January 12, 2017
By Meg Kinnard and Jeffrey Collins
Associated Press
An unrepentant Dylann Roof was sentenced to death Tuesday January 10, for killing nine black church members during Bible study, the first person to face execution for federal hate crime convictions.
A jury deliberated his sentence for about three hours, capping a trial in which the white man did not fight for his life or show any remorse. He was his own attorney during sentencing and insisted that he wasn’t mentally ill, but he never asked for forgiveness or mercy, or explained the crime.
And he threw away one last chance to plead for his life on Tuesday, telling jurors: “I still feel like I had to do it.”
Every juror looked directly at Roof, 22, as he spoke for about five minutes. A few nodded as he reminded them that they said during jury selection they could fairly weigh the factors of his case. Only one of them, he noted, had to disagree to spare his life.
“I have the right to ask you to give me a life sentence, but I’m not sure what good it would do anyway,” he said.
When the verdict was read, he stood stoic and showed no emotion. Several family members of victims wiped away quiet tears.
Roof told FBI agents when they arrested him after the June 17, 2015, slayings that he wanted the shootings to bring back segregation or perhaps start a race war. Instead, the slayings had a unifying effect, as South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its Statehouse for the first time in more than 50 years and other states followed suit, taking down Confederate banners and monuments. Roof had posed with the flag in photos.
Malcolm Graham, whose sister Cynthia Hurd was slain, said he thought the jury made the right decision.
“There is no room in America's smallest jail cell for hatred, racism and discrimination,” he said from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The journey for me and my family today has come to an end.”
Roof specifically picked out Emanuel AME Church, the South’s oldest black church, to carry out the cold, calculated slaughter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson said.
The 12 people he targeted opened the door for a stranger with a smile, he said. Three people survived the attack.
“They welcomed a 13th person that night ... with a kind word, a Bible, a handout and a chair,” Richardson said during his closing argument. “He had come with a hateful heart and a Glock .45.”
The gunman sat with the Bible study group for about 45 minutes. During the final prayer — when everyone’s eyes were closed — he started firing. He stood over some of the fallen victims, shooting them again as they lay on the floor, Richardson said.
The prosecutor reminded jurors about each one of the victims and the bloody scene that Roof left in the church's lower level.
Nearly two dozen friends and relatives of the victims testified during the sentencing phase of the trial. They shared cherished memories and talked about a future without a mother, father, sister or brother. They shed tears, and their voices shook, but none of them said whether Roof should face the death penalty.
Jennifer Pinckney testified about huddling under a desk with her 6-year-old daughter, her hand clasped over the girl’s mouth to keep her quiet, as Roof started firing.
Not knowing for certain if the danger had passed, Pinckney dialed 911 and breathlessly told an operator she had heard shots inside the church.
“I think there’s been a shooting. I’m in the closet, under a desk,” Pinckney told the operator. “Please hurry.”
On the call, Pinckney tries to comfort her daughter Malana, who had been watching cartoons in her father’s office as he participated in Bible study.
“Daddy’s dead?” Malana says.
“No, baby, no,” the mother says. But at that moment, Pinckney said she knew her husband, church pastor Clementa Pinckney, had been killed.
The prosecutor reminded jurors that Clementa Pinckney, the church pastor and a state senator, would be remembered for singing goofy songs and watching cartoons with his young daughters. In a sign of perhaps how important that testimony was, jurors re-watched a speech by Pinckney in which he talks about the history of Emanuel and its mission.
The jury convicted him last month of all 33 federal charges he faced, including hate crimes.
Roof did not explain his actions to jurors, saying only that “anyone who hates anything in their mind has a good reason for it.”
In one of his journals, he wrote that he didn’t believe in psychology, calling it “a Jewish invention” that “does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they don’t.”
His attorneys said he didn’t want to present any evidence that might embarrass him or his family.
After he was sentenced, Roof asked a judge to appoint him new attorneys, but the judge said he was not inclined to because they had performed “admirably.”
“We are sorry that, despite our best efforts, the legal proceedings have shed so little light on the reasons for this tragedy,” the attorneys said in a veiled reference to the mental health issues they wanted to present.
A judge formally sentenced him during a hearing Wednesday.
The last person sent to federal death row was Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2015.
January 12, 2017
By Charlene Muhammad
Contributing Writer
Civil rights leaders condemned the rushed Jan. 10 hearing of Senator Jeff Sessions, President-Elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General.
The Alabama Republican’s 30-year record of racial insensitivity, bias against immigrants, disregard for the rule of law, and hostility towards the protection of civil rights makes him unfit to serve as the Attorney General of the United States, insists civil rights leaders from The Leadership Conference, the National Action Network, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., NCAPA, NCLR and MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense Fund).
They called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose his nomination during a conference call with press on Jan. 6.
“This isn’t about partisan politics, this is about stopping an individual who has made racist comments and called the Voting Rights Act ‘intrusive,’ from heading the Justice Department. Nothing in his career suggests he understands justice,” said Reverend Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network.
“Instead, his statements suggest he won’t enforce civil rights. It’s not the Anti-Justice Department, it’s an agency we rely on to protect freedom and democracy. He’s not the person for the job and we will do everything we can to block his appointment,” Sharpton stated.
According to the civil rights leaders, a coalition of organizations reported Sessions’ initial Senate Judiciary Questionnaire had hundreds of concerning omissions, and, that his application is “still astonishingly incomplete.”
His hypocrisy has been breathtaking, and he has grossly misrepresented his civil rights record by claiming that cases he had “no substantive involvement in” were among the most significant he personally handled, the coalition continued.
Sessions’ disregard for the Senate requirements shows a fundamental disregard for the office of Attorney General and for the Senate itself.
“The Attorney General is one of the most important positions in the entire federal government, as the Justice Department has the responsibility to vigorously enforce some of our nation’s most critical laws; to protect the rights and liberties of all Americans,” said Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Sherrilyn Ifill, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.’s president and Director-Counsel, said, “There is only one real question before the Committee, the Senate, and the American people: Does the nearly 40 year record of Sen. Sessions in public life demonstrate that he is fit and prepared to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and particularly the chief enforcer of our nation’s civil rights laws? No matter how the hearing process is rigged, the rules are bent, or history is rewritten by Sen. Sessions’ supporters, his long and voluminous record demonstrates that the answer to that question is no.”
According to the civil rights leaders, in his questionnaire, Sessions lists four civil right cases among the 10 most significant he personally litigated. Three pertained to voting rights, and the final a school desegregation case. But three former Justice Department civil rights lawyers refuted his claims in an op-ed piece.
Sessions’ exaggerations are particularly concerning given his deplorable civil rights record, including his vote against the Violence Against Women Act and against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation, the civil rights leaders went on.
“Republicans are rushing to rubberstamp Sessions’ nomination because they know that if they followed the rules—and if Senator Sessions submitted the required information—then his nomination would be rejected, just as it was 30 years ago (in his failed bid to become a federal judge), because he is still unable to protect the civil rights and liberties of all Americans. The Attorney General serves as the People’s Lawyer, and there is too much at stake for Republican Senators to give special treatment to Senator Sessions just because he eats at the same lunch table and works out the same gym,” said Christopher Kang, director of National Council of Asian Pacific Americans.
Janet Murguía, president and CEO of National Council of La Raza, called Sessions the architect of the most extreme and anti-immigrant views and positions that have been promoted by President-elect Donald Trump.
“Throughout his career, he has staunchly opposed the progress of historically disenfranchised groups, whether it’s Blacks, Latinos, LGBT Americans, or women. Those of us who fight for a just society that values diversity and equal treatment under the law for all must work together to stop his confirmation as our nation's next attorney general,” she stated.
Thomas Saenz, president and General Counsel of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said Sessions’ scant available record on his views of the law indicates that he is far outside the mainstream of legal thinking in 21st century America, particularly on issues of greatest concern to the Latino community.
“It takes more than a law degree to be confirmed as Attorney General, the lead attorney in the federal government; the current record suggests that Sessions, without candidly acknowledging this view, rejects wholesale the development of constitutional civil rights law by the Supreme Court in the last 60 years,” Saenz said.
“Senator Sessions’ callous and caustic opposition to the vote and refusal to acknowledge the reality of voter suppression, means he’s not only a threat to the values of the America of the majority, but an even greater threat to the power of the vote and our democracy,” concurred Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP.
January 05, 2017
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Newswire
During the Ceremonial Swearing-In event a few blocks from The White House, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc., honored Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), the new chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and members of the CBC that will serve during the 115th Congress.
A. Shuanise Washington, the president and CEO of the CBCF, said that 115th Congress will have the largest CBC in history with 49 members.
“While the CBC grows in numbers, there remains a lack of diversity and inclusion when it comes to senior staff placement in senate and congressional offices,” said Washington. “The CBCF is committed to doing its part to change the landscape of Capitol Hill and we’re doing so with one of our newest initiatives: Emerge 535.”
Launched in 2013, the Emerge 535 program will enable the CBCF to expand opportunities for young people of color by providing 535 scholarships and fellowships to work on Capitol Hill.
During her comments at the CBC ceremony, House Minority leader Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted Republican lawmakers for blocking President Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court justice nominee and efforts to pass an updated Voting Rights Act (VRA).
Pelosi also noted the irony in the fact that some of the same Republicans, who attended the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the fiftieth anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., refused to work with Democrats on Capitol Hill to restore the protections of the VRA.
“It’s not about Democrats, it’s not about Republicans, it’s about America,” said Pelosi. “The greatness of America is affected by how [Republicans] have rejected the ability of our president to appoint a [Supreme Court] justice, how they have rejected our calls for correcting the injustice of the Supreme Court decision [in Shelby v. Holder]. It’s all about justice.”
Pelosi called the CBC the “conscience of the Congress and indeed of the country,” and she added that it was exciting to see that some of the newest members of the CBC were representing districts who had never elected a Black lawmaker to serve in the U.S. Congress.
The newest members of the CBC are: Senator Kamala Harris, who is California’s first African American senator; Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.); Rep. Lisa Blunt-Rochester (D-Del.), the first African American and woman to serve in Congress from Delaware; Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.); Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) and Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.).
After the ceremonial oath of office was performed, outgoing Chairman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said that 2016 is now in our rearview mirror.
“We find ourselves facing a difficult, political and legislative environment, unlike any that we have ever seen before, but I promise you that the CBC will rise to the occasion and we will meet these new challenges,” said Butterfield. “The consequences are too enormous for us to be indecisive and to allow conservative forces and forces of the alt-right to defend our nation. We will be strategic and we will be unified in our work.”
While many of the CBC members are “baby boomers,” Butterfield said that there is no question that Richmond, who is a part of Generation X, is well-suited and well-prepared to lead the CBC in confronting these new challenges.
During his remarks at the ceremonial swearing-in event, Richmond said that CBC members represent 78 million Americans, 24 percent of the population and 17 million Blacks representing 41 percent of the African American population in this country.
“There are many Americans, especially Black Americans, who can’t understand how we got hear today, coming off eight years of hope, pride and inspiration,” said Richmond. “They are fearful of the current state of division, hate and pettiness.
Richmond continued: “Many of our young people are frustrated with the fact that they seem to be fighting the same causes that Dr. King and Reverend Jackson and John Lewis and many others galvanized the country behind during the Civil Rights Movement; and that’s jobs justice and common humanity.”
The Louisiana congressman noted that while others have thrown up their hands, hung their heads, paralyzed by frustration, CBC members have remained focused and driven.
Richmond acknowledged that members like Shirley Chisholm work on poverty and expanding opportunities for women in the labor force and children in the classroom, Charlie Rangel on economic inequality and John Conyers on criminal justice reform.
Richmond said that the CBC members are committed to do their part, to provide leadership, engage the people across this country and fight shoulder to shoulder to ensure that the arc, but they cannot do it alone.
“We need the fire, passion and talent of young people to use the tools and resources of today to capture the nation and to give life to our movement,” said Richmond, adding that it was young women and young men who were on the frontlines of the fight for freedom during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Richmond said that fighting injustice will also require the wisdom, clarity and foresight of our elders, because, “if we do not learn from our past, our future will be more of the same.”
The new CBC chair said that during 115th Congressional session, CBC members will continue to confront those who seek to divide the country and that they will be clear about their demands, on behalf of Black people. He added that CBC members will also venture outside of Washington to engage everyday people where they live, work and worship.
“We will heed the many lessons of our leaders that came before, but we will innovate and evolve to tackle the challenges of today,” said Richmond. “We will be deliberate in our thoughts and actions and we will engage on our own terms.”
Richmond continued: “We have the strength and the courage of our ancestors that survived the Middle Passage, who survived slavery and segregation and Jim Crow; and in that spirit we won’t give in, we won’t give up and we won’t fall back.”
December 29, 2016
By CRAIG CLOUGH
City News Service
A City Hall gadfly arrested after submitting a comment card containing Ku Klux Klan imagery, racial slurs and profanity during a meeting chaired by a black councilman will not be charged with any crimes, the District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday, December 22.
The D.A.’s office cited Wayne Spindler’s First Amendment rights and insufficient evidence that he violated any of the threat statutes as reasons for not filing a criminal case.
“There is no doubt the speaker card contained hateful and extremely outrageous words and imagery that we reject as being deeply offensive, morally wrong and socially reprehensible,” a D.A. charge evaluation worksheet on the case states.
But there was insufficient evidence that Spindler crossed the “somewhat nebulous line between constitutionally protected free speech and punishable ‘true threat,’” the document says.
Spindler, 46, frequently speaks at Los Angeles City Council meetings, is critical of the government, and often holds a puppet while making vulgar comments. He was arrested May 13, two days after a committee meeting was held chaired by Council President Herb Wesson.
The comment card that prompted Spindler’s arrest featured images of a burning cross and a person hanging from a tree by a noose. At the center of the card was a drawing of what appears to be a triangular-shaped person wearing a KKK hood and carrying a noose and a sign that says “Herb=(N-word).”
Vanessa Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Wesson, said he was disappointed by the outcome.
“We disagree with the D.A.’s decision,” she said. “We found the threat to be morally reprehensible. We will continue in our role as public servants.”
Spindler could not be reached for comment.
Wesson called a news conference after the committee meeting to denounce the imagery and language in the comment card, saying, “You don’t threaten a black man that way.”
Wesson contended the person who submitted the card knew it “was going to find its way to the individual who was chairing this meeting, and this card was a message to me.”
Wesson subsequently obtained a restraining order requiring Spindler to stay at least 10 yards away from him during council and committee meetings. Spindler can still attend the meetings and give public comment in a peaceful and orderly way.
Spindler filed two claims in June against the city related to his arrest, alleging $775,000 in damages.