Jury sentences Roof to death for Charleston church shootings
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine black parishioners during a church Bible study, was sentenced to death Tuesday after jurors found life imprisonment offered no possibly of redemption for the 22-year-old.
The panel deliberated for about three hours after listening to closing statements from prosecutors and Roof, who told federal jurors in a brief, disjointed statement that he continues to stand by the rampage.
Following the decision, Roof asked the judge to appoint new attorneys in preparation for a motion in which he will ask for a new trial. The judge said he would take that matter up after a formal sentencing hearing, scheduled for Wednesday morning.
Roof, who served as his own attorney, had been represented by David Bruck and Kimberly C. Stevens, who continue to serve as his standby counselors. Following the sentencing, the team sent out a brief statement.
"We want to express our sympathy to all of the families who were so grievously hurt by Dylann Roof’s actions,” the statement read. “Today’s sentencing decision means that this case will not be over for a very long time. We are sorry that, despite our best efforts, the legal proceedings have shed so little light on the reasons for this tragedy."
In his brief address to the panel, Roof had clarified a confession he made to FBI agents the day after the June 2015 attack, one in which he told them, “I had to do it.”
Is death for Dylann Roof justified?
“I didn’t have to do anything and no one made me do it,” Roof told jurors in his closing statement Tuesday, his voice carrying no emotion. “What I meant is I felt like I had to do it and I still feel like I had to do it.”
His address, about five minutes long and delivered with a flat affect, came in response to a two-hour closing statement from a federal prosecutor who repeatedly urged the panel of 10 women and two men to vote for a death sentence.
Roof urged the jurists to consider a life sentence, telling them only one member needed to vote for life for that sentence to be imposed. Gergel later instructed the panel that a hung jury would result in a sentence of life in prison rather than a mistrial.
If the U.S. District Court jury had not decided on the death penalty, Roof still would have faced a death penalty trial in South Carolina's 9th Judicial Circuit Court. Whether he will still go on trial in state court is unclear.
Judge J.C. Nicholson on Thursday ordered that trial to be put on hold indefinitely. It was to have begun Jan. 17.
In December, Roof was convicted of 33 federal counts in his attack on Emanuel AME Church, which included charges based on hate crime laws. In the sentencing phase, Roof represented himself in a successful bid to keep his team of capital defenders from offering evidence that he might suffer from a mental illness.
Had his attorneys been at the helm, they were expected to offer testimony from mental health experts and other witnesses that would have lasted at least a week, much of it likely centering on an undisclosed mental defect.
Instead, Roof offered no evidence or witnesses and asked no questions of the government’s witnesses.
But in his own convoluted address to jurors, Roof seemed to contradict his earlier insistence that he does not have mental health issues.
“I think that it’s safe to say that no one in their right mind wants to go to a church and kill people,” the self-admitted white supremacist said, seeming to downplay the hatred he has been accused of. “Anyone, including the prosecution, who thinks that I’m filled with hatred has no idea what real hate is.”
Tuesday’s closing arguments began with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson, who framed the heinous crime – one that struck at both race and religion by targeting African-Americans at prayer – with a subtle biblical reference.
The parishioners gathered at Mother Emanuel were a group of 12 who learned from one another and worked together, Richardson told jurors, a numerical reference that seemed to allude to the disciples of Jesus Christ.
“We heard how after they started the Bible study, they welcomed a 13th person that night,” Richardson said of the stranger who concealed a .45-caliber Glock handgun tucked in his utility pouch.
In another bit of symbolism, Richardson reminded the panel that Roof carried 88 hollow-point bullets into the church. The letter “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and 88 is often used in white supremacist circles as a reference to “Heil Hitler.”
In jailhouse writings, Roof said the Nazi leader would one day become a saint.
In telling jurists to vote for death, Richardson chronicled the lives of the nine dead, from the church’s leader, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, to the lost, bright future of Tywanza Sanders, 26, to Susie Jackson, who at age 87 remained dedicated to the church.
“He went to Mother Emanuel to find the best among us, and he did indeed find them,” Richardson said, saying he shot each victim because "to him they were brute animals," part of his racist ideology that looked at African-Americans as subhuman.
The prosecutor noted that Jackson and two other older victims were particularly vulnerable due to their age, and urged the panel to use that aggravating factor as a reason to impose a death sentence.
He outlined eight other aggravating factors, including Roof’s racism, his planning of the murders, his lack of remorse and his attempts to incite others. Those, Richardson said, outweighed any mitigating factors such as Roof's age, his lack of a record of a felony conviction or a history of violence.
In determining Roof's sentence, the jury was to weigh any aggravating circumstances against mitigating circumstances.
In a capital case, defense attorneys typically offer mental health evidence as a possible mitigator, but in Roof’s case those efforts were blocked not only by a client who relegated them to the role of standby counselors, but also by the presiding judge, who twice ruled that Roof was competent to stand trial and serve as his own attorney.
The high school dropout rested his case Monday, offering neither witnesses nor evidence in his defense.
Jurors on Tuesday began deliberating at 1:35 p.m. and about two hours later returned several questions regarding mitigating factors as presented to them on a verdict form. The gist of two questions went to any danger he might pose in inciting violence should future prison writings be released, and in the third, the jury asked to see a video of a recorded speech of Rev. Pinckney.
Prosecutors had presented their sentencing case in about three-and-a-half days and questioned 25 witnesses, most of them family members of victims who suffered multiple gunshots in a shooting spree that came after Roof sat with the parishioners for about 40 minutes. He had appeared at the group and was welcomed by the church’s leader, Pinckney, who also served as a South Carolina state senator.
Roof shot Pinckney as the worshippers bowed their heads in prayer, and as others tried to hide beneath folding tables, he moved around the room, firing more than 70 bullets, most finding a human target.
During the trial proceedings, Roof’s mother Amy Roof appeared once, at opening statements, while his grandparents came to the courtroom a handful of times. Following the decision, Roof’s family sent out a statement.
“We will always love Dylann. We will struggle as long as we live to understand why he committed this horrible attack, which caused so much pain to so many good people,” the statement read. “We wish to express the grief we feel for the victims of his crimes, and our sympathy to the many families he has hurt. We continue to pray for the Emanuel AME families and the Charleston community."