Charleston church killer’s friend sentenced to 27 months in prison
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 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.”
Although Roof was the lone killer, evidence in the case showed — and Meek admitted — that Roof told Meek of his plans to slaughter unarmed African-Americans at a Charleston church during their Wednesday night Bible study. Meek told authorities Roof’s statements were made while they were high on cocaine and that he didn’t take them seriously until news of the killings hit the television that night. Meek said he told his friend not to call police because he feared Roof would come to his Red Bank home and kill him.
Although Meek knew of Roof’s plans in advance, he was not charged with concealing that from authorities before the killings. It is not a crime to fail to tell law officers about a proposed criminal act.
At Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted 2 1/2 hours, Meek’s court-appointed attorney, Debbie Barbier of Columbia, put up two witnesses: James Aiken, a former warden of high security prisons at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and Dr. Thomas Martin, a Columbia psychiatrist.
Aiken testified that because of the notoriety of Roof’s crime, Meek’s life would likely be in danger if he were put in the general prison population. “People are going to do something to him,” Aiken said.
And if Meek were put in solitary confinement, the stress of being isolated from others might cause him to kill himself, Aiken said.
Martin testified that since December 2015, he has spent 55 hours talking to Meek. Meek comes from a broken home with an abusive, alcoholic father and has a variety of mental disorders, including anxiety, bipolar episodes, depression, an inability to tell the truth and substance abuse, Martin told the judge.
“He sometimes has the coping skills of a 2-year-old,” said Martin, who added, however, that none of those mental illnesses prevent Meek from knowing right from wrong. “He would lie to me on simple things he didn’t need to lie to me” about.
Martin testified that Meek was making much progress as a patient, has stopped using drugs and holds a regular job in a restaurant. Martin said he worried that if Meek were sent to prison, he would relapse, especially in solitary confinement.
When Barbier used her witness statements to argue that Meek would be in danger from others in the general prison population, and a danger to himself in solitary, Gergel shook his head.
Under Barbier’s logic, the judge said, he might as well not sentence any people guilty of horrible crimes — such as child molesters — to prison when the two choices are to be put in solitary or the general population.
“If I take your argument to its logical conclusion, I couldn’t send anybody to prison,” Gergel told Barbier.
Barbier then stressed how harmless her client is. “Mr. Meek has never hurt a fly,” Barbier said.
“He is not charged with that,” Gergel retorted. “It’s that he stopped another person who did feel a reasonable obligation to report it at a time when Mr. Roof was still out. Thank goodness nothing happened … on that horrible night.”