CHARLESTON, S.C. — Dylann Roof, a self-radicalized young white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners last year when he opened fire during a long-planned assault on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, was found guilty by a federal jury Thursday.
The jury convicted Roof of nine counts of hate crimes resulting in death, three counts of hate crimes involving an attempt to kill (there were three survivors), nine counts of obstructing the exercise of religion resulting in death, three counts of that charge with an attempt to kill, and nine counts of using a firearm to commit murder.
Roof, 22, stood, his hands at his side and his face emotionless, as a clerk read the verdict in court. Two deputy US marshals stood behind Roof, whose lawyers also stood nearby.
He will face the same jurors when they gather Jan. 3 to begin a second and more suspenseful phase of his trial to decide whether he will be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.
As the first verdicts were read, a few women in the courtroom nodded with satisfaction. But as the clerk read the counts, a process that took about 12 minutes, the women eventually drew still. After the court adjourned, the two adult survivors of the attack, Felicia Sanders and Polly Sheppard, shared a long embrace.
Reaction was swift. “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,’’ Governor Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina said in a statement.
The jury reached its verdict hours after hearing closing arguments in the case. The outcome seemed a foregone conclusion from the first minutes of the trial, which began Dec. 7 and included a swift acknowledgment from the chief defense lawyer, David I. Bruck, that Roof was responsible for the “astonishing, horrible attack’’ on June 17, 2015.
Roof had chillingly confessed to investigators nearly 18 months earlier and revealed his purpose in a blatantly racist manifesto that he published online. His choice of targets seemed intensely premeditated — he scouted the church half a dozen times — although he also researched other black churches and a festival elsewhere in South Carolina before settling on Charleston because, he wrote, it is the “most historic city in my state.’’
In his 53-minute closing statement to the jury, Assistant US Attorney Nathan S. Williams depicted Roof as “a man of hatred, a man who’s proven to be a coward, and a man of immense racial ignorance.’’ Repeatedly using the word “hatred’’ to connect Roof to the hate-crime counts, Williams said the defendant had “executed them because he believes that they are nothing more than animals.’’
The prosecutor’s voice often rose in outrage, and the jurors were again shown photographs of the carnage Roof left behind.
“He must be held accountable for each and every action he took in that church,’’ Williams urged.
As he has throughout the trial, Bruck responded by planting suggestions that Roof was mentally unstable and thus not fully accountable. He peppered his closing statement with words such as “abnormal,’’ “irrationality,’’ “senselessness,’’ “illogical,’’ “obsessive,’’ “delusional,’’ and “suicidal.’’ Roof told the FBI in a confession shortly after being arrested that he had saved ammunition to kill himself if, as he expected, he confronted police when he left the church.
Such an argument would ordinarily be advanced during the trial’s penalty phase, but Roof said again Thursday that he intends to represent himself at that point, presumably because he hopes to avoid courtroom disclosures about his family and psychological background. Although Roof may change his mind, Thursday’s closing argument may well have been Bruck’s last opportunity to plant the defense’s theory.
He referred to Roof as “lost.’’ He said “there is something wrong with his perception’’ and urged the jury to “to understand what was going on in his head.’’
The judge, Richard M. Gergel of US District Court, consistently refused to allow the defense to introduce what it described as “evidence of the defendant’s state of mind and personal characteristics.’’ Thursday was no different. When Bruck ventured too close to discussion of mental health during his closing statement, prosecutors interrupted with objections, and Gergel quickly and forcefully announced: “Sustained.’’
Prosecutors and defense lawyers alike agreed on the basic contours of Roof’s gravitation toward racial animosity. He belonged to no groups and acted alone in Charleston, and they said he had been an avid consumer of racist materials online.
“You can easily give him way too much credit for thinking of this stuff if you don’t see where it came from,’’ Bruck said of Roof, who had declared in his writings that he had not been “raised in a racist home or environment.’’
The Wednesday night attack at the oldest AME congregation in the South began less than an hour after Roof unexpectedly entered through an unlocked side door and took a seat at a weekly Bible study meeting. The congregants, including the church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, were studying the parable of the sower.
The session was passing without incident — one victim, Tywanza Sanders, even recorded a few moments on his cellphone and posted the video to Snapchat — but when the congregants closed their eyes for a familiar benediction, the staccato report of gunfire echoed through the ground-floor fellowship hall.
When the congregants looked up, they saw Roof holding a Glock .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol he had bought about two months earlier and concealed in a pack on his waist. Pinckney was wounded, and churchgoers were diving below the room’s circular tables. Roof kept firing, emptying magazine after magazine, and striking the victims at least 60 times. One crime scene photo showed one of the tables bearing an opened Bible, a folded study sheet, and an empty magazine.
Sheppard, the government’s final witness, told jurors that Roof had approached her and asked whether she was wounded. She was not.
“I’m going to leave you to tell the story,’’ Roof replied, according to Sheppard.
