With Dylann Roof's trial done, prosecutors seek stiffer penalty for friend who failed to report plot
"Federal prosecutors want a hefty prison sentence for the friend who sat idle as Dylann Roof carried out the deadly attack on Emanuel AME Church, signaling Monday their hope to send a message about the seriousness of his inaction.
Their court filing struck a different tone from Joey Meek's agreement to plead guilty to misprision of a felony and lying to federal agents after the June 2015 hate-motivated slayings in Charleston.
If he had contributed significantly to Roof's prosecution, Meek's deal would have called on the authorities to seek lesser prison time than normally prescribed by sentencing guidelines.
But Roof's death penalty trial ended earlier this year without Meek taking the witness stand against the white supremacist who he spent time with in the weeks before the massacre. Roof, 22, was convicted of 33 federal counts and sentenced to die.
That prompted prosecutors to reverse course on Meek, who is set to be sentenced at 11 a.m. Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston. Instead of seeking a prison term on the low end of the range allowed by law, they plan to ask Judge Richard Gergel for a penalty on the higher side. The 22-year-old Lexington County man could get up to eight years behind bars...."
http://www.postandcourier.com/churc...cle_56b46bcc-fd18-11e6-9d9d-63938be3d4a0.html
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Summary of Meek interview with FBI (5 pages)
http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.town...-11e6-a931-f32a2ee37856/58b49ac6b3b62.pdf.pdf
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United States v. Dylann Roof
"In early January, three weeks into the federal trial of Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015, a prison guard named Lauren Knapp gave testimony about The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Officer Knapp is a lanky woman with short bleached hair and a blunt manner who does not bring to mind a scholar of German Romanticism. From the witness chair Knapp said that in early August 2015, while reading the correspondence of prisoners, looking for references to gangs or to crimes, she came upon the “young Werther letter.”
The two-page text was the first outgoing note written by Roof at the Charleston County Detention Center. Its swooning prose sounded strange to Knapp, who took down a sentence or two and discovered, using a search engine, that these matched an English edition of The Sorrows of Young Werther—“the German book,” she called it. Knapp learned that “the German book” was a novel about unrequited love whose narrator commits suicide and that “it was supposed to have started a suicide fever.” After that, Knapp said, “it was decided to put prisoner Roof on suicide protocol.”...
—This is the first of two articles...."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/united-states-versus-dylann-roof/
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Students Respond to Dylann Roof Trial
"The federal criminal trial of Dylann Roof fascinated me. I followed the trial closely and jumped at the chance to write this article because I wanted to discuss the trial with others. I assumed law students would be eager to talk with me about it too. I was shocked when only one law student contacted me to speak about the trial. Every other person I convinced to speak with me requested anonymity, and, to my surprise, many students admitted that they did not follow the trial at all.
Despite their reluctance, I learned that regardless of students’ stance on the morality of the death penalty, few were satisfied with the outcome of the case. Those who generally supported the death penalty and believed that Dylann Roof deserved to be executed expressed exasperation at the endless appeals sure to follow. Students who were against the death penalty felt demoralized at the thought of the government putting someone they felt was mentally ill to death.
There were a few things that students on either side of the death penalty debate had in common...."
http://www.wlulawnews.com/?p=2558
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