Black man shot at while waiting to go to work says South Carolina needs hate crime law

Columbia, SC – When Jarvis McKenzie locked his eyes with the man in the car, he could not understand the hatred he had seen. When the man picked up a rifle, shot his head and shouted “You better run, my boy!” As he rushed behind a brick wall, McKenzie knew it was because he is black.

McKenzie told his story a month after the shooting because South Carolina is one of the two states with Wyoming which does not have their own laws on hatred crime.

About two dozen local governments in Southern Carolina have adopted their own hatred crime orders such as the last attempted pressure on the South Carolina Senate to vote on a bill offering more stimulating sanctions for crimes provoked by hatred of victims because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, their sex or their sex.

A decade of pressure from businesses, the survivors of a racist massacre of the Church of Charleston which left nine dead, and some of their own Republicans were not sufficient to influence the senators.

The county of Richland, where McKenzie lives, has a prescription for hatred crime and the white man seen on images of security cameras striking the rifle and pulling through the window of his open car before going to his neighborhood on July 24 is the first to face the load.

But local laws are limited to crimes with sentences capped in a month in prison. The proposal for hate crimes of the state supported by business leaders could add years to assault convictions and other violent crimes.

McKenzie sat in the same place at the edge of his neighborhood for a year at 5:30 am, waiting for his supervisor to pick him up at work. For him and his family, each trip outside is now met with discomfort if not fear.

“It is heartbreaking to know that I get up every morning. I am there without knowing if he had already seen me,” said McKenzie.

The absence of a law on hate crimes on a state scale quickly became a painful place in South Carolina after the death by the ball in 2015 of nine black faithful at the Emanuel AMER church in Charleston. After a summer of racial conflicts in 2020, business leaders made a priority and the Southern Carolina House spent its version in 2021.

But in 2021 and again during the next session in 2023, the proposal blocked in the South South Senate without vote. Supporters say that the management of the Republican Senate knows that it will pass as more moderate members of their own party support it, but they will maintain it buried on the calendar with procedural movements.

The opposition is done above all in silence and the bill is only mentioned only by adopting that the Senate occupies other articles, as in May 2023, when a debate on the directives for the program of history studies on subjects such as slavery and segregation have briefly had a long -standing democratic legislator, Shane Massey, the chief of hatred of hatred could not vote.

“The problem right now is that there are a number of people who think that it is not only good legislation, but it is bad legislation. It is bad policy not because people support hatred, but because it strengthens division,” said Massey on the Senate soil.

Opponents of a law on state crimes underline that there is a federal law on hatred crimes and the church shooter of Charleston is in the corridor of Federal Death because of this.

But federal officials cannot continue the cases involving minors, they have a time and limited resources compared to the State and these decisions are made in Washington, DC, instead of locally, said that the Sheriff of the county of Richland, Leon Lott, who put pressure on the order of hatred in his county.

“This is common sense. We make something very simple complicated, and it is not complicated. If you commit a crime against someone simply because of hatred for them, because of whom they are, religion, etc., we know what it is,” said Lott.

The Senate Democrats were particularly frustrated during this year’s session, because if the senators debated more severe convictions for having attacked health workers or police dogs, hate crimes have again remained anywhere.

Supporters of a state crime law say that the resistance of southern Carolina to promulgate white supremacists.

“The subliminal message that says if you are racist and want to commit a crime and target someone for their race, sex, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or everything you can do here,” said McKenzie’s lawyer Tyler Bailey.

Republican governor Henry McMaster understands why local governments adopt their own hatred crime laws, but said that the laws of South Carolina against attacks and other violent crimes have enough penalties for judges to give maximum sanctions if they think that the main motivation of a crime is hatred.

“There is nothing like a crime of love. There is always an element of hatred or lack of respect or something like that,” said the former prosecutor who added that he fears the danger that occurs when the investigators try to enter someone’s mind or control their speech.

But some crimes shout to give people more support in our society, said Lott.

“I think that it is very important to protect everyone. My race, your race, the race of everyone, your religion, there must be some protection for that. This is what our Constitution gives us,” said sheriff.

And while the man accused of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for having shot McKenzie risks up to 20 years in prison if he was condemned, the man who was just waiting to go to work resembles the state in which he lives does not care about terrorism that he felt just because of his race.

“I feel like someone looks at me. I feel like I was followed,” said McKenzie. “It frightened me.”