Emmett Till Lynching Update: White Woman Who Lied About Black Boy Could Go To Jail For Obstructing Justice, Report Says

Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who admitted she falsely testified in the 1955 Emmett Till lynching case, could end up in jail for lying, USA Today reported Tuesday.

Bryant had accused the 14-year-old black boy of making sexual advances toward her, following which her then husband Roy Bryant and his step-brother J.W. Milam — both white — lynched and fatally shot Till. The men were acquitted by an all-white jury in September 1955, despite evidence that the men killed Till.

In a new book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” author Timothy Tyson, a Duke University senior research scholar, revealed that in 2007, Bryant told him that she fabricated some of the testimony she gave during the trial. When he asked her about her claim that Till flirted with her and made sexual advances, she said, “That part’s not true.”

Bryant also lied to the FBI a decade ago after the case was reopened in 2004. Giving false testimony and lying to the FBI are crimes that carry up to five years in jail. However, prosecuting Bryant, who is now 82 years old, would be a challenge because of the five-year statute of limitations to initiate legal proceedings is over, USA Today reported.

“It appears that time has once again robbed us of justice in the Emmett Till case,” former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones told USA Today.

Now that Bryant “has started talking, we’ll see if we can keep her credibly talking," Alvin Sykes, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, told the newspaper.

Sykes reportedly said he started contacting officials “to determine if we have one best chance to find out the whole truth by prosecutorial or alternative non-prosecutorial methods.”

Bryant has now gone into hiding and her whereabouts are unknown. Both Bryant and Milam are dead. Till’s 1955 case was one of the events that triggered the Civil Rights movement.