Judge feels sorry for kin – of monster
A SOUTH CAROLINA judge — who once uttered the N-word in the courtroom — opened a Friday bond hearing for Dylann Roof with a tone-deaf statement urging the community to rally around the racist killer’s family.
“We have victims — nine of them. But we also have victims on the other side,” Charleston County Magistrate James (Skip) Gosnell Jr. announced in the courtroom packed with the victims’ anguished relatives.
“There are victims on this young man’s side of the family.” Gosnell was just getting started. “Nobody would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of events that they are being thrown into,” he said. “We must find it in our heart at some point in time not only to help those that are victims but to also help his family as well.”
Gosnell, who was immediately branded a racist sympathizer on social media, has a history of putting his foot in his mouth.
“There are four kinds of people in this world: black people, white people, rednecks and n-----s,” he told a black defendant in a November 2013 bond reduction hearing.
Gosnell later offered a sorry defense, saying he was merely repeating a statement he heard from an African-American lawman.
“(Gosnell) represents he knew the defendant, the defendant’s father, and the defendant’s grandfather,” court papers show. “(Gosnell) represents that when the defendant, an African American, appeared in court for the bond hearing, (he) recalled a statement made to him by a veteran African American sheriff’s deputy.”
Gosnell insisted he made the comment in an “ill-considered effort to encourage him to recognize and change the path he had chosen in life.” Still, the outrageous statement led the state Supreme Court to issue Gosnell a “public reprimand.”
Gosnell’s Friday speech — which was aired live on cable news — drew the wrath of the Internet.
“Wait was judge James Gosnell Jr job to arraign Dylann Roof or defend Roof’s family? Wow #RacismInAmerica,” tweeted Pierrela Jeanbaptist.
Gosnell offered no apologies afterward.
“It’s my courtroom,” he told Fox News. “I take control over it, and I conduct business within the scope of the law.”