Charleston, South Carolina — The trial of former Charleston County Deputy Emily Pelletier continues on Friday, and the community plans to speak out on the issue from outside the courtroom.
Pelletier faces three counts of reckless homicide in the deaths of a mother and her two daughters.
According to community activists, one of the demonstration’s main goals is to exercise their first amendment rights.
“We are all about peacefully getting our point across, addressing the issues because our thoughts, our opinions, and the way we see our society, it matters just as much as everyone else’s,” Pastor Thomas Dixon, a community activist, told me.
They also say they want to advocate for Stephanie Dantzler and her daughters Shanice and Miranda, the three victims in the case.
“We stand in solidarity, not just with the victims who can no longer speak for themselves, but also with the family,” said Tyeesha Aiken, one of the protest organizers. “Who’s going through that reliving this tragic event all over again to let them know that they’re not alone,” she questioned.
One of the most notable takeaways from this week’s trial is that Pelletier’s legal team filed a pretrial motion to include the victims’ blood alcohol levels.
The judge allowed the driver’s levels to be entered, despite the state’s claim that they were irrelevant to the case.
This week, Dr. Angelina Phillips, who performed the autopsies on the three victims, was called to the stand.
She stated that the cause of death for all three was “total body trauma” and testified that the victim’s blood alcohol level while driving was.13, but noted that the victim’s injuries could have caused contamination and a higher reading than normal.
Community activists say they hope to address this particular aspect of the trial during today’s peaceful demonstration.
“It’s ironic that here in this trial, just like we’ve seen before, lawyers are trying to make the victims the criminals,” Dixon pointed out. “Here you have these attorneys, and the community is outraged by the portrayal of these women as responsible for their own deaths. So, the community wants to speak out about that aspect of it, and to let the legal system know that we will not tolerate it any longer,” he said.
