Eleventh Cir. Limits Grand Jury Record Access in Lynching Case

A researcher lost his bid to obtain grand jury records related to the last mass lynching in U.S. history, as the full Eleventh Circuit issued a divided ruling overturning its precedent and restricting district courts’ discretion to release such information.

The late historian Anthony S. Pitch petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia for grand jury records related to the Moore’s Ford Lynching of 1946, in which a mob of whites in Walton County, Georgia, dragged two African American couples from a car and shot them multiple times.

A grand jury heard sixteen days of testimony ...