‘VASTNESS OF HIS HATRED’
Jury finds Dylann Roof guilty in church shootings
“THERE WAS SOMETHING IN HIM THAT MADE HIM FEEL HE HAD TO DO IT, AND THAT WAS CLOSE AS THEY GOT TO IT.” Defense lawyer David Bruck, regarding Dylann Roof ’s motivation
A federal jury took a little less than two hours Thursday to find Dylann Roof, the self-admitted white supremacist who shot to death nine black parishioners at a Charleston church, guilty of all 33 counts lodged against him.
Roof stood as a court official read each count. Several people in the courtroom who lost loved ones in the attack in June 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church nodded silently at each “guilty.”
Among them was Felicia Sanders, a survivor of the attack, who held her 11-year-old granddaughter to near-suffocation to keep the child still in a hail of gunfire. The girl survived, but Roof murdered two others in Sanders’ family, her 26-year-old son, Tywanza Sanders, and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson.
Sanders called the verdict “music to my ears,” adding, “I wasn’t expecting anything less.”
A few shed tears as the word “guilty” was repeated again and again in a verdict that holds Roof responsible not only for the mur- ders but also for hate crimes and obstruction of religion.
The 22-year-old will face a penalty phase, scheduled to begin in January, in which the same panel will determine whether he should be sentenced to life imprisonment or execution.
Roof elected to represent himself at sentencing, a move that strips his defense team of its decision-making powers. Court statements hint that the rift is over evidence that Roof suffers from an unnamed mental defect, a position his attorneys have taken for months in court documents.
After jurors were dismissed, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel called Roof ’s desire to represent himself a “bad decision” and asked him a series of questions confirming he wants to maintain that course.
Answering only “yes” or “correct,” Roof confirmed his decision, though Gergel said he would allow Roof until jurors reconvene to change his mind.
Throughout six days of testimony, Roof rarely, if ever, turned his head to look at a witness or evidence, instead staring straight ahead or at the table before him.
Thursday, jurors heard closings statements offered by prose- cutors and Roof ’s lead defense attorney. Prosecutor Nathan Williams and defense attorney David Bruck agreed on the most important point before jurors: Both said Roof is guilty of the attack at Mother Emanuel.
In 50 minutes, Williams, 43, offered a summary of the voluminous case against Roof, honing in on the months of planning that included purchasing a gun, stockpiling ammunition and writing a manifesto of racist vitriol.
He pointed out that Roof penned a list of predominately black churches, Mother Emanuel listed at the top of one.
“When you see that list of churches, you see the vastness of his hatred,” Williams said, showing a video of Roof shooting his Glock pistol into a phonebook on the ground.
The assistant U.S. attorney described Roof as a coward and a racist who did not see African Americans as equals.
“He executes them because he doesn’t think they are more than animals,” Williams said.
How could someone shoot innocent people while they were on the ground, Williams asked.
“He thinks they are less than human,” he said.
He contrasted what he said were the heroic actions of the victims with the “executions” by Roof. “These nine people exemplify a goodness that was greater than his message of hate,” the prosecutor said, his voice rising.
The arguments included photos of the crime scene and of the victims alive, prompting emotional reactions from some family members in the courtroom. Mental health counselors were on hand to assist family members.
Bruck, 67, urged jurors to consider life imprisonment.
“He tells the FBI he’s not delusional,” Bruck said, referencing Roof ’s video-recorded confession. “If someone says that, common sense tells you he might be delusional.” He pointed to Roof ’s confusion on that tape over the month and the number of victims.
Bruck did not contest the evidence in his closing arguments and even offered praise for the FBI’s investigation of the case. He focused instead on what motivated Roof. He said a racist paradigm seemed to form suddenly after an Internet search for “black on white crime.”
“What happened in that instant is he acquired a magic decoder ring to explain every bad thing on the Earth,” Bruck said.
Bruck said Roof did not get his feelings on race from family or friends. “He didn’t get this from anybody else he knew,” he said.
Bruck portrayed Roof as a solitary figure who developed an obsession that a war existed between whites and blacks that required him to act and to even sacrifice himself, pointing to his statements to the FBI that he had intended to kill himself.
“There was something in him that made him feel he had to do it, and that’s as close as they got to it,” he said of Roof ’s motivation.
Roof, he said, was an odd character, a loner who had hundreds of photos of his cat and wore sweats under his jeans.
Contrasting prosecutors’ argu- ments that Roof had spent a lot of time planning the murders, Bruck said Roof did not plan much of what he did. “He had no escape plan, no money, a car full of dirty stuff,” he told the jury.
In discussing Roof ’s lack of remorse, he said, “you don’t feel remorseful for what you felt you had to do.”
Bruck concluded by asking jurors to “look beyond the surface.”
“Is there something more to the story?” he said.
Jurors asked a single question, one that came an hour into deliberation. They asked to see the video in which Roof expressed surprise when FBI agents told him nine people were dead. Roof thought the victims numbered five, maybe four.
The shootings horrified South Carolinians and the nation, and President Obama eulogized the victims, praising their families for their grace in forgiving Roof, as a few did during Roof ’s bond hearing shortly after his capture.
The Mother Emanuel shootings prompted a dialogue about race relations, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in a statement, “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.”
South Carolina voted to lower the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds in response to the crime.
It was a flag Roof visited when it was flying at the Statehouse. It appeared among the many photos he took of historical sites around the state, many of them steeped in a history that harkens to slavery or racial tensions.
The case against Roof opened more than a week ago, when Jay Richardson, the lead assistant U.S. attorney, told jurors they would hear overwhelming evidence against the 22-year-old.
In the days that followed, Richardson and his team of prosecutors delivered on that promise, presenting wrenching testimonies of two adult survivors of that night in June 2015. Between those testimonies delivered by two grandmothers, jurors heard from witnesses who said Roof planned the attacks. The jury saw his video-recorded confession, read his racist writings and examined crime scene photos depicting the dead.
In his opening statement, the lead attorney representing Roof conceded guilt, saying he might not call witnesses at all. Instead, Bruck tried to nudge the panel toward considering a life sentence without release over execution.
For that, he earned objections from Richardson, frustrated that Bruck was attempting to take jurors to the penalty phase of the trial before guilt had been decided. Gergel agreed, chastising Bruck for stepping outside the bounds of trial rules.
“These nine people exemplify a goodness that was greater than his message of hate.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams