BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The former U.S. Attorney who reopened the cold case in the 1963 16th Street Birmingham Baptist Church bombing said on the Paul Finebaum Show Thursday that he believes law enforcement should better monitor social media to prevent attacks like the one in Charleston.
“With the rise of the Internet and social media, with all of this going on across the spectrum of accessibility to young people,” said former prosecutor Doug Jones. “It plays into the fears. If somebody loses a job, somebody gets demoted from the football team by someone of another race, their fears can get played on by the people of the internet. It can get out of hand.”
Jones said that, despite the fact that he believes the country has come very far since the racial turmoil of the 1960s, he often sees an “undercurrent” of racism that can be misinterpreted by susceptible young people.
“I don’t know if this guy ultimately was a member of a [hate] group or not, but it doesn’t really matter,” he added. “You can tell by the pictures I’ve seen on Facebook with the jackets he’s wearing with the hate symbols. That’s what I’m concerned about most, is people not monitoring social media to monitor that these young people are not reading the wrong things and not getting excited by these hate filled groups and we’re seeing it most with ISIS, and their unbelievable use of social media.”
Finebaum asked Jones what could possibly posses someone at such a young age to “go down this road.”
“That’s going to be a very difficult question to answer,” Jones responded, adding that the knee-jerk reaction to label the killer with some sort of mental illness would probably be shown to have some validity, but doesn’t flesh out the entire picture.
“There’s a difference between simply having some type of mental illness and being legally insane for purposes of a criminal case,” Jones explained. “Certainly there is something, socially, and something I think mentally, with anyone who would feel so compelled to commit a cold blooded murder like this; it’s just astounding.”
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
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