Window on the West
Opinion column
by Mary Rupert
Alvin Sykes stayed up late Friday night listening to Congress take care of business before adjourning, but when he heard that the Senate would recess at 3 a.m. Saturday, he thought the chances for passing the Till Bill reauthorization were over this year.
That wasn’t so, however. Sykes, a human rights activist in Kansas City, Kan., thought it was over but it was around 5:23 a.m. Kansas City time when the Till Bill reauthorization he has worked on for years finally passed the Senate, on unanimous consent, he said. The bill was considered after some other more controversial legislation was completed.
“I’m just certainly honored to play such a role as the architect for these two legislations,” Sykes said after the bill passed Saturday. He also was active in the passage of the first Till Bill.
He said the bill is a way of changing the poison of hate-based civil rights murders into the medicine of justice for countless people in the future.
“That’s not just a snappy cliché, that is a real deal in terms of using what kills you to cure you, and to replace some of the fears with the belief that we can in fact achieve these goals of finding the perpetrators of these murders and bring them to justice, or at least be able to find the truth about what has transpired and bring some solace to some of the families,” Sykes said. “Not all would settle for that, but for those we could do that for, we are duty-bound to try, and we have a responsibility to move forward.”
Sykes said the bill had to overcome some hurdles; and a compromise was reached with the Department of Justice on it. He wanted the bill to apply to all years, not just the “civil rights era,” but he had to compromise with 1979 as the upper limit that the bill covers instead of 1969.
“Certainly we will have to go back to Congress in the future to expand further, but we at least wanted to get the infrastructure in place and get it functioning as a law, and work amendments in the future to expand both the scope and the time of the law,” Sykes said.
Ultimately, he would like to see the Till Bill as a permanent cold case law, not just for racially motivated murders, and for all years, not just a period of time, he said. He added he thinks there are a lot of cases, not just in the civil rights era.
There was some concern by the Department of Justice about funding for the program, he said. The bill provides $13.5 million a year for investigating the cold cases, he said. It will allow additional people to be hired, he added.
Sykes said the compromise with the Department of Justice allowed the bill to move to the House and ultimately to the Senate. The bill originally passed the Senate in another version in July, then it passed the House on Wednesday, and changes were made to it. The Senate had to approve the changes, Sykes said. Early Saturday morning, a voice vote was taken on it and the chairman declared it passed by a two-thirds majority. There were no “no” votes, Sykes said. The bill now will go to President Obama for a signature, he said.
The Till Bill reauthorization was the second piece of legislation he’s been involved with this year that deals with law enforcement, Sykes said. The other one was a bill in the Kansas Legislature that requires written policies on the use of eyewitness identification.
Few court cases come out of complaints
Sykes said his original thoughts on the Till Bill were that every year, thousands of complaints are made to the Justice Department about racially motivated incidents, and typically only 50 to 100 make it to court. When he saw the disparity between the number of complaints compared to the number of the cases that ultimately went through, he tried to discover why so few were addressed.
There were a significant number of cases where investigators were not able to determine whether it was a civil rights case, because of lack of testimony, investigation or cooperation, he said. But his thought was that if the cases were reopened later, after a number of years, there might be new testimony, for instance, formerly loyal spouses who were now divorced and able to testify.
The original Till Bill was not used very much, and the reasons probably were the expense of cold cases and the fact that some of the cases couldn’t be proven to be a civil rights case, according to Sykes. He noticed that there wasn’t a lot of engagement in a manhunt to look for witnesses in these cases. Many of the successful prosecutions came about from investigative work done by the Southern Poverty Law Center, he added.
Investigating a case that is decades old can be very expensive. Tracking down the victim’s family for interviews can be time-consuming, as many have moved to different places, he said.
Sykes said he has noticed that many of the cold cases that moved forward were those in which third parties, such as university students or investigative reporters, had been involved. He mentioned Syracuse, Louisiana and Northeastern as places where university students had successfully assisted in investigations, as part of their class work.
Students across the country have become very savvy and effective working on cases of wrongfully convicted persons, he said. Their findings have the potential of freeing a wrongfully convicted person and at the same time, possibly identifying a new suspect. Sykes said as more university students and investigative reporters become involved in this effort for justice, he believes there will be more success.
Cases from the 1950s and 1940s are already at the point where there won’t be much actual effective prosecution, Sykes said, because so many of the people involved are no longer alive. He said cases from the 1960s into the 1980s have a better chance of finding witnesses who are still alive, and evidence that still is in existence.
A learning curve
The original Till Bill was as much a learning curve as it was a means to investigate these cases, Sykes said. He learned from the experiences, was able to work with the Justice Department effectively, and learned that the partnership between state, and federal and local offices was important.
Sykes said he believes a period of time is coming when people will start to be fearful that they can’t get away with a crime just because time has gone by. Usually, when some of those cases are solved, they will lead to solving multiple cases, he said. That happened in investigating Leon Jordan’s death, he said, when another body was found under the ASB bridge.
The Till Bill reauthorization had bipartisan support and was sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Other lawmakers who were co-sponsors included Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. The bill also had the support of Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-3rd Dist.
Sykes thinks it is likely that President Obama will sign the bill, as he originally supported the first Till Bill in 2007. Both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were co-sponsors of the original bill.
Multi-jurisdiction investigations
Local police have always had the right to investigate cold cases, Sykes said, as there is no statute of limitations on murders at the state level. The problems in the past have been having enough resources to investigate those cold cases and having the type of expertise that comes with building cases that cover multiple jurisdictions, Sykes said.
When cold civil rights cases are reopened decades later, often the victims are found to have moved somewhere, typically to the north, while the suspects often have stayed there, he said. State and local officers often don’t have the money to do these multi-jurisdiction investigations, which is where federal investigators come into play, according to Sykes. But federal investigators had a five-year statute of limitations on cases.
Sykes supported an extension of the time period for these cases until 1994 if he couldn’t get an open-ended “forever” length of time, but the Justice Department didn’t support it, so he then came up with a compromise 10-year-extension from 1969 to 1979, he said.
Sykes said a hate crime murder case in Missouri in 1983 was one of only a handful of similar cases prosecuted successfully under civil rights laws, he said.
Truth as a measure of success
From his experience with the results of the first Till Bill, Sykes said people supporting it now realize that they can’t just pass a law and wait for the results.
“My perspective as the architect of the legislation, it was never my intent that the measuring stick (of success) would be based on how many successful criminal prosecutions came out of it,” Sykes said. “My measurement was based on how much truth do we find in these cases before we can even get to the part about justice or criminal prosecution.”
“I would view as a success those cases where they were able to find who may have did it and help family members get a sense of closure knowing that even if they weren’t able to get a criminal prosecution out of it. I would still look at that and some family members would still look at it as a victory,” Sykes said.
Sykes said he also would consider it a victory if federal investigators looked into a suspected civil rights murder and found out it was not a hate crime. It would be a victory because they were finding out the truth, he said.
Part of the problem of the first Till Bill, he said, was no money for nongovernmental entities to be involved in this effort. Now there will be $1.5 million a year available for public engagement, he added. A third party sometimes may be helpful in improving the relationship between local and federal law enforcement, he added.
Will it be implemented?
Now that the Till Bill reauthorization has passed, and once it is signed, will it be implemented?
It is unknown at the present time whether it will have the support of the incoming administration, however, the bill had wide bipartisan support in the Congress and its main sponsor in the Senate was a Republican who supported the president-elect, Sykes said.
He said it’s possible that the Till Bill advocates will have to work alongside the administration and Justice Department for implementation.
“I think we have the responsibility as the people to make sure the worst-case fears don’t happen,” he said.
He added that because of his backgrounds and beliefs, he does not have much fear about catastrophic calamities that some people are voicing.
There is a story in Buddhism, Sykes said, that says if you meet a mountain and your life condition is low, you will find that climbing the mountain is a tumultuous and painful experience. But if you have a strong life condition, you may find that climbing the mountain can be a pleasure and enjoyable.
“The state of your life condition dictates how much pain you feel,” he said.
He said spending more time elevating one’s life condition, collectively and individually, was more important than worrying about what an administration can do.
Elevating respect toward human dignity
The Emmett Till case and Devery Anderson’s book about it, “Emmett Till: The Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” will become an HMO movie in the future, Sykes said.
Through the years, Sykes’ human rights work has attracted international attention, he said. He is working on his autobiography, “Show Me Justice.” He said he plans speaking engagements next year in London and Tokyo.
“I believe in the ability to attain world peace through individual happiness, not some panacea where everything is all good all the time with everybody,” Sykes said. “It’s as we strive toward elevating respect toward human dignity in other people’s lives, we’re less inclined to engage in crimes that invalidate that.
“If more and more people find out what their mission in life is, and pursue the attainment of it, they’ll be less inclined to commit crimes and will develop a certain level of inner happiness that will help them to grow despite the environment they’re in,” Sykes said.
The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Reauthorization Act was named for Emmett Till, a 14-year-old murder victim who was brutally beaten and murdered in 1955 in Georgia. It originally became law in 2007, and allowed federal investigators to dig into past civil rights crimes, including racially motivated murders that had gone unsolved for decades. The original bill had a sunset clause after 10 years, which prompted Sykes to work for its reauthorization. The bill encourages partnerships among federal and state investigators, along with independent investigators such as university students.
For earlier stories on this topic, visit:
Civil rights Till Bill reauthorization to come before House next week, https://wyandotteonline.com/civil-rights-till-bill-reauthorization-to-come-before-house-next-week/
Civil rights justice bill passes Senate, https://wyandotteonline.com/civil-rights-justice-bill-passes-senate/
Human rights activist calls for expansion of Emmett Till Act, https://wyandotteonline.com/human-rights-activist-calls-for-expansion-of-emmett-till-act/