In the wake of Wednesday’s fatal shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley was quick to tell reporters on Thursday that “we absolutely will want him to have the death penalty.” She was referring to Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white suspect who was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing nine congregants at the historic church during bible study. Roof has been charged with nine counts of murder and possession of a firearm.

Roof’s uncle echoed the cry for his nephew to be put to death: “If he’s found guilty, I’ll be the one to push the button myself,” Carson Cowles told reporters. But the victims’ surviving family members have called for mercy. “You hurt me,” the daughter of victim Ethel Vance told Roof as she wept at a court hearing on Friday. (Roof was being held nearby, and a live image was transmitted to a video screen in the courtroom.) “You hurt a lot of people, but God forgive you, and I forgive you.” Other family members of victims also expressed forgiveness and encouraged Roof to give his life to Christ. He appeared expressionless throughout. It remains to be seen if the family members will weigh in on the decision of whether to seek the death penalty, which rests with state prosecutors.

South Carolina is one of 31 states that still have the death penalty, and the fight by advocates to abolish the practice there has been a slow one. “We’re a long way from abolition, but we are using the death penalty less and less,” said Ron Kaz, cochair of the advocacy group South Carolinians Abolishing the Death Penalty. The state has steadily sentenced fewer people to death over the last decade and has not executed anyone in five years. South Carolina, like Utah, introduced a bill in the last legislative session to resurrect the practice of execution by firing squad as lethal injection drugs have become harder to acquire owing to objections to the practice in Europe, where they are produced.

Kaz’s coalition has a membership of around 700 people, he said, and is composed of a variety of groups around the state that support abolition. One of those groups is the South Carolina Christian Action Council, which comprises 20 congregations throughout the state—including Emanuel AME Church. Among the victims was pastor Clementa Pickney, who was also a state senator, and whose cousin told WYFF4.com after the shooting that Pickney was “a man of forgiveness. We know our loved one would forgive the person who did this.”

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said reaching immediately for a death sentence is a distraction. “One of the harms of the death penalty is it sucks all the air out of the room and doesn’t leave space for really getting at the underlying challenges,” she said. “The underlying challenge here is violence and racial hatred.” Rust-Tierney noted that two months ago, just five miles north of Emanuel AME Church, Walter Scott, a black man, was shot in the back and killed as he ran from a white police officer.

Haley calls for the death penalty at a time when support across the country is declining. While a majority of Americans favor the practice—56 percent—support has fallen 20 percent since 1996, according to the Pew Research Center. “It just feels like easy politics for the governor to turn to the death penalty,” said Susan Dunn, legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina. “You would think that the desires of the families and the victims and the church itself would be given some credence and honor, but it’s hard not to see that every single decision to ask for the death penalty is at some level a political decision.”

In Kaz’s experience, prosecutors in the state tend to seek the death penalty if the family of a victim is supportive, and they let the public know that’s why they’re doing it. But when families are opposed, prosecutors tend to shy away from the family’s guidance. “There are exceptions, but that’s typically what’s happened here,” Kaz said. “This hate-filled young man saw killing people as a way to solve his problems. We’re hoping South Carolina as a state can do better than killing people to solve its problems.”