CIrcuit Judge Charles Wilson. Photo: John Disney

A split federal appellate panel upheld a decision to unseal the transcript of a grand jury asked to investigate the unsolved lynching of four African-Americans in Georgia in 1946.

A federal grand jury charged no one in the Moore's Ford Bridge mob beating and shooting deaths of two couples, George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Dorsey Malcom.

More than 70 years later, historian Anthony Pitch petitioned the U.S. District Court in Macon, Georgia, to unseal the transcripts, and Judge Marc Treadwell agreed in 2017.

The Justice Department appealed the ruling, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed Treadwell's decision Monday. Government lawyers argued he abused his discretion by basing his decision solely on the historical significance of the lynching, which drew the attention of President Harry Truman and is considered a precursor to the civil rights movement.

Circuit Judges Charles Wilson and Adalberto Jordan deferred to Treadwell because the lynching provided sufficient “exceptional circumstances” to override typical grand jury secrecy.

Writing for the majority, Wilson said the case's significance in the civil rights movement and the passage of more than 70 years, among other factors, meant it served as a historically significant exception to keeping the transcripts secret.

“There is no indication that any witnesses, suspects, or their immediate family members are alive to be intimidated, persecuted, or arrested,” said Wilson, the only black judge on the 11th Circuit.

Visiting Senior Judge James L. Graham of the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation, dissented, writing, “I believe that judges should not be so bold as to grant themselves the authority to decide that the historical significance exception should exist and what the criteria should be.”

He said the descendants of suspects or witnesses could suffer from the release of the transcript.

“I am unable to dismiss the reputational harm that could occur to a living person if the grand jury transcripts reveal that their parent or grandparent was a suspect, a witness who equivocated or was uncooperative, a member of the grand jury which refused to indict, or a person whose name was identified as a Klan member,” Graham wrote.

Jordan concurred specially, noting he would have reached a different decision in 1984 when the circuit set out the “exceptional circumstances” standard for unsealing grand jury records. He pointed out federal judges rejected an effort by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 to change grand jury secrecy rules that would have established unsealing procedures.

Bradley Hinshelwood of the Justice Department's civil division in Washington argued for the government. A spokesman said the department declined to comment.

Joseph J. Bell of Rockaway, New Jersey's Bell & Shivas represented Pitch, the historian seeking the records. He said they were “ecstatic,” noting Pitch first sought the records in 2014.

Bell called the ruling “another brick in the emerging wall of justice.”

Bell took the case after meeting Pitch when Bell was joining the U.S. Supreme Court bar.