The Honorable Reverend Clementa Carlos Pinckney, a 41-year-old African American man, was a respected state senator and senior pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. On the evening of June 17, 2015, he was leading a Bible study and prayer session at his church, a place of historical significance for the Black community. Earlier that day, he had been campaigning with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
As the evening service proceeded, a young white man who had been welcomed into the Bible study group sat with the congregants for about an hour before opening fire, tragically cutting short the lives of Reverend Pinckney and eight other church members in a hail of bullets.
The perpetrator was quickly identified as Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist. A manhunt ensued, and Roof was arrested the following morning in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed to the killings, admitting that his motive was to ignite a race war. Investigations revealed a website owned by Roof containing a manifesto of his white supremacist views, which he claimed were fueled by the killing of Trayvon Martin and narratives of black-on-white crime. The attack was widely condemned as an act of domestic terrorism.
In the aftermath of the horrific shooting, the community and the nation mourned the loss of Reverend Pinckney and the other victims. At his bond hearing, survivors and relatives of the deceased remarkably expressed forgiveness and prayed for Roof's soul. Roof faced charges in both federal and state courts. In his federal trial, which began in December 2016, he was found guilty on all 33 counts, including hate crimes. In January 2017, he was sentenced to death for these federal crimes. To avoid a second death sentence at the state level, Roof pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder in April 2017 and was sentenced to nine consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
