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Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

FBI reopens decades-old Macon slaying

The year was 1962.

In the midst of the civil rights movement, two Macon police officers fired shots at A.C. Hall, a 17-year-old black youth, killing him.

Hall had been walking home near the old Carver Elementary School on Hazel Street when a police car pulled into the school’s driveway. The driver got out and Hall started running. Shots rang out. Hall died of a single shot to the chest.

The officers were later charged with murder. They said they fired at Hall because it appeared to them as though Hall was reaching into his pocket for a gun.

An estimated 400 people protested Hall’s shooting at Macon City Hall on the day testimony began during a coroner’s inquest into the teen’s death. Then they walked three and four abreast to the county courthouse to sit in on the hearing.

Now, more than 40 years later, the FBI has reopened the case, and authorities are searching for Hall’s family members.

It’s part of the FBI’s Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative, a program in which more than 100 cases nationwide are being re-examined with fresh eyes, said Chris Allen, an FBI spokesman.

“We’re looking at unsolved or inadequately solved cases,” he said.

Stephen Emmett, a spokesman for the FBI’s Atlanta field office, said it’s possible that witnesses that were reluctant to come forward at the time of the crime, and with the changing times and the passing of time, they might be willing to talk with investigators.

“New technology that has emerged might shed light on the investigations,” he said.

Although a few of the cases have resulted in criminal prosecutions, agents have found during the course of their investigations that suspects in nearly half the cases have died.

Each of the cases was recommended by agencies such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP and the National Urban League.

Allen said agents need help locating family members in 33 of the cases, in part so they’ll be able to hand deliver a letter explaining the outcome of the newly opened investigation. Five of the cases are in Georgia.

“Hopefully, that will bring some closure to the families,” he said.

In the case of Hall’s death, there’s no record at the Bibb County Courthouse that the officers, J.L. Durden and J.T. Brown, went to trial, said Linda Tillman, an assistant Superior Court clerk.

Brown still lives in Macon, but he declined to comment Thursday.

Several people testified at the 1962 coroner’s inquest, including Macon police officers, a witness and a couple who alleged that Hall stole a pistol from their car Oct. 13, 1962.

Eloise Franklin, 15 at the time, testified that she and Hall were walking home from a Cotton Avenue club when they stopped beside the school to rest. Franklin needed to take a pebble out of her shoe, according to reports at the time.

They were standing beside the school when the police car turned into the driveway. As the car moved down the driveway, Hall ran in front of the car’s headlights at one point and in the direction of Ash Street.

The driver got out and fired, Franklin testified at the coroner’s inquest.

The officers filed a report saying that they ordered Hall to stop before they both fired several shots at him. Franklin testified that she didn’t hear any instructions for Hall to stop.

An attorney representing Hall’s mother said there was no evidence presented showing that Hall had a gun.

Police were unable to find a pistol near the body on the night of the shooting.

Detective James E. Brooks testified that a .22-caliber pistol found at the scene the next morning wasn’t the gun stolen from the couple’s car. It didn’t have fingerprints on it.

Although the police officer who found the gun said he didn’t have any “positive knowledge” that the gun was Hall’s, he testified that he believed it belonged to the teen.

The woman who identified Hall as the pistol thief testified that she recognized him by his clothing description — a white shirt outside his pants — and his general physical build.

Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Hall’s family or information about the incident is asked to call the FBI’s Atlanta office at (404) 679-9000.

Information from The Telegraph’s archives was included in this report.

To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398