 Dale also previously refused, before the lynching, Sheriff Moody's request to move Parker outside the county or have members of the Mississippi National Guard protect Parker.After a Mississippi grand jury refused to indict the lynchers, a federal grand jury in Biloxi then oversaw the case under District Court Judge Sidney Mize on January 1960 and failed to indict some of the mob by a single vote.Before the trial, Dale went to meet Mize and managed to convince him to narrow the Federal kidnaping statute

Before the last grand jury convened, Poplarville mayor Pat Hyde stated that “you couldn’t convict the guilty parties if you had sound film of the lynching,” and an unnamed Poplarville businessman rhetorically asked why the FBI even bothered to investigate since no jury would convict the killers.