On May 2, 1964, Klansman James Ford Seale picked up two black hitchhikers and drowned both young men in the Mississippi River. Seale spent more than forty years a free man, before finally facing trial in 2007. There could have been two defendants in the resulting case: James Ford Seale for kidnapping and murder, and the State of Mississippi for complicity--knowingly aiding, abetting, and creating men like Seale. In The Past Is Never Dead, best-selling author Harry MacLean follows Seale's trial, the legal difficulties of prosecuting kidnapping and murder charges decades after the fact, and the strain on a state contending with a past that can't be forgiven. MacLean's narrative is at once the account of a gripping legal battle and an acute meditation on the possibility of redemption.
- ISBN10 046501996X
- ISBN13 9780465019960
- Publish Date 22 September 2009
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 17 November 2014
- Publisher INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US
- Imprint Basic Civitas Books
- Format eBook
- Pages 304
- Language English