Church gunman won’t apologize, say why he shot
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Sometime in the six weeks after he killed nine Bible study worshippers at this city’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Dylann Roof wrote in a journal that he had “not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed.”
On Wednesday morning, standing before the jurors who will decide whether he should be put to death, Roof again offffffffffffered no apology, no explanation and no remorse for the horrifific massacre.
In a strikingly brief opening statement in the penalty phase of his trial in U.S. District Court, where he is representing himself, Roof repeatedly assured the jurors that he was not mentally ill, and left it at that.
“There’s nothing wrong with me psychologically,” he said, before striding back to the defense table, taking a deep breath.
By then, Courtroom No. 6 had already been jarred by a reading of two pages from Roof ’s journal, a white supremacist manifesto written in Charleston County’s jail.
“I would like to make it crystal clear I do not regret what I did,” Roof wrote in the journal, which offifficials seized in August 2015. “I am not sorry.”
Roof, who was then 21, also wrote: “I do feel sorry for the innocent white children forced to live in this sick country and I do feel sorry for the innocent white people that are killed daily at the hands of the lower race. I have shed a tear of self-pity for myself. I feel pity that I had to do what I did in the fifirst place. I feel pity that I had to give up my life because of a situation that should never have existed.”
As he be gan to lay out the government’s case for a death sentence, the prosecutor who read from the journal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan S. Williams, told the jury of 10 women and two men that Roof ’s killing spree had been a premeditated act that had devastated the families of his victims.
“The defendant didn’t stop after shooting one person or two or four or fifive; he killed nine people,” Williams said, a few moments before he flflatly declared: “The death penalty is justifified.”
Later, aided by a slideshow of pictures, he described each of the victims and their lives.
The presentations struck a startling beginning to the t r i al’s s entenc i ng phase, which is expected to run into next week. On Dec. 15, after a weeklong fifirst phase, the jury found him guilty of 33 counts, including hate crimes, obstruction of religion resulting in death and fifirearms charges. Eighteen counts require the jury to decide whether to sentence Roof, now 22, to either death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. A death sentence requires unanimity.
Roof ’s opening statement Wednesday was the fifirst time he had directly addressed jurors. He chose to allow his court-appointed legal team to represent him during the guilt phase, but sidelined them during the penalt y phase in order to prevent them from introducing any mitigating evidence regarding his family background.