You’re the judge: Gunned down in prayer
He was welcomed with open arms, so what made the churchgoer open fire?
Members of a historic black church in South Carolina had just begun their evening Bible study in June 2015, when the door opened and in walked a stranger.
The young white man was welcomed with a smile.
The pastor pulled up an empty seat next to his own and handed him a Bible.
Around 45 minutes later, the group stood up to pray.
Then, with their eyes closed, they heard a deafening bang.
The young man had pulled out a pistol and shot Reverend Clementa Pinckney at close range.
In the horrifying minutes that followed, the man opened fire on the rest of the group, shooting nine dead. As he fled Emanuel
African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, he told one survivor he planned to kill himself.
Laughing confession
Emergency services rushed to the scene and the search for the attacker began. The following day, a childhood friend recognised the man in a CCTV image shared on the news. While the victims’ families mourned, detectives set out looking for 21-year-old Dylann Roof, the introverted son of a well-to-do family.
He was apprehended a day later, more than 200 miles away, driving towards Nashville, Tennessee. He quickly confessed.
‘I did it,’ he laughed. The attack, suspected to be racist, had made headlines around the world.
An old school friend told reporters he found the news
hard
to believe, and that Roof hadn’t expressed racist views while at school.
The mum of another friend described him as ‘quiet’ and ‘a really sweet kid’.
The day after his arrest, Roof attended court via video link, to hear the charges against him.
Movingly, some grieving relatives stood and told him they forgave him.
In November 2016, shortly before Roof’s trial, his lawyers asked for a delay so he could undergo a mental-competency review.
They said he had extreme anxiety, depression and autism spectrum disorder, and was ‘delusional’.
A forensic psychiatrist met Roof over three sessions.
They found no evidence of psychosis but said he met the criteria for socialanxiety disorder, schizoid personality disorder, depression and possible autistic-spectrum disorder.
But none of this prevented him standing trial.
So, on 7 December, Roof walked into Charleston’s federal courthouse, looking smaller and younger than his 22 years.
He pleaded not guilty to 33 felony counts – 12 were hate crimes and 18 punishable by death, including using a firearm to commit murder.
As prosecutor Jay Richardson shared details of the crime, Roof’s mother suddenly slumped over in her seat.
She seemed to have fainted and was helped out the courtroom and taken to hospital.
It was later learnt she’d had a heart attack.
She survived, but was unable to return for the rest of the trial.
Mr Richardson told the court Roof had chosen Emanuel AME for his shooting spree because it was the South’s oldest black church.
He painted a picture of Roof as a white supremacist who hoped his attack would lead to ‘a race war’.
Mr Richardson read from a notebook found in Roof’s car, where he had written, How could our faces, skin colour and body structure be so different, but our brains exactly the same?
The first witness, Felicia Sanders, had survived the attack but lost her 26-yearold son.
Asked about Roof’s demeanour in church, she said, ‘Most of the time, he hung his head down just the way he’s doing right now.’
Roof didn’t look at his victims or their families throughout the trial.
Felicia said she initially believed the gunshots were sounds from a new lift being constructed in the building.
Then she screamed as she saw Roof holding a gun.
Defence lawyer David Bruck asked her if Roof had spoken as he left the church.
She replied, ‘He said he was going to kill himself, and I was counting on that. He’s evil. There’s no place on earth for him except the pit of hell.’
The next day, Mr Bruck filed a motion for a mistrial, arguing the jury might see Felicia’s comments as a plea for a death sentence.
Mr Bruck told the court Roof committed the shooting, but insisted proceedings were being overshadowed by the government’s ‘desire to pursue the death penalty’.
Jeopardising the fairness of his trial.
Allthesame,Roof’strial was allowed to continue.
A South Carolina lawenforcement agent said that 54 bullets had been removed from the victims.
The eldest victim, 87-year-old Susie Jackson, had been shot 11 times.
Many in the courtroom cried as the jury were shown photos of the spacious room, with a small altar and several tables.
A Bible could be seen undisturbed on one table, but around it lay bodies and furniture riddled with bullets.
Sick or evil?
In his closing argument, Mr Bruck painted Roof as an alienated ‘boy’.
He described Roof’s belief that ‘there is raging in our society a fight to the death between black people and white people that is being concealed and covered up by some sort of vast conspiracy’.
And Bruck added, ‘He doesn’t seem to think that anybody but him really understands this.’
So, was Dylann Roof a mentally ill, alienated young man who couldn’t distinguish between the real world and the paranoia he read on the internet?
Or was he a racist who set out to massacre the group of Christians with pure hatred in his heart?
It was now for the jury to decide. Guilty or not? Turn to find out
The jury considered for only two hours on a Thursday afternoon before finding Dylann Roof guilty of all 33 charges against him.
When he appeared for sentencing in January 2017, Roof represented himself.
He told the jury that there was ‘nothing wrong with him psychologically’, asking them to ignore everything they’d heard from his defence team.
Prosecutor Jay Richardson called 23 witnesses to talk about the impact of their loved ones’ deaths.
In Roof’s closing statement, he said, ‘I felt like I had to do it. I still feel like I had to do it.’
The jury decided Roof should be executed.
Sentencing Roof to death, Judge Richard Gergel said, ‘This trial has produced no winners, only losers.’
With his federal trial over, Roof still had to stand trial in a state court.
This time, he pleaded guilty to murder charges and was sentenced to nine life terms in prison.
Afterwards, documents were unsealed showing Roof’s lawyers had wanted to plead an insanity defence, but he refused to let them discuss his mental health in court.
Roof called it ‘a pathetic, fraudulent excuse for a defence’.
But in January 2020, Roof made a U-turn. Still on death row, he appealed his convictions and argued that he was suffering from schizophrenia at the time of his trial.
Roof’s appeal could take a decade.
But the families whose loved ones were gunned down will suffer for ever.