Emmett Till’s family wants woman arrested after unserved warrant found six decades later

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Emmett Till’s family is calling for the arrest of the woman who wrongfully accused the Black teen after a team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about Till’s lynching found an unserved warrant charging Carolyn Bryant Donham in his 1955 kidnapping.

Emmett Till’s family wants woman charged

According to the Associated Press, a warrant for the arrest of Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box.

The search group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two of Till relatives: Cousin Deborah Watts, head of the Foundation; and her daughter, Teri Watts.

Relatives want authorities to use the warrant dated August 29, 1955, to arrest Donham, who at the time of the murder was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after 14-year-old Till was kidnapped from a relative’s home, killed and dumped into a river.

“Serve it and charge her”, Teri Watts said to the Associated Press.

Bryant is in her 80s and reportedly living in North Carolina.

Is the document still good?

Arrest warrants can “go stale” because of the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn’t pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi told the Associated Press.

But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant “absolutely” could be an important step toward establishing probable cause for a new prosecution.

1955 lynching

Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot in the head, then dumped in a river in 1955 after Carolyn Bryant Donham, said he whistled at her and touched her in a Mississippi store. He was only 14 at the time of his death.

J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, Donham’s husband at the time, were acquitted of Till’s murder by an all-male, all-white jury in Mississippi that deliberated for just over an hour before it returned a not guilty verdict.

Till’s murder rocked the nation, becoming a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Thousands of people attended his funeral, where his mother insisted on an open casket to show the brutality of his killing.

Last year, the Department of Justice closed their investigation due to lack of evidence.