The chief magistrate of Charleston County, South Carolina was replaced Wednesday, less than a week after presiding over the bond hearing for the white, 21-year-old man who allegedly killed nine people at a historic black church.
James Gosnell notified the South Carolina Supreme Court that he didn’t want to be re-considered for the position when his term expired at the end of the month, his attorney, Lionel Lofton, told local TV station WCIV. He is expected to remain a magistrate judge.
Lofton told The Post and Courier newspaper that his client “just decided he was tired of being chief magistrate.”
Gosnell was heavily criticized in recent days for urging sympathy for Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof’s family before allowing his victims’ loved ones to address the court at the Friday bond hearing.
“We have victims — nine of them,” Gosnell said at the hearing, as quoted by WCIV. “But we also have victims on the other side. 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.”
After the bond hearing, The Daily Beast also surfaced a reprimand Gosnell received in 2005 from the state Supreme Court for using the N-word in court. Gosnell was presiding over a 2003 bond reduction hearing for a black defendant whom he knew personally when he repeated something he said he’d learned from a black sheriff’s deputy, according to the Supreme Court’s finding.
“There are four kinds of people in this world – black people, white people, red necks, and n_____,” Gosnell told the defendant, as quoted by the court finding.
The finding stated that Gosnell explained he “repeated this statement to the defendant in an ill-considered effort to encourage him to recognize and change the path he had chosen in life.”
