Justice Stevens: Cert Denial in Klan Case Has ‘No Benefit and Significant Cost'
Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal today to decide whether the statute of limitations bars prosecution of a Klansman convicted of kidnapping two black youths who were drowned 45 years ago.
“The question is narrow, debatable and important,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a statement (PDF) joined by Justice Antonin Scalia. “I see no benefit and significant cost to postponing the question’s resolution.”
Stevens noted that the issue of a prosecution deadline reached the court via a certified question by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “This certificate presents us with a pure question of law that may well determine the outcome of a number of cases of ugly racial violence remaining from the 1960s,” he said.
SCOTUSblog says the case is “a notorious one” that seeks clarification on when the federal government may prosecute a series of old civil rights crimes in the South.
According to Stevens, the court has not accepted a certified case since 1981. “The certification process has all but disappeared in recent decades,” he wrote. “The court has accepted only a handful of certified cases since the 1940s and none since 1981; it is a newsworthy event these days when a lower court even tries for certification.”
The certification process can serve a valuable function, Stevens said. “We ought to avail ourselves of it in an appropriate case.”
The statute of limitations question stems from the prosecution of James Ford Seale in 2007 for the 1964 kidnapping of two black youths who were later drowned. Seale was prosecuted and found guilty under a kidnapping statute that had carried a death sentence along with no limitations period before a 1968 Supreme Court ruling held the death provision unconstitutional. Congress later repealed the death penalty provision in 1972, which had the effect of putting in place a five-year statute of limitations. In 1994, Congress then reinstated the death penalty for kidnappings that result in death.
The 5th Circuit had divided 9-9 in an en banc appeal, with the effect of leaving in place a district court ruling allowing the prosecution of Seale.
The Associated Press also covered the cert denial. Crime author Harry MacLean, who wrote a book about the case, wrote more than a week ago on In Cold Blog that the Supreme Court should have decided whether to take the case on the first Monday in October. The delay “leads one to speculate that there must be a serious split on the court about the case, and that there might be some horse trading going on,” he wrote.
