Have you seen this in the news? I have been reading about it and was wondering what the MN hive mind thought.
I'm sure you've all heard this awful story, but incase you haven't, Carolyn Bryant Donham was a white woman who, aged 22, was whistled at (and apparently also grabbed) by a 14 year old African American boy named Emmett Till in a store in Mississippi in 1955. (In her own memoir, she claims she called for help but there were apparently no witnesses in the store who heard her call.)
Emmett Till was kidnapped at gunpoint from his bed by the woman's husband and brother in law, who tortured and murdered Till before dumping his body in a river. It's a truly heartbreaking and just hideous story. The story is that witnesses heard a woman's voice (supposedly Carolyn's) identifying Emmett, saying, "That's him" from a car before he was taken away and killed.
The two men were acquitted of murder, but admitted to the killing in a paid interview later, as they couldn't be prosecuted having been found innocent already.
Carolyn Bryant Donham is now around 88 years old. Her whereabouts are unknown. The story seems to be a little hazy, with popular opinion being that Carolyn later admitted that Emmett never touched her (as this was claimed by a biographer of hers), although this is denied by both Carolyn and also the FBI who said that this was never admitted. Carolyn, in her own autobiography, stands by her story and the FBI have said that she never changed her story.
In Carolyn's autobiography, she claims to have had no idea what her husband and brother in law planned to do Emmett. She says she told them they'd got the wrong boy in an attempt to make them take him home. She says she feels like a victim too, in a way, because her life was changed forever by what happened. She says that she'd prayed every day for Emmett's family.
Family of Emmett Till and other campaigners have since discovered a 67 year old arrest warrant for Carolyn that was never served. They are now trying to find her to serve it to her, and are demanding that the police take action.
Protestors recently stormed a retirement home in large numbers trying to find Carolyn to serve her the arrest warrant. They are searching for her still, but apparently can't find her. Carolyn's family have remained silent, but a friend of the family has said that she's in very ill health, blind, and even if the papers were served to her, she'd be dead before it went to trial.
My question is - how do you feel about this? On the one hand, I understand the desire for justice to be served. This case is absolutely heartbreaking and disgusting. On the other hand, it reminds me a little of the arresting of guards in their 90s, who had worked at concentration camps during World War 2. While a few top Nazis were executed or imprisoned after the war, a number of people who did far more hideous things were free to live normal lives, like the many Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians who were given government jobs in the USA after the war due to their skill and knowledge. Many years later, when people were hungry for justice, they went after the only living people left. It's like needing SOMEONE to be punished because this thing is too hideous to go unpunished. It's almost unbearable for it to go unpunished. But the actual perpetrators aren't around anymore to be punished.
I also wonder whether, even if Carolyn did point out Emmett, she has actually committed a crime if she claims that she had no idea what her husband and brother in law planned to do? I'm not sure about American law but I don't know what that crime would be. I also wonder whether it would actually be justice for her to be punished while his actual killers lived normal lives and died peacefully without ever facing punishment. Would it really be justice or would it just be 'an eye for an eye' - like, SOMEONE has to pay for this.
What do you think?