Justice No Longer Delayed

Yesterday, the Senate approved a bill to create a new Justice Department office devoted to investigating and prosecuting the cold case murders from the civil rights era:

The bill was inspired by efforts to reopen the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year old black boy who was murdered in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, said Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., who sponsored the legislation with Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

"We want the murderers and their accomplices who are still living to know there's an entire section of the Department of Justice that is going after them," Talent said in a statement. "We need to unearth the truth and do justice because there cannot be healing without the truth."...

The new office has been compared to Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which focuses on finding and deporting former Nazis living in the United States.

The new Unsolved Crimes Section would focus on pre-1970 hate crimes. Since 1989, many of these cases that have been re-opened. Twenty-three murders have been re-examined, resulting in 27 arrests, two acquittals and one mistrial.

This summer's there was a conviction in the "Klan Case". A Mississippi jury found former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen guilty of manslaughter for one of the most notorious crimes of the civil-rights era, the slayings of three voter-registration workers 41 years ago. That verdict brings the total to 22 convictions.

Morris Dees, the Southern Poverty Law Center and it's Intelligence Project have played a crucial role to this this fight.

While the new department is a welcome move, it's key to note that the Internet is the new home of hate groups. The Intelligence Project monitors hate groups and extremist activity in the U.S.

The Intelligence Project counted 762 active hate groups in the United States in 2004. The center's lawyers used cutting edge civil suits to take down more than 40 individuals and nine major white-supremacist organizations in the project's first 17 years.

The Senate is expected to pass this bill in the next week. I hope we are able to find justice for Emmett Till at last.