CALLS FOR an arrest warrant against the white woman whose accusations led to the brutal lynching of Emmett Till will be “no use” if served, a Mississippi Sheriff has said. 

The Black teenager was violently murdered in 1955 after Carolyn Byrant Donham claimed that he had wolf-whistled at her, made sexual advances and grabbed at a grocery store. 

Her then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam was behind the tragic killing of Till when they beat him to near death, gouged his eyes out and shot him in the head before his body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River.

An arrest warrant for Ms Donham, who was just 22-years-old when she made the allegations, was never served after the lynching. 

In June last year, a research team found the warrant under Ms Donham’s former name “Mrs. Roy Bryant” at a courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi.

Despite calls from Till’s relative to serve the arrest warrant, the Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said there was no new evidence to pursue a criminal case against the white woman.

A district attorney said a Leflore County grand jury declined to indict Donham in August.

The Associated Press reported that Charles J. Swayze III, an attorney for Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks, wrote in court papers: “Since the Grand Jury found no probable cause to indict Donham on the charges of kidnapping and manslaughter, there is no probable cause to support the 1955 Arrest Warrant.”

Till’s cousin, Patricia Sterling, filed a federal lawsuit against Sheriff Banks to incite him to serve the arrest warrant.

However, Swayze asked a judge to dismiss the suit and wrote that Sterling’s lawsuit had “no factual allegation of misconduct by Banks.”

The tragic lynching of Till sparked outrage in souther US states and was one of many shocking incidents of racism that galvanised the civil rights era.

Ms Donham, now in her late 80s, has never publicly commented on the calls for her arrest over the allegations that have dogged her throughout her life.