Two survivors of the 2015 Charleston church massacre say South Carolina's failure to enact a hate crimes law is an insult to the injury they suffered at the hands of racially motivated murderer Dylann Roof.
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states without a law giving stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by someone's race, sexual orientation, religion or disability.
At Tuesday's hearing before the Senate subcommittee considering the latest proposal, Polly Sheppard and wounded survivor Felicia Sanders recounted the night every one who had come to a bible study at the Emanuel AME church was shot, most of them several times.
Sheppard reminded the lawmakers that the young white gunman told her he was only leaving her alive to tell people he killed the others because he hated the color of their skin. She told Senators they're sending a message that the state isn't serious about stopping the kind of wickedness that led to the massacre.
The Senate subcommittee passed it Tuesday, and the whole Judiciary Committee's 15-8 vote later in the afternoon — in which several Republicans joined Democrats — sent it to the Senate floor. That's where it died last year.