Dylann Roof guilty on 33 Federal Crimes from his massacre of nine Black Parishioners at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church (photo by Grace Beahm).
Story by Charleston's Post and Courier
Written by Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Abigail Darlington
Dylann Roof, a gun-obsessed loner who tried to provoke a race war after soaking up online hate, faces a potential death sentence after a jury convicted him Thursday of 33 federal crimes stemming from his massacre of nine black parishioners at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church.
A federal jury with three black members and nine whites deliberated for two hours before finding the white supremacist guilty of hate crimes, obstruction of religion and firearms violations. Roof stood facing forward, impassive, as the jury foreman read each count in order, accompanied by: "We find the defendant Dylann Storm Roof guilty."
They will return Jan. 3 to decide whether he will be put to death or imprisoned for life for committing the shooting rampage.
The verdict came nearly two years from the day when Roof began scouting out Emanuel for his attack, making the 90-minute drive from his Eastover home to Charleston six times to prepare for the June 2015 mass shooting.
Nearly 50 victims' family members and the adult survivors of the shooting packed into the courtroom listened quietly, several nodding, many holding hands as the verdicts were read. Survivors Felicia Sanders and Jennifer Pinckney left the courtroom smiling.
Roof confessed to the killings, and his legal team readily acknowledged his guilt. Offering no defense, they instead sought to portray the 22-year-old gunman as a disaffected, delusional loner who was set on a twisted path to murder by racist rantings he found online.
But federal prosecutors urged the jury to cast aside such “distractions” and hold Roof accountable for the carnage he had left in his wake. They described him as a cold, calculating and methodical killer filled with a vast reservoir of hate that he unleashed on nine kind and virtuous church goers who had done him no wrong.
In the government's emotional closing argument after six days of testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams said hatred had no place in the sanctuary of Emanuel, but Roof brought it just the same. He turned his .45-caliber Glock pistol on innocents and peppered them with a barrage of bullets when they were at their most defenseless, their eyes shut for closing prayer, he said.
"In that moment, a man of immense hatred walked that room shooting person after person after person, stopping only so he could reload more magazines and kill more people," Williams told the jury, his voice growing louder. "It was an act of tremendous cowardice, shooting people as they have their eyes closed in prayer, shooting them on the ground" and as they cowered under tables.
The families of those killed and survivors cried softly and wiped their eyes, as did one juror, during the passionate closing arguments that highlighted the bravery of Tywanza Sanders, who tried to reason with Roof, and the Rev. Dan Simmons Sr., who rose to check on the church's pastor after he was shot. As he spoke about the carnage, Williams showed photographs of the dead sprawled in their fellowship hall juxtaposed with their smiling faces in life. Throughout, jurors leaned forward listening intently to every word.
Roof stared ahead, as he has throughout testimony, showing no emotion. His grandparents also watched quietly, his grandmother leaning her face against one hand.
Roof executed nine people, in part, because he viewed them through a racist lens and considered them less than human, Williams said. He viewed apartheid as an ideal and sought to stoke a race war with an attack fueled by a hatred that was "planned, thought-through and horrifically violent, he said.
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The Emmanuel AME Shooting Church Victims are Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson. _____________________________________________________________________________________
Roof may have taken their lives, Williams said, but he did not destroy a goodness they exemplified that was greater than his hate. "He does not get to choose who they were, the example that they lived their lives by - not in this church, not in this courtroom."
Williams said the racist journal and online manifesto the self-avowed white supremacist posted along with hundreds of photos showed his dedication to his twisted cause and the "vastness of his hatred." He spent months scouting his target and stockpiling ammunition, casing Emanuel in trip after trip to Charleston over more than six months leading up to the June 2015 shooting, he said.
"This is not just him driving by the church. We see a pattern," Williams said, noting the hours Roof spent in the area around the church on his trips.
Lists found in his car contained the names of several other black churches and an African American festival in Elloree - more signs of the preparation Roof took and the depths of hatred that drove him, Williams said. He then played for the jury a video of Roof taking target practice with the gun he used to kill the Emanuel worshipers, firing again and again with the laser-sighted pistol in the back yard of the home where he lived in Eastover, he said.
Williams then again showed graphic images from the crime scene on the night of June 17, 2015, with portraits of the victims inset in photos of them lying dead beneath the Bible study tables, their bleeding bodies peppered with at least 60 bullets.
Williams walked the jury through the carnage, taking them step by step through the shooting spree to which Roof confessed the next day, starting with the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who gave the gunman a seat beside him that night.
"Clementa Pinckney pulled out a chair for him and he was executed while his family sat on the other side of that wall," he said, pointing to a photo of Pinckney lying face down, a stream of blood trailing from his body.
Williams said Roof claimed he undertook the attack because no one else was brave enough to address perceived injustices against whites. But Roof was really a coward, he said.
"The defendant has no claim to bravery, but you have heard of bravery in this case," he said.
He then recounted the Rev. Daniel Simmons attempts to save his pastor, only to be gunned down. He talked of Polly Sheppard, looking the killer in the eye as he approached her with the gun. He spoke of Felicia Sanders, who used her body to shield her 11-year-old granddaughter as she waited to be shot. He also spoke of her son, Tywanza, who pleaded with Roof to stop, saying "We mean you no harm," while wounded himself. Roof shot him dead instead, Williams said.
"Tywanza Sanders is a hero," he said. "He saved lives."
Roof, wearing a light blue sweater and dark slacks, stared at the table in front of him, showing no emotion as Williams urged the jury to hold him accountable for the killings.
Jurors next heard from Roof’s lead defense attorney, David Bruck, a nationally renowned capital defense lawyer who rested his case Wednesday without calling a single witness. Bruck’s closing arguments could mark the last words jurors hear from him before he hands the reins to Roof, a 22-year-old, self-avowed white supremacist who dropped out of high school.
Throughout the trial, Bruck has tried to introduce evidence and testimony raising questions about Roof's psychiatric history and mental state, only to be shot down time and again by U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Gergel. The judge repeatedly reminded Bruck that this sort of evidence is reserved for the penalty phase of trial, when Roof is expected to represent himself.
In his closing argument, Bruck did his best to paint around the margins of that prohibition and portray Roof as a troubled loner who latched onto a twisted world of online conspiracy theories in his attempt to make sense of the world.
Bruck told the jury that what happened in this case and who is responsible "is pretty straightforward."
"The issue in this case from the beginning and continues to be why?" he said.
Bruck said Roof's decision to dedicate his life to conspiracy theories about an ongoing battle between blacks and whites that only he and a few others could understand raises very real questions about his state of mind, Bruck said. What does it say about Roof that he thought an appropriate remedy would be to murder innocent people in a church, he asked.
"There is hatred all right, and certainly racism, but it goes a lot further than that," he said.
The fact that he was contemplating suicide at the end of his mission to Emanuel further drives that point home, Bruck said.
"What could have left him so convinced that he was required not only to take the lives of innocent people but to also sacrifice himself?" Bruck said.
In his confession to the FBI, Roof told agents that he was not delusional, Bruck said, when common sense would tell most people the opposite.
Bruck said Roof's thinking crystallized after reading online about the case of Trayvon Martin, a black teen shot to death by a neighborhood watch coordinator in Florida in 2012. Stories on the case that made claims about black-on-white crime seemed like a "magic decoder ring" to Roof, fueling the twisted thinking that later showed up in his racist manifesto, he said. He was just aping things he had picked on the internet and spitting it back to the world, he said.
"Every bit of motivation came from things he saw on the internet. That's it," Bruck said. "He is simply regurgitating, in whole paragraphs, slogans and facts - bits and pieces of facts that he downloaded from the internet directly into his brain," Bruck said.
During his confession, his lack of clarity about how many people he killed and other factors of the crime also shows "there is something wrong with his perceptions."
Bruck implored the jury to consider these factors as they try to reach a decision in the case. "I ask you, does this make sense, or is there something more to this story?"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Curran then countered, telling the jury that Bruck's words, however compelling, were merely a distraction. They told jurors that Roof had a family, friends and a deep hatred that fueled the killing. "He did act alone," a prosecutor said. "They were his choices, his actions, his decisions, his responsibility."
If convicted, Roof, who declined to take the stand in his own defense, has opted to act as his own attorney when the penalty phase begins on Jan. 3. Bruck then will be relegated to an advisory role.
Prosecutors wrapped up the guilt portion of their case Wednesday by calling shooting survivor Polly Sheppard, who took jurors back to the night of June 17 when 13 people — including Roof — gathered for Bible study.
Sheppard, a 72-year-old retired nurse, described how Emanuel's pastor welcomed the stranger and handed Roof a Bible and a paper with the week's Scripture lesson. The Rev. Clementa Pinckney then invited the guest to sit beside him.
Less than an hour later, as the group shut their eyes and bowed for closing prayer, a blast rang out.
"The defendant started shooting," Sheppard said.
She described thinking at first that the gunshots were sparks from faulty wiring in the historic church. But then her longtime friend Felicia Sanders, sitting at a table beside her, shrieked that Roof had a gun, Sheppard said.
During her emotional testimony, Sheppard clutched a tissue and kept her voice even while recounting the chaos that followed. Roof, as was his practice throughout testimony, stared down at the defense table.
Sheppard, who once worked as a nurse at the jail where Roof now is housed, said she dove under a table when he opened fire. Shell casings clattered to the floor and gunshot blasts echoed over the fellowship hall as some 77 hollow-point bullets were fired. From beneath a table, Sheppard watched the gunman's boots step closer and closer to her, she said.
When Roof reached her, he pointed his .45-caliber Glock at her feet.
He asked if he had shot her yet.
"No," she replied.
"'I'm not going to,'" she said Roof told her. "'I'm going to leave you here to tell the story."
As he walked away, Sheppard noticed that a cellphone had fallen beside her during the shooting. She grabbed it and frantically punched at the keys. The call didn't go through. She heard Roof's gun click twice and thought he had run out of bullets. She tried dialing 911 again.
This time, an operator answered.
"Please, Emanuel church," Sheppard said in muffled tones between shallow breaths. "People shot. Please send (help) right away!"
She tells the operator that a gunman shot the pastor.
"He shot all the men in the church. Please come right away."
Sheppard noticed a shadowy movement near a door.
"Send someone down here, please," she pleaded, breathing heavily into the phone.
The female operator warned Sheppard to stay quiet and not hang up.
"He's coming. He's coming. Please!" Sheppard said. "He's reloading."
The call continues as Sheppard cowers beneath the table waiting for help, unsure if the gunman has left the church's fellowship hall.
Police arrived shortly after asking, "Where is he?" But by then, Roof had ducked out of the church's side door and cruised out of town, driving up Meeting Street and then slipping up rural backroads as the city recoiled in shock at what had transpired inside Emanuel.
Police arrested Roof in a small North Carolina border town the next morning, and he promptly confessed to FBI agents.
“I mean, I just went to that church in Charleston and, uh, you know, I, you know, did it,” he told them.
Jurors on Friday heard Roof describe in chillingly nonchalant terms how he picked out the church to target black people in a place without security “because no one else is brave enough” to avenge his perceived wrongs against whites. He chose Emanuel, the oldest AME church in the South, because of its history and the fact that an attack there would resonate with people, he said in his taped confession.
During that two-hour interview, Roof also admitted he knew Sheppard had survived the hail of 77 bullets.
"I didn't shoot her because she was, like, looking at me," Roof said.
Sheppard and fellow survivor Felicia Sanders book-ended six days of testimony from a long march of law enforcement officials and a pathologist who performed all nine autopsies.
Family members listened Wednesday to detailed descriptions of the multiple gunshot wounds on each of the victims’ bodies as Medical University of South Carolina pathologist Erin Presnell explained the autopsies she conducted over four days. She counted at least 60 gunshot wounds in all. Most of the hollow-point bullets hit the victims from the left side and flayed flesh and bones, piercing vital organs and arteries along fatal paths.
The oldest victim, 87-year-old family matriarch Susie Jackson, was struck more times than any other victim. She had at least 10 bullet wounds, all to her left side.
“They were so close together, it was hard to determine which gunshot hit what,” Presnell said.
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Contact Jennifer Hawes at (843) 937-5563 or follow her on Twitter @jenberryhawes.
