The murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the jogger hunted down by a retired policeman and his son in Georgia evoked for Eric Segall (and many others) the history of lynch murders in the United States. Four thousand victims are memorialized at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The murder of two African American couples - . one of the last mob lynchings, is an unsolved crime near Moore's Ford east of Atlanta in 1946. An historian's dying quest to learn how it is that no one was ever charged with the crime has been turned down by an 8-4 vote the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Unless Anthony Pitch's widow finds the resources and the United States Supreme Court takes the case the records of that Grand Jury investigation will be forever sealed - despite the undisputed historic importance of the unpunished crimes.
The investigation of the Trump campaign by Robert Mueller drew attention to the rigor with which Grand Jury secrecy is maintained. It is, in the main, a good rule. There are a handful of exceptions to Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Defendants may obtain the testimony of the witnesses against them, or other prosecutors with a need to know.
But there is a historic discretionary power held by trial judges - for cases of historic importance. Courts have differed on whether such power survived the 1944 Congressional adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Did the Rules silence imply abolition of the historic discretionary power of a judge?
Georgia State Law professor Erich Segall explores the issues presented by Pitch v. United States. Pitch had written a book about what may have been the last mass lynching in the United States.
Dorf on Law: Of Lynchings, Grand Jury Secrecy, and the Rot of Racism in the United States
By Eric Segall
On July 25, 1946, about sixty miles east of Atlanta, two African-American couples, Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey, were dragged from their car at gunpoint, tied to a tree, and shot approximately 60 times. The attack came to be known as the Moore’s Ford lynchings.
Despite the police interviewing almost 3000 witnesses, and a grand jury investigation that lasted for 16 days with over 100 witnesses, no one was ever arrested for these terrible and gruesome murders, which took place in public. Some people believe this heinous crime was the last mass lynching in our country.
Historian Anthony Pitch, who had already written one book on the subject, spent the last six years of his life trying to unseal the grand jury materials relevant to the lynchings. He believed that this racist crime and the likely coverup of those who committed it was a major event in American history as well a tragic saga of race in America.
He prevailed in front of both the trial court and a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. After the appeals court decided to hear the case en banc, however, Pitch passed away. Nevertheless, his widow kept the lawsuit alive. Then, on March 27 of this year, by a vote of 8-4, the full Eleventh Circuit reversed the panel decision and said the materials must remain sealed. Mr. Pitch's widow has 90 days from the date of the decision to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case.
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