Delayed Trial For Charleston Church Shooter

Dylann Roof charged with murder of nine African-American worshipers at a city church will be tried more than a year after committing the crime.

This Tuesday a federal judge has announced that the trial for Dylann Roof, a white man, who opened fire at Charleston Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and took the lives of nine people including state senator Clementa C. Pinckney and the senior pastor of the church, has been scheduled on November, 7.

It’s been almost a year since Roof took the chance to implement his dreadful plan. Not many people will remember that he spent more than an hour at a biblical lesson in the church before he began to kill, or that he showed no remorse at all during and after the arrest.

Roof is facing more than 30 charges including 9 murder counts, hate crimes and obstruction of the practice of religion; the prosecutors are seeking death penalty as the killer “expressed hatred and contempt towards African-Americans as well as other groups, and his animosity toward African-Americans played a role in the murders charged in the indictment.”

At the moment a lot of attention is paid to the selection of the jury because Roof’s lawyer, David I. Bruck, hopes that a more regional, coastal jury pool would help his client and Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court is ready to call up to 1,500 candidates statewide to rule out “the hotheads” and guarantee the impartiality of the final decision.

We are looking forward to the day, when justice might finally be served, but even the families of the victims find the chosen time rather uncomfortable. The trial will take place during the holidays, lending a particularly heavy burden on them.

Moreover, as time goes by people tend to forget things and after more than a year Roof’s horrible deeds will seem just a frightening story from the past. General public will be too busy with the news of upcoming presidential elections and nobody will probably notice that the verdict of the jury is not as rough as it should be. That is exactly what Roof and many other racist criminals hope for. Let’s not allow this to happen!

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