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The Past Is Never Dead: The Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississippi's Struggle for Redemption
Author(s): Harry N. MacLean (Author)
- Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
- Publication Date: 22 Sept. 2009
- Language: English
- Print length: 290 pages
- ISBN-10: 0465005047
- ISBN-13: 9780465005048
Book Description
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 Seales 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 cant be forgiven. MacLeans narrative is at once the account of a gripping legal battle and an acute meditation on the possibility of redemption.
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About the Author
Harry N. MacLean is a lawyer and writer. He has worked as a juvenile court magistrate, first assistant attorney general, associate professor of law, general counsel of the Peace Corps, and labor arbitrator. His first book, In Broad Daylight, won an Edgar Award for Best True Crime and was a New York Times bestseller. His second book, Once Upon a Time, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
