A federal court jury in South Carolina has sentenced convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof to death for the June 2015 massacre at historically black Emanuel AME church, where he killed nine people during a Bible study.
It took the jury — composed of eight white women, two black women, one black man, and one white man — just less than three hours of deliberation to decide the fate of the avowed white supremacist who was convicted on all 33 counts against him, including nine murder charges and twelve violations of the federal hate crime statute.
The jury’s decision to sentence Roof to the death comes after a penalty phase trial that saw four days of testimony from loved ones of the victims shot to death on June 17, 2015.
During the penalty phase, government prosecutors argued that Roof deserved the death penalty because he showed no remorse for his crimes. In his opening statement, prosecutor Nathan Williams read an excerpt from jailhouse writings by Roof written six weeks after his arrest in 2015 where he declared he was not sorry about the murders.
Roof acted as his own attorney at the penalty phase, ignoring the advice of Judge Richard Gergel to allow the lawyer that he appointed to represent the defendant, David Bruck, a renowned capital defense attorney, to act as Roof’s lead counsel.
In a brief opening statement delivered by Roof, the convicted killer declared that he is not mentally ill.
“The point is I’m not going to lie to you,” Roof said. “There’s nothing wrong with me psychologically.” He added that his problem is “I trust people that I shouldn’t.”
In closing, Roof said “If you happen to remember anything that my lawyer said during the guilt phase of the trial I ask that you to forget it.”
And speaking on
Roof’s behalf, Bruck called the proceedings “a runaway freight train”
and begged Gergel to allow him to be able to object for Roof during
testimony.
Hoping to persuade the judge, Bruck added, “This is his sentencing not a memorial service.”
Gergel denied Bruck’s request and allowed Roof to continue as his own attorney.
Roof declined to question all of the prosecution’s witness during the government’s penalty phase presentation.
When the time came for him to present his own evidence, Roof called no witnesses and declined to testify on his own behalf.
In
a closing statement that ran for two hours, lead prosecutor Jay
Richardson told the jury that Roof “feels no remorse because it was
worth it to him.”
Richardson called Roof’s crimes “cold, calculated, malicious.” And in asking the jury to sentence him to death he told the jury there’s no evidence to support that prison will help change his life.
In a brief closing statement, Roof told the jurors “I felt like I had to do it. And I still feel like I had to do it.”
On the potential sentences he faced, Roof said “I have a right to ask you to give me a life sentence, but I’m not sure what good that would do anyway.”
He reminded the jury that if only one of them decided
against imposing the death penalty that he would receive a sentence of
life in prison.
“This is the defendant that continues to believe it is worth it…that he has done the right thing,” Richardson said during his brief rebuttal to Roof’s closing, adding that Roof believed he was “justified” in carrying out “a modern-day lynching.”
Following the jury’s decision, Roof’s family put out a statement:
“We are Dylann Roof’s family. 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. 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.”
In a statement from Roof’s defense, his attorneys said “We want to express our sympathy to all of the families who were so grievously hurt by Dylann Roof’s actions. 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.”
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