Washington ( CNN ) -- The Supreme Court has refused a lower court 's unusual request to decide whether a shocking 45-year-old civil rights crime can be prosecuted decades later . The justices Monday dismissed an appeal involving James Ford Seale , convicted in the 1964 kidnapping of two teenagers whose bodies were found in a backwater area of the Mississippi River . The reputed former Ku Klux Klan member had long been suspected in the crime , but it was officially unsolved until Seale was indicted in 2007 , and later convicted . He is serving three life sentences . The move by the high court not to get involved keeps in place Seale 's original indictment , but does not resolve the larger question of whether similar cases can be prosecuted . The issue could have enormous implications for several dozen `` cold cases '' involving racially motivated crimes dating back to the 1950s . Seale had appealed his conviction , claiming the statute of limitations had expired five years after the crime . The confusion arises over the fact that kidnapping could be considered a capital offense in 1964 , and thus had no time limit for a prosecution . The high court in 1968 eliminated the federal death penalty for that crime , and Congress four years later changed the law to reflect that ruling . But lawmakers 15 years ago reinstated kidnapping as death penalty-eligible . So the justices were being asked to decide when the statute of limitations kicked in , if ever . Justice John Paul Stevens , supported by his conservative colleague Justice Antonin Scalia , thought the court should get involved . `` I see no benefit and significant cost to postponing the question 's resolution , '' Stevens wrote in dissent . `` A prompt answer from this court will expedite the termination of this litigation and determine whether other similar cases may be prosecuted . '' Seale , a former sheriff 's deputy , was convicted in June 2007 of kidnapping and conspiracy in the disappearances of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee , both 19 . Federal officials had initially trumpeted reopening the Seale case . `` Today 's indictment is one example of the FBI 's strong and ongoing commitment to re-examining and investigating unsolved civil rights era murders and other crimes , '' FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said in January 2007 . `` Under our Cold Case Initiative , we will continue to identify and pursue these cases of racially motivated violence to ensure justice is served wherever possible . '' Seale was not tried for murder , but prosecutors alleged that he and fellow Klansmen conspired to abduct , beat and murder Dee and Moore in May 1964 . An indictment accused Seale and his cohorts of picking up the two men hitchhiking and driving them into the Homochitto National Forest in Franklin County , Mississippi , where the teenagers were beaten and interrogated at gunpoint . Dee and Moore were then bound with duct tape and weighted down by an engine block and railroad rail . They were still alive when they were thrown into the Old Mississippi River , where they drowned , according to the FBI . Their decomposed bodies were found two months later during a search for three other missing civil rights workers that would later be known as the Mississippi Burning case . Seale and another man , Charles Edwards , were arrested in the slayings in 1964 , but were released on bond and never tried . The FBI turned the case over to local authorities , and the investigation was dropped after a justice of the peace said witnesses had refused to testify . The case was revived in 2007 when Moore 's brother -- during a visit to Franklin County to help research the case for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary -- discovered Seale was still alive . Thomas Moore told CNN in January 2007 that he gave the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi FBI files on the case , which he had obtained from a Mississippi reporter . U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton helped form a task force that led to Seale 's indictment . Seale was the only person convicted in the Moore and Dee murders , the Justice Department said . Since then , other notable cold cases from the civil rights era also have gone to trial . In 2005 , Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter for his role in the Mississippi Burning case . Adding to the unusual nature of the Seale case is that a lower court was unable to decide the matter . The full 18-judge panel on the 5th U.S . Circuit Court of Appeals split evenly on the time-limit question . They then asked the high court to `` certify '' the question , a rarely used procedure that essentially asks the justices about how to proceed . The Supreme Court was under no obligation to accept the case in this fashion , under its `` Rule 19 . '' That provision gives appeals courts the discretion to hand off to the high court `` any question of law in any civil or criminal case as to which instructions are desired , and upon such certification the Supreme Court may give binding instructions or require the entire record to be sent up for decision of the entire matter in controversy . '' The case is U.S. v. Seale ( 09-166 ) .
Appeals court asked high court if a civil rights crime can be prosecuted decades later . Justices dismissed appeal involving man convicted in 1964 kidnapping of two teens . James Ford Seale appealed conviction in case , saying statute of limitations had expired . Indictment stands , but question of whether similar cases can be prosecuted is unanswered .