nonetheless dwelling. The division mentioned the statute of limitations had run out on any potential federal crime, however the FBI labored with state investigators to decide if state prices might be introduced. In February 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict anybody, and the Justice Department introduced it was closing the case.