A year and a half later Dylann Roof's confession of the Charleston Massacre is accessible to the public courtesy of the video's initial presentation during his murder trial, which is in full swing as of Wednesday. Per usual, those following the case seem shocked at his chilling confession. How could anyone take the lives of nine people and chuckle during his confession?
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"I did it," Roof told police with a matter of fact tone. Plain and simple, there's nothing left to analyze. He did it, he took time to consider his options as he sat in the room during the bible study and that's as complicated as the case gets.
So what's left for a jury to decide here? The jury, might I add, includes three Blacks and nine Whites. In light of Dylann's confession, the defense bargained to provide a guilty plea so long as the death penalty was removed.
It's not Roof's confession that should scare us, we understand back in 2015 that this was no accident. The trouble is that the root of the problem is failure to operate as a nation, which stemmed into a desire to take matters into one's own hands. Our nation has taken on a mindset that our government isn't going to take care of us the way our Founding Father's promised it would. As the death toll rises exponentially with each new crime, fear for our nation's future grows.
Someone in Dylann Roof's position feels that blacks are "raping all of the white women-- at least two in every state" in a 2005 FBI statistic, according to Roof. On the flip side of that fear is a black man terrified to drive down the street of his neighborhood because he may be pulled over for a busted tail light, and may never go home. Tangled in that paranoia is the cop that sees the tail light out and knows the fine line between his life and his professional duty. Underneath all of those nightmares is a series of torturous stories that make their appearance once in a blue moon: a child is kidnapped by his father, women finally speak out against their rapist, a parent doesn't go to jail for taking action against a pedophile.
Why are we so paranoid against our Justice System? Perhaps it's because police fed Dylann Roof a burger from Burger King directly before he confessed to his massacre. No one can confess to murder on an empty stomach of course. If the unevenly stacked White to Black ratio of his jury doesn't concern you, then I'm not sure you should be concerned with his case at all. The fact that the defense made a motion for mistrial after Felicia Sanders took the stand should be enough of a guilty plea. Where our Justice System continuously fails is in the defense of these criminals. How many murderers have had a defense consist of mental defect? Almost all of them have had a sad story where they "didn't have any friends."
It's not up to us to take matters into our own hands because we don't think rationally when we feel personally affected or harmed. However, it's also up to our government to rectify the situation and make us feel safe again. I have no answers or direction for us to go, but it's important that we as a society comprehend the center of our fears: We've lost faith in the system that was meant to hold this nation together.
