The case bears the mark of a craving for vengeance that cannot be satisfied by pursuing the actual shooters, who killed themselves.
A Forsyth County grand jury in North Carolina this week returned an indictment against a Winston-Salem teenager, Sarah Lindsey Santiago, charging her with three counts of murder in connection with the May 18 assault on the Islamic Center of San Diego. The two gunmen, 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez, died by suicide soon after the attack. Santiago was not present at the scene, and prosecutors say her alleged involvement mainly centered on helping to livestream the attack and disseminate the attackers’ manifesto.
Because Santiago allegedly aided and abetted Clark and Vazquez, Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill stated at a Monday news conference that she stands guilty of first-degree murder, a crime in North Carolina that carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for defendants aged 18 or older. Since Santiago is 17, she could, if convicted, face a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years under a claim of mitigating circumstances.
Assuming the allegations against Santiago are accurate, her conduct was morally reprehensible and potentially criminal. Yet the decision to charge her with first-degree murder strikes many as an attempt at retribution that cannot be fulfilled by prosecuting the shooters who are no longer alive. Moreover, O’Neill’s justification blends the elements of aiding and abetting with concerns about promoting bigotry and celebrating violence, even when the offenders had no advance knowledge of any actual crimes.
“My client is innocent of all these charges,” Santiago’s attorney, Alan Doorasamy, declared. The case “touches on major issues in the U.S., including youth, social media, and mental health,” he added. “The world will soon learn the facts that caused this major tragedy.”
O’Neill contended that Santiago never met Clark or Vazquez in person but spoke with them online. He asserted she knew of their intent to strike the San Diego mosque and was aware that they also planned to attack a synagogue and “a predominantly African-American high school.” Rather than reporting or discouraging these plans, the indictment maintains, she endorsed them, even sending Vazquez a Sonnenrad patch that he wore during the mosque assault. She is also alleged to have agreed to “live stream the planned attacks that day, disseminate the recording publicly, and then release the manifesto authored by the attackers purporting to justify the attack.”
O’Neill said the livestream, transmitted via GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets worn by Clark and Vazquez, was viewed by Santiago and two other individuals, which is what allowed investigators to pinpoint her involvement. He noted that last week he consulted Forsyth County Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough, other local law enforcement officials, the FBI, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Anand Ramaswamy about how to move forward with the case.
One issue under consideration was whether to arrest Santiago immediately or wait for an indictment. “With the weekend approaching, and holy days coming up,” O’Neill said, “we didn’t know what she was capable of.”
Another issue was whether to file charges in state or federal court. If she had been charged under federal law, O’Neill explained, “the time she faced would be only about three or four years.” He may have been referring to the statute criminalizing “misprision of felony,” which carries a maximum of three years in prison and involves concealing and failing to report a federal felony. By contrast, if Santiago were charged under state law with aiding and abetting the three murders in San Diego, she could face a life sentence. O’Neill believed the latter route was more fitting given “her role in this carnage.”
If a defendant assists or conspires to commit a crime, North Carolina’s model jury instruction explains that he “is guilty of the offense as if the defendant had personally performed all the acts required to constitute that crime.” Aiding and abetting requires three elements: 1) the crime was carried out by another person, 2) the defendant knowingly “advised,” “instigated,” “encouraged,” “procured,” or “aided” that person in committing the crime, and 3) “the defendant’s actions or statements contributed to the commission of the crime.”
To convict Santiago, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that her role in livestreaming and recording the mosque attack, publishing the killers’ manifesto, and supplying Vazquez with a Sonnenrad patch meets those three elements. That is a demanding standard, especially regarding the third element, which depends on whether Clark and Vazquez would have carried out their plan even without Santiago’s involvement. If they would have acted anyway, it becomes difficult to show that Santiago’s conduct “caused or contributed to” the murders they committed.
“When someone has credible knowledge that a crime is going to be planned or committed, particularly any act of violence,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis said at the press conference, “the law requires them to come forward and report it. Failure to do so is not only irresponsible, but it can also be a crime.” Yet that crime is far removed from first-degree murder, and Santiago’s alleged conduct, while horrific, does not appear to justify treating her as if she had personally shot and killed the mosque’s victims.
In defending the decision, O’Neill suggested that Santiago’s real offense lay in taking part in an online culture that radicalizes potentially violent young people. “There exists in our world an underground subculture,” he stated. “It’s an echo chamber of intense hatred toward different cultures and religions.” Participants in “this underground subculture of hate,” he continued, “listen to and talk with one another on encoded platforms like Signal, and it radicalizes them to the point where they commit these horrific acts of violence and murder.”
O’Neill urged parents to be vigilant as one remedy to that problem. He also said it is “imperative” that lawmakers prevent these sites from remaining accessible to minors. When asked about plans to charge the two other people who watched the livestream, he declined to comment, calling it “a continuing investigation.”
O’Neill portrayed Santiago’s case as part of a broader crackdown on “this subculture of hate,” suggesting that it could set a precedent for future prosecutions. In tying the charges to the larger issue, he conflated the allegations of aiding and abetting murder with the expression of contemptible views.
Even individuals with no advance knowledge of the San Diego attack, he implied, might face criminal charges merely for watching the livestream. He went further, arguing that the government should block access not only to such footage but also to sites that foster religious, racial, or ethnic hostility, which remain protected by the First Amendment regardless of how hateful their content might be.
“Today we send a message, a strong message,” Winston-Salem Police Chief William Penn told reporters. “If you commit a crime, especially a heinous one, you will not be shielded by distance, you will not be shielded by a computer screen, and you will not be shielded in your basement. You will be brought to justice.”
Given the breadth of the problem as described by O’Neill, that “strong message” is cause for concern for many observers. Reasonable people may differ on the appropriate charge or punishment for a 17-year-old who allegedly did what Santiago is accused of. The core issue, however, should be the extent to which she encouraged or facilitated the crimes Clark and Vazquez committed, rather than her views about Muslims, Jews, or Black Americans. By portraying the case as part of a broader war against a “subculture of hate,” the distinction between criminal conduct and constitutionally protected speech becomes blurred.
