JURY DECIDES DEATH FOR DYLANN ROOF

A federal district court jury sentenced Dylann Roof to death Tuesday for his attack in June 2015 on a black church’s Bible study group that left nine people dead.

The jurors took very little time to make their decision after closing arguments. Roof, 22, looked down and shuffled papers as U. S. District Judge Richard Gergel read the death sentence.

The 10 women and two men found that all aggravating factors that Assistant U. S. Attorney Jay Richardson outlined applied and rejected some mitigating factors, such as Roof’s age or lack of previous felony convictions.

Roof asked about filing a motion for a new trial. The judge said he will formally sentence the self- described white supremacist Wednesday though he is bound by the jury’s verdict.

Roof was found guilty last month of 33 federal counts in his attack June 17, 2015, on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, many of them based on hate crimes.

Richardson began the government’s closing statements Tuesday by taking jurors through testimony showing Roof’s “cold and calculated” actions that led to a “race- based massacre.”

After describing a peaceful gathering of the victims at Emanuel for the Bible study, he talked about the horrific shootings, what Richardson said were methodical executions.

He then reviewed the lives of each of the nine victims, telling jurors that testimony gave a window into the goodness in each.

Richardson called Roof “an extraordinary racist.” The shootings, he said, were “calculated, misguided but thoughtful.”

“He spent years acquiring this deep hatred,” the prosecutor said.

He said Roof targeted the church and the Bible study because it would have the most impact in making a racist statement. “He chose to target them, knowing they would be particularly good people,” he said.

Roof was unrepentant because the massacre “was worth it to him” to incite racial unrest, Richardson said.

“It does not take a detective to figure out why he did this,” he said. Roof repeatedly shot each victim because “to him, they were brute animals,” part of his racist ideology that looked at African Americans as subhuman.

Targeting the victims in a church was the ultimate wrong, Richardson told the jury. “What is wrong here is exactly why this case justifies the death penalty.”

Roof blocked his defense team from submitting evidence that he might suffer from a mental illness and represented himself in the sentencing phase.

The high school dropout rested his case Monday, offering neither witnesses nor evidence.