1955 ARREST WARRANT IN EMMETT TILL CASE DISCOVERED
A team of researchers, including relatives of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted and murdered in Mississippi in 1955, has discovered an unserved arrest warrant for the White woman whose accusations led to his gruesome death.
The document was found last week in the basement of a courthouse in Greenwood, Miss. It does not constitute major new evidence in the case, which horrified but galvanized Black Americans at the time and helped lead to the civil rights movement.
But those still working on Emmett’s behalf said that the discovery added to their understanding of the legal drama surrounding his death and that they hoped it would provide a basis for a new investigation. The woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, was never charged in the case. She is now in her 80s and was living in North Carolina as recently as May, according to public records. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Donham was married to Roy Bryant at the time of the killing. Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam murdered Emmett days after the teenager was said to have whistled at Donham during an encounter at the couple’s store. The two White men were acquitted by an allWhite jury but later confessed to the killing. They have since died.
The newly discovered warrant, issued by the sheriff of Leflore County, Miss., and dated Aug. 29, 1955, charges the two men and Donham, identified as Mrs. Roy Bryant, with Emmett’s kidnapping. The current clerk of the Leflore County Circuit Court, Elmus Stockstill, certified its authenticity.
An affidavit attached to the warrant says that the three did “willfully, unlawfully and feloniously and without lawful authority, forcibly seize and confine and kidnap Emmitt Lewis Tell,” misspelling the boy’s first and last names, as well as his middle name, Louis.
A note on the back of the warrant signed by a local sheriff says Donham was not arrested because she was
not located in the county at the time, said Keith A. Beauchamp, a filmmaker who directed a 2005 documentary about the killing and helped find the warrant.
He called the discovery “a jackpot” and wrote in a text message to The New York Times, “I hope that the authorities will do the job they were suppose to do in 1955.”
Although the document does not appear to have been rescinded, experts said it was unlikely that Donham would be arrested based solely on the warrant.
“Relying upon a 67-yearold warrant, while it’s an interesting academic exercise, I think would be unsound police work,” Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi and an expert in criminal procedure and Mississippi criminal trial practice, said in an interview. “Why would you rely on a 67-year-old warrant if you think you have the cause today to justify it?”
In a 1956 article in Look magazine, Bryant and Milam confessed to killing Emmett. Donham later divorced Bryant, who died in 1994. Milam died in 1980.