The lies that the Franklin County, Miss., sheriff told in 1964 about the whereabouts of two black teenagers should not result in the dismissal 44 years later of a civil rights suit against the county because of the statute of limitations.

A key threshold issue in the case filed in August by relatives of Henry Dee and Charles Moore is whether the three-year statute began to run when the youths' bodies were found in July 1964, as the county argues, or when a federal grand jury indicted a reputed Ku Klux Klan member on charges related to the murders in January 2007.

The indictment named Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto, who died in 1984, as a co-conspirator, alleging he conspired with James Seale and other Klansmen on the day of the crime and helped cover it up.

Dee and Moore, both 19, were abducted and killed May 2, 1964. As part of the alleged cover-up, Hutto told Moore's mother two days later that the youths were in Louisiana and, on May 16, told other family members that he had no information about their whereabouts.

“[P]laintiffs claim in 1964 defendant Franklin County had an unlawful, racially motivated policy and practice of protecting the Ku Klux Klan,” the complaint, which describes Hutto as a “member or close affiliate" of the Klan, says.

In a motion to dismiss, county attorney Michael J. Wolf doesn't deny that Hutto lied to the family members. But he does make a creative attempt to, in effect, hoist the plaintiffs by their own petard.

Since the plaintiffs' theory of liability is that Franklin County had a “policy of tolerance toward Klan activity,” he argues, they

must have known that the information provided to them by the Sheriff, that the men were in Louisiana, would have been [ ] false. According to the Complaint, every reason to suspect some liability existed in 1964.

“Quite simply,” Wolf says in another brief, “the Plaintiffs were waiting for the criminal justice system to give them answers, rather than avail themselves of the civil remedies which were always available to them.”

Plaintiffs' counsel Dennis C. Sweet has correctly pointed out the irony of the county's position that “statements made by the sheriff that ... were clearly intended to discourage [the plaintiffs] from pursuing their right of injury should be construed as triggering the limitations period.”

Hutto's statements and the discovery of the bodies were “hardly sufficient evidence to lead the Plaintiffs to suspect the sheriff was in on the crime,” Sweet says in a brief opposing dismissal, and

It is simply not plausible to conclude, as defendant does, that the Plaintiffs should have suspected that their Sheriff had formed an alliance with private criminals when this information was unknown to the FBI, and when a sheriff is commonly seen to be a law enforcement officer, not a law-breaker.

The criminal indictment followed the confession of Klansman Charles Edwards, who, among other things, testified that Hutto had contact with the kidnappers of Dee and Moore before the youths were killed. “Sheriff Hutto was in a position to, but did not, intervene to protect Dee and Moore,” the civil rights suit says.

Seale was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy and is now serving three life sentences in an Indiana prison.

By Matthew Heller
12/4/08