Strain on forgiveness after church massacre, other killings
The victims’ families spoke words of forgiveness in Charleston after nine black people were massacred in a historic church by Dylann Roof, a white man who harboured dreams of launching a race war. The relatives were held up as examples of grace amid horror, and the city stayed calm.
Now, Roof has been convicted in a federal trial, bringing relief tempered by uncertainty over whether he will get the death penalty for his crimes — and whether wanting to see Roof pay with his life is at odds with the call to forgive.
Roof’s guilty verdict came less than two weeks after a jury deadlocked in the case of Michael Slager, a white ex-police officer charged with fatally shooting Walter Scott, a black man, as Scott tried to flee an April 2015 traffic stop. The sentencing phase of his trial is scheduled for next month.
The proximity of the cases — tried in courthouses across the street from each other — left Charleston minister Kylon Middleton unsure about where justice actually dwells.