Forty-three years was too long a delay for justice in the kidnappings and murders of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.

Unfortunately, it was too long for the courts, as well, according to a decision made by a three-judge federal appeals panel. The court decided Tuesday that the kidnapping conviction of James Ford Seale must be overturned because the statute of limitations on the crime had long since expired. A 1972 congressional act abolishing the death penalty for kidnapping also imposed a five-year statute of limitations, Seale’s defense attorneys argued.

Prosecutors will now seek the opinion of the full appeals panel, but it is hard to see how they will succeed. As even Thomas Moore — brother of the slain Charles Moore — said, “The law is the law.”

Seale was the only person ever convicted in the case, 43 years after Moore and Dee’s bodies were pulled from the Mississippi River south of Natchez. The teenagers had disappeared from Franklin County in May of that year, and investigations into alleged Ku Klux Klansmen went nowhere.

Last year, Seale was convicted in part based on testimony from Charles Marcus Edwards, a confessed Klansman who received immunity from prosecution for his part in the kidnapping. Everyone else named as having had part in the crime has since died.

The vacating of Seale’s conviction is indeed a blow to the efforts at having civil rights cold cases adjudicated. But Thomas Moore’s patience in the face of such frustration is an example of how much the truth can ease pain, even if justice is denied.

The appeals court decision did not vacate the facts: Seale was indeed guilty of kidnapping in the case. Even if he was never convicted of murder, even if he won’t serve any more time on the kidnapping charge, Thomas Moore believes the truth of what happened so many years ago has finally been revealed.

As Moore said: “Nothing can take that away.”

It may not be justice, but it may have to be enough, for now.