Mississippi Grand Jury Declines to Indict Woman in Emmett Till Murder Case
Carolyn Bryant Donham had accused the 14-year-old boy of whistling at her in 1955. His killing helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
NASHVILLE — A grand jury in Mississippi examining the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy whose abduction and killing more than six decades ago became a galvanizing force for the civil rights movement, has declined to indict the white woman whose accusations prompted the attack, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Jurors in Leflore County in the Mississippi Delta, where Emmett had traveled from Chicago in the summer of 1955, heard more than seven hours of testimony from investigators and witnesses with direct knowledge of the case. Still, prosecutors said, the panel did not find sufficient evidence to indict the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, on charges of kidnapping or manslaughter.
“After hearing every aspect of the investigation and evidence collected regarding Donham’s involvement, the grand jury returned a ‘no bill’ to the charges of both kidnapping and manslaughter,” the office of W. Dewayne Richardson, the district attorney for the Fourth Circuit Court District of Mississippi, said Tuesday.
The grand jury’s decision had been reported by The Associated Press.
For more than two decades, prosecutors and legal experts have indicated that there were dwindling legal avenues for holding Ms. Donham — or anyone — criminally responsible for the abduction, torture and killing of the teenager. Investigations were closed, and no indictments or charges had been issued. Witnesses were aging or dying. Ms. Donham’s husband at the time, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, confessed to the murder, but only after they had been acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men are dead.
Even so, new details kept emerging and reinvigorating the case. The latest came this summer as relatives of Emmett and researchers looking into his murder unearthed an arrest warrant for Ms. Donham — issued by the Leflore County sheriff and dated Aug. 29, 1955 — that had never been served. It accused her of kidnapping and led to the grand jury examination.
The Murder of Emmett Till
In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Mississippi after he allegedly whistled at a white woman.
- Enduring Legacy: The Emmett Till murder shaped the civil rights movement in America. In 2022, President Biden signed a bill named for the boy, making lynching a federal hate crime.
- Recalling Who He Was: In a conversation with The Times, the child’s cousin said he was a jokester who “loved to make people laugh.”
- The Investigation: The Department of Justice closed the case more than six decades after the killing, saying it could not corroborate a book’s claim that a central witness had recanted her statements.
- A New Development: Researchers discovered an unserved arrest warrant for the white woman whose accusations led to the boy’s death. A grand jury later refused to indict the woman.
The most recent turn in the case could very well be one of the last options for prosecution in the case.
“The murder of Emmett Till remains an unforgettable tragedy in this country,” prosecutors said in a statement, “and the thoughts and prayers of this nation continue to be with the family of Emmett Till.”The Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., a cousin and best friend of Emmett’s who is the last living witness to the abduction, described the development as “unfortunate, but predictable, news.” Still, he said he believed that prosecutors were living up to their assurances that “they would leave no stone unturned in the fight for justice for my cousin.”