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 JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The first day of jury selection in the case of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman charged in the 1964 deaths of two young black men brought a Faulknerian cast of characters to a federal courtroom Wednesday.
Mississippi's rural roots and modern anxieties were on display as the judge and lawyers winnowed the pool to 55 people, from which lawyers hope to pick a dozen to decide whether James Ford Seale, now 71, took part in abducting and killing Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The two 19-year-olds were beaten and dumped, still alive, into the Mississippi River.
Seale, who has denied membership in the Klan, faces up to life in prison if convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy in the latest of more than a dozen civil rights-era cases that have been prosecuted across the South since the early 1990s.
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