McCaskill pushes for renewal of Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) feels good about her chances to lead a reauthorization of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, in part because her Republican co-sponsor, U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), is up for re-election this year.

The 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act provided a means to investigate and prosecute racially motivated murders that occurred on or before December 31, 1969. The legislation established offices within the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI to investigate and prosecute murders from the civil rights era, and authorized $10 million annually for investigations and $2 million for grants to states in order to support this work.

“It does not give DOJ jurisdiction that they don’t currently have,” McCaskill said to The American in an interview on May 2. “The federal government can always investigate any crime for any civil rights violation. But the law does give resources and focus where these cases can be prosecuted under civil rights laws.”

The renewed bill would be strengthened in several ways. It would broaden the scope to include the investigation of all racially motivated murders, up to the present day. It would require that investigators conduct an in-person interview before closing a case. It would strengthen reporting requirements to make it more clear what the DOJ has and hasn’t done on each case. And it would provide for the creation of a task force to review these cases that includes local, state and federal officials, as well as civil rights advocates.

“It does not appear there was enough coordination of federal, state and local officials, so we added this task force provision,” McCaskill told The American. “It’s a public/private task force that also includes representatives from higher education and civil rights groups.”

McCaskill and staff met with a number of civil rights groups in preparing for the bill’s reauthorization. They include the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University, the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University’s College of Law, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the National Urban League and the Emmett Till Campaign.

Though McCaskill did not meet with any activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter groups regarding this legislation, she thinks their voices would be important on the task force. “I would hope when the task force is put together that it includes a multi-generational look at the advocates out there,” she said, “with the established leadership as well as some of the new leadership that has taken its place.”

The community advocates on the task force must represent “an organization whose primary purpose is to promote civil rights, an institution of higher education, or another entity, determined by the attorney general to be appropriate,” according to the legislation.

Alvin Sykes, the civil rights advocate from Kansas City who pushed for passage of the initial bill (with McCaskill’s active support, as a then-newly elected senator), remains critical to the effort to reauthorize the bill.

“Alvin gets a lot of the credit,” McCaskill said. “He’s worked on this for so long.”

Sykes also is advocating for an Executive Order from President Obama that would make the Emmett Till cold case unit a permanent fixture in the DOJ.

In the meantime, it’s up to the Congress to reauthorize the law before it expires next year. It passed the Senate unanimously in 2008, and McCaskill expects similarly overwhelming support for its renewal – not least of all because her Republican co-sponsor faces a spirited challenge this year from a Democratic candidate, Deborah Ross, who outraised Burr in the first quarter of this year.

“Richard Burr is anxious to show he supports this,” McCaskill said. “He is up this year in North Carolina, where there are a lot of political cross-currents in a lot of different ways. I would not be optimistic if there were not a Republican co-sponsor, since Mitch McConnell is in charge.”

McCaskill said she was not aware of a backlog of cases in Missouri that would be activated by a renewal of the bill, and as a former Jackson County prosecutor she recognizes the older cases are tough to make. “It’s hard finding the cause of death, rounding up witnesses, and there are double jeopardy issues,” she said.

The attorney general made its most recent report to the U.S. Senate regarding Emmett Till cold cases on May 28, 2015. “Though very few prosecutions have resulted from these exhaustive efforts,” the attorney general reported, “the department’s efforts to review these matters have helped bring closure to the family members of the victims.”

The report sites one successful federal prosecution and one successful state prosecution of cold cases since the passage of the act in 2008.

The Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University’s College of Law submitted 196 cases to the DOJ – and there are likely many more out there waiting for justice.

McCaskill said, “This law is for those civil rights advocate who feel like they are knocking on the door Justice and not getting an answer.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) has introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House.