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Alabama Prosecutor: Jeff Sessions Helped Secure the Death Penalty for the KKK

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  sixpick  •  7 years ago  •  10 comments

Alabama Prosecutor: Jeff Sessions Helped Secure the Death Penalty for the KKK

Jan 09, 2017

Chris Galanos says the attorney general nominee is no racist.


Senator Jeff Sessions begins confirmation hearings on Tuesday to become the next attorney general. Since President-elect Donald Trump nominated the Alabama Republican to the post in November, critics have resurrected old allegations that Sessions is racist. The allegations were first made in the 1980's when Sessions was tapped for a federal judgeship in the Reagan administration, and they successfully scuttled his nomination then.

Nearly all of the allegations that Sessions is a racist stem from one man, Thomas Figures, who worked under him when Sessions was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. On Monday, the Daily Beast rather sensationally revives accusations from Figures that Sessions initially tried to impede the U.S. Attorney's office from getting involved in the prosecution of Henry Hays, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who abducted and lynched a young black man, Michael Donald, in 1981. (Sessions has long disputed Figures's claims about the case.) This Atlantic piece on the Sessions controversy is chock full good reporting about the Donald lynching and even includes multiple paragraphs from sources who were involved crediting Sessions for helping the Hays prosecution to varying degrees. Nonetheless, the overall story is clearly contextualized to be unflattering to Sessions.

The exact truth may never be known, but it's fair to say that Figures's accusations are mostly hearsay, and when you drill down, his statements can be cagey and far from definitive. For instance, this is how Figures describes Sessions's supposed signals not to pursue the Hays case: "All of these statements were well calculated to induce me to drop the case…On the other hand, none of them amounted to a direct order to drop the case."

However, this characterization of Sessions is at odds with how Chris Galanos, the former Mobile district attorney who secured the death penalty conviction for Hays, describes Sessions. And in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD Monday, Galanos further argues that Sessions played a significant role in the Hays prosecution. "I do not believe Jeff Sessions is a racist. That's based on my professional interactions with him during the 1980s and early 1990s," Galanos told TWS. "It was because of Jeff's willingness to help us that Hays and [accomplice James "Tiger"] Knowles were indicted. Down the road a guy named Frank Cox who provided the rope was also indicted, and the leader of the Klan at that time, Henry Hays's father Bennie Hays was also indicted."

According to Galanos, securing Henry Hays's conviction was a long, involved process, and the resources Sessions provided helped break the case wide open. Here's what Galanos describes happening in his own words, taken from our phone interview:

 

Between 1981 and 1983 the state developed two very substantial suspects [in the Michael Donald lynching] but we didn't quite have the juice that would rise to the level of proving these two characters guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Enter Jeff Sessions. I went to Jeff and basically requested two things. Number one was his use of a federal grand jury to bring these Klansmen before a federal forum on a repeated basis. And two was his influence in getting the FBI to provide investigative assistance.

OK, the first obvious question would be, what'd you need a federal grand jury for? The way the courts are structured down here, a state grand jury convenes for a single session, issues a report and then is disbanded. In the federal system, however, a grand jury can be convened, focus on a single topic, and has virtually an indeterminate life span. So if you for example want to bring these Klansmen in, you almost know that they're going to lie in the first go around. But you also know who you're looking at in term of subjects, potential defendants, and what evidence you need. So you can bring these characters back time and time and time again until somebody breaks.

 

That was the strategy, and fortunately for us it worked. A federal grand jury was convened sometime in 1983 with the knowledge that Henry Hays and Tiger Knowles were the prime suspects. These characters were paraded through and I use these terms loosely, there was obviously a lot of thought and preparation that went into it. They were paraded through once, twice, lied like hell. But again the strategy was to keep bringing them back until somebody broke. And Knowles broke and incriminated himself and implicated Henry Hays as the guy who actually killed Michael Donald.

To get there, we had to have the FBI, because the FBI has a lot more people and quite candidly back in the day more expertise than the state did in terms of knocking on doors and talking to people so that when Hays and Knowles were targeted as suspects and you knew who, for example in this case, attended that Klan meeting on the Wednesday night before the lynching occurred on Friday night, when you go out there and you know what to ask and how to ask it on behalf of "The United States" that can intimidate people.

TWS asked Galanos whether Sessions was personally involved in securing the large amount of federal assistance in the case detailed here. Galanos replied, "Oh yeah, definitely." Henry Hays's conviction spawned a chain of events that "ultimately bankrupted the KKK" in Alabama, according to the New York Times . Sessions was later elected state attorney general in Alabama, where he handled Henry Hays's death penalty appeal, ensuring the death sentence was carried out. Hays was executed six months after Sessions left the state attorney general's office to become a United States senator.

Galanos notes that he also knew and liked Thomas Figures because "he had been an assistant DA in the state system before he went and became an Assistant U.S. attorney." Asked why there might be any acrimony between the two men, Galanos said, "I have no idea." Figures was later indicted by a grand jury for attempting to bribe a drug dealer. He was found innocent, and at the time there were claims that Figures's indictment was retribution for blowing up Sessions's judicial nomination. Sessions denied this was the case, telling the New York Times , "I'm sorry people see it that way. It is a matter I would like to see behind me, and I'm sorry to see it come up again."

But Galanos maintains he does not believe Sessions is the racist that his strident critics say he is. "All I can tell you is that I've always considered him to be a good and decent man and in my view based on the scenario that I just related to you, he is no racist," he says. "He could have told me, 'It's your problem, deal with it.' But he helped."

~Link~

Weekly Standard


These media sources are highly biased toward conservative causes. They utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

Factual Reporting: HIGH

Notes: The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine   published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title on September 18, 1995. It has a strong right wing editorial bias, but reports news stories with good sourcing.


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sixpick
Professor Quiet
link   seeder  sixpick    7 years ago

The Democrats will try their best to keep this honorable man from being approved using a story that has been proven wrong and disregarding all the evidence during Jeff Sessions public life that backs up the truth.

But Galanos maintains he does not believe Sessions is the racist that his strident critics say he is. "All I can tell you is that I've always considered him to be a good and decent man and in my view based on the scenario that I just related to you, he is no racist," he says. "He could have told me, 'It's your problem, deal with it.' But he helped."

 
 
 
sixpick
Professor Quiet
link   seeder  sixpick    7 years ago

Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions

Much Democratic opposition to Sessions is based on his conservative record in the Senate. However, it also extends to comments or jokes regarding race Sessions allegedly made while serving as a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Alabama in the early 1980s, even as he was known for helping to prosecute multiple civil rights cases . These were the allegations that sunk his 1986 nomination to be a federal judge.

~Link~

 
 
 
96WS6
Junior Quiet
link   96WS6  replied to  sixpick   7 years ago

Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions

THIS is the REAL irony my friend.

 
 
 
sixpick
Professor Quiet
link   seeder  sixpick    7 years ago

Tim Scott, First Black Senator In the South Since Reconstruction, Supporting Sessions

The South Carolina Republican says the AG nominee is "consistently fair."
 
 
 
 
sixpick
Professor Quiet
link   seeder  sixpick    7 years ago

Well, the Democrats have used their "Sympathy" and "Race" cards and even had a few of their Klan members protesting during the Confirmation of Jeff Sessions to no avail.

Think they'll all get up and leave the chamber?

I can smell them from here.

 
 
 
Spikegary
Junior Quiet
link   Spikegary  replied to  sixpick   7 years ago

You mean the party of Strom Thurmond? LOL.  Clean hands are hard to come by on that side of the fence.

 
 
 
96WS6
Junior Quiet
link   96WS6    7 years ago

Boy if someone should not be considered because of something they supposedly said, how the heck did Hillary and Trump get so far?

 
 
 
Jonathan P
Sophomore Silent
link   Jonathan P  replied to  96WS6   7 years ago

What difference, at this point, does it make?

laughing dude

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
link   Kavika     7 years ago

I support Sessions stance on drugs, including marijuana. Jail all the users of these substances.

Look at the upside to it. More prisons to be built (private of course) which will add new construction jobs. More private security guards, (increased long term employment) Judges able to increase the school to prison pipeline. (kick backs from the corporate prison owners)

And best of all, he can go after the doctors that are over prescribing drugs. Put them in jail as well along with the users. (ooppss that will have a detrimental affect on big pharma)

Now the downside, politicians and the elite will go to prison only if they can't buy their way out of it. (increased corruption and graft) but they can experience life as the poor, drug addicted, and less fortunate live it.

I'm starting to like Sessions more and more.

 

 
 

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