Sen. Jones talks next steps in Civil Rights Cold Case Records Act

Published 8:08 pm Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Senate moved one step closer to passing bipartisan legislation that would help families find justice when the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs passed the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act. This bill would release information on cold cases from the civil rights era, with the hope that additional sunlight and public interest will bring revelation, justice and closure where these things have been lacking, according to Sen. Doug Jones, D-AL.

Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said this legislation is a “good idea.”

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Jackson was the prosecutor in the cold case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, an African American protestor who was killed in 1965. Jimmie’s death led to the historic Selma to Montgomery march.

The former state trooper who was prosecuted in the case, James Bonard Fowler, claimed self-defense in the shooting of Jimmie.

Michael said that he had to “jump through a lot of hoops” in Washington, D.C. to obtain information regarding the then 45-year-old cold case when the trial began in 2010.

Michael said there are at least five cold cases in Dallas County from the Civil Rights era, and that this legislation would allow not only access to the information about each case, but would also provide closure to families of the victims.

One cold case Michael said was famous in Dallas County is the murder of James Joseph Reeb, a Boston minister who was murdered in 1965. The Boston Globe claimed in a 2011 article about Reeb that his death helped usher in the Voting Rights Act.

“While most of the perpetrators of these horrific crimes have never been identified and brought to justice, there have been notable successes like the convictions of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers, Sam Bowers for the murder of Vernon Dahmer, and Tommy Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for the murder of four young girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,” said Jones in a press release. “However, in many cases, witnesses were intimidated into silence and evidence was intentionally brushed under the rug by corrupt officials. Victims and their families were often afraid to pursue justice against their attackers. And despite the best efforts of law enforcement in many cases, they did not have access to modern forensic methods, and trails went cold.

“Records and evidence from many of these cases sit locked away in files and vaults, outside of the public eye. As memories fade and witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of decades-old crimes pass away, our window to solve these cold cases shrinks,” said Jones. “The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act would address this problem by disclosing case records so that private detectives, historians, victims, and victims’ families can access these files, pursue leads, and document these tragic events.

“Our legislation would require government offices to submit files and records about civil rights cold cases to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This office would then create a collection of documents that would be publicly disclosed, although, for certain reasons, the disclosure of some information may be postponed,” said Jones. “Postponement would be appropriate where disclosure would clearly and demonstrably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security, military defense, law enforcement, intelligence operations, or foreign relations; pose substantial unwarranted harm to a living person; constitute a grave breach of personal privacy; compromise a confidentiality agreement between law enforcement and a cooperating individual; or interfere with ongoing law enforcement proceedings.”

Jones also said this legislation establishes a Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board as an independent agency of impartial private citizens to facilitate the review, transmission to NARA, and public disclosure of government records related to these civil rights cold cases.

“The Board would also be empowered to hold hearings and render decisions on determinations by government offices that seek to postpone the disclosure of such records while acting as a conduit for information volunteered by the public,” Jones said. “Many journalists and organizations like the Center for Investigative Reporting have called for a decentralized, crowdsourced approach to breaking cold cases by making their information public, which is exactly the intent of our legislation.”

We are hopeful that the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act will add another victorious footnote to the legacy of the civil rights movement, and allow the American people to seek justice for their countrymen who were wrongly persecuted for the color of their skin and their fight for equality.