CHARLESTON, S.C. — After four days of testimony, prosecutors rested their death penalty case Monday against convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, calling more than two dozen people during the trial’s penalty phase.
US District Judge Richard Gergel said jurors will begin deliberating on the sentence Tuesday.
The jury’s decision must be unanimous to invoke the death penalty. If they are unable to agree, a life sentence is automatically imposed.
Most of Monday’s testimony consisted of heartwarming stories about each of the nine people Roof killed in the 2015 attack at Emanuel AME Church. Witnesses also talked about the heart-rending effects of the deaths.
Roof, 22, was convicted last month on 33 federal charges, including hate crimes and obstruction of religion. The same jury that found him guilty has been back in court this month, tasked with deciding if he gets the death penalty or life in prison.
As he promised earlier in the trial, Roof — who is representing himself — rested his case without calling witnesses or presenting any evidence on his own behalf.
Jennifer Pinckney was the government’s first witness, testifying about the life of her husband, church pastor and state Senator Clementa Pinckney.
Pinckney also spoke about the harrowing minutes she spent huddled underneath a desk with her youngest daughter as shots rang out in the next room, unsure if the shooter was coming her way.
‘‘I sat in front of the girls, and I basically told them that something had happened,’’ she said. ‘‘I think that that’s the hardest thing that I've ever had to do.’’
Survivor Felicia Sanders, who also gave powerful testimony during the guilt phase of Roof’s trial, wrapped up the prosecution’s case at sentencing, talking about her creative, 26-year-old son, the youngest victim, and his commitment to his faith and Emanuel.
‘‘That night they were getting basic instruction before leaving Earth,’’ Sanders said. ‘‘I did not know that was going to be the life of them.’’
The Rev. Anthony Thompson cried as he described a conversation with his wife, Myra, about their future plans to move and pursue careers in the church. ‘‘She was my world, and she was gone,’’ he said.
Daniel L. Simmons Jr. told of his initial bewilderment that his father, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran with a license to carry a concealed weapon, had not done more to protect the churchgoers as he always had his family.
He got his answer after receiving the keys to his father’s car from the coroner and finding the gun inside. “When I opened the car, it was sitting on the front seat,’’ Simmons said. “He took it off before he went to church.’’
Law officers took the stand, too, reading from a journal found in Roof’s cell. In pencil, on lined paper, six weeks after his arrest, the then-21-year-old Roof wrote that he had ‘‘not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed,’’ scribbling white supremacy symbols and writing his thoughts about other races’ inferiority.
Victim impact evidence has become a staple of capital punishment proceedings. More than a dozen victim impact witnesses testified at the 2015 trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who received the death penalty for the Boston Marathon attack that left three people dead and more than 250 wounded.
Before Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, prosecutors called 38 impact witnesses.
In 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled that such evidence in capital cases was a “constitutionally unacceptable risk.’’
Four years later, it reversed that position when it ruled in Payne v. Tennessee.
“Victim impact evidence is simply another form or method of informing the sentencing authority about the specific harm caused by the crime in question,’’ Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for the 6-to-3 majority.
