Man who aided S.C. killer gets jail term
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A weeping Joey Meek, who convinced a friend not to call police with the identity of the Charleston church killer while a nationwide manhunt was getting underway, received a 27-month prison sentence Tuesday from U.S. Judge Richard Gergel.
Meek’s charge was misprision of a felony, which Gergel termed “a fairly rare crime, because it requires both knowledge that a crime has been committed and an act to conceal it.”
Meek, 22, of Red Bank in Lexington County, had admitted to convincing the friend, Dalton Tyler, not to call police an hour or so after the June 17, 2015, killings of nine African-American parishioners at Charleston’s historic Mother Emanuel AME Church.
At the time, Meek knew the killer was Dylann Roof, a white supremacist from the Columbia area who had been staying on and off in Meek’s family’s mobile home in Red Bank. But authorities didn’t know the shooter was Roof, and they feared another massacre.
“The danger he (Meek) exposed the community to was extraordinary,” Gergel told the courtroom audience, stressing that Roof at the time was “armed, dangerous and on the loose . ... I simply cannot ignore that.”
In addition to the seriousness of Roof’s crime, Gergel — who last winter presided over Roof’s trial and death sentence — said he wanted to send a message by giving Meek hard time “so that others will see the consequences of such an offense.”
Minutes before sentencing, a weeping Meek choked back sobs and told Gergel he regrets his failure to act.
“If anything like this were ever to happen again, I would report it to law enforcement as soon as possible,” Meek said. “I am really, really sorry that all those beautiful lives were taken in the way that they were.”
Meek, who has been living with his grandparents in the Columbia area, also apologized to law enforcement, adding, “I don’t know if I will make it out of prison or not ... it scares me.”