A South Carolina jury has found Dylann Roof, the self-avowed white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners in a Charleston church in June 2015, guilty of all 33 federal charges he faced, including hate crimes, murder, attempted murder and obstruction of religion.
Barring appeal, the conviction means that Roof, 22, could either spend the rest of his life in prison or be subject to the death penalty. Sentencing has been scheduled for January, and Roof has been cleared by Judge Richard Gergel to represent himself in those proceedings. Experts have suggested this leaves Roof, a high school dropout with no legal training, much more likely to be sentenced to death.
Nine white jurors and three black jurors took less than three hours to come to a unanimous decision on the charges.
In addition to these federal convictions, Roof will also face a trial on state charges, scheduled for January. Roof could be sentenced to death in that trial too.
In a statement, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said: “It is my hope that the survivors, the families, and the people of South Carolina can find some peace in the fact that justice has been served.”
Among the evidence presented to jurors by the prosecution were horrific images from inside the Mother Emanuel AME church in the aftermath of the shooting, with victims lying on the ground bleeding and apparently attempting to hide from their killer. The prosecution’s evidence also included surveillance video footage of Roof entering and leaving the church. In the latter, a pistol appears to be visible in Roof’s hand.
Jurors heard testimony from shooting survivor Polly Sheppard, a 72-year-old retired nurse who was in attendance at the Bible study session in the church the night that Roof launched his attack. Sheppard testified that Roof approached her during the massacre and asked her if he had shot her yet, to which she replied no. “‘I’m not going to,’” she said Roof told her. “‘I’m going to leave you here to tell the story.’”
Jurors also watched a taped confession during Roof’s initial questioning by the FBI in which he can be heard saying “I did it” and “I killed them.” During deliberations jurors asked for clarification on how many people Roof admitted to killing on the video, suggesting that the confession may have played a substantial role in their decision.
The charges Roof faced included nine counts of violating the Hate Crime Act resulting in death – one for each of his victims, including Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a state senator. Roof was also found guilty of three counts of violating the Hate Crime Act involving an attempt to kill, one for each of the three survivors.
Roof was also convicted on nine counts of obstruction of exercise of religion resulting in death; three counts of obstruction of exercise of religion involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon; and nine counts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence.
Roof’s defense counsel David Bruck argued that the then 21-year-old was suicidal, impressionable and merely acting out violent, racist ideology he had encountered on internet blogs and forums. Bruck argued that Roof didn’t understand the full weight of his actions, and tried to raise doubts about Roof’s mental state, however Judge Gergel sustained objections by the prosecution, ruling that such considerations wouldn’t be relevant until the sentencing phase of the trial.
Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said after the verdict: “Dylann Roof represents the modern face of domestic terrorism: the extremist who acts alone after being radicalized online.” Cohen called that specific threat “a problem we must address”.
Roof stated both during questioning and in written manifestos that he had hoped his shooting attack at the Mother Emanuel AME church, a historic black house of worship in a city with a long history of racial strife, would spark a race war. Instead, the most tangible change in the shooting’s aftermath was the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse.
