Criminal justice doesn't only mean punishment for misdeeds; equally important is finding the truth about a crime and making it widely known. The more information that is known about a crime, the more society can do to prevent similar crimes from happening.
This is why it is important that an autopsy was performed on the body of Emmett Till, whose brutal murder in 1955 helped ignite the U.S. civil rights movement. That year, Till was a Chicago teenager visiting relatives in Mississippi, when as the story goes, he whistled at a white woman in a store, an action strictly forbidden by the racist segregation codes of the south - the Jim Crow laws
Soon after, he was kidnapped while sleeping, and then tortured before being killed. The woman's husband and another man were charged with the murder but were acquitted by an all-white jury, although they later described how they killed Till in a magazine interview.
This should've raised some red flags right away - perhaps their comments could've led to further investigation - but now it is too late for that, as the men are now dead. However, a reasonable suspicion has been raised that there were more assailants involved, some of whom might still be alive and unpunished. For this reason, members of Till's family and groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have urged the Justice Department to reopen the case. The Till murder is too important an event in U.S. history to pigeonhole it somewhere.
Most shockingly, an autopsy was never performed after Till's death until after his body was exhumed recently. Given the advancements in forensic science, such as DNA sampling, there might be new evidence available. Keith Beauchamp, director of the documentary film "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," suspects that as many as 14 people participated in the murder. New evidence might be the key to testing this theory.
Even though the main culprits are most likely dead, convictions of any possible accomplices would bring some justice to this case - and better late than never.
As a case in point, there's Thomas Blanton Jr., who bombed a church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, killing four young girls. His racially motivated crime went unpunished for 37 years, until he was convicted of first-degree murder at the age of 62.
Blanton's conviction and the recent autopsy of Till are bringing some closure to a painful part of U.S. history, the specifics of which are waning in our collective consciousness. Nonetheless, knowing the truth is crucial to moving on, while still learning from past injustices. Even if future investigations into the Till case yield no convictions, they will at least yield the truth. Till's family and everyone else who cares about racial injustice deserve this.
