Just a few hours after he told a crowded courtroom “I still feel like I had to do it,” Dylann Roof was sentenced to death by a federal jury for carrying out a cold, calculated massacre inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church in a bid to spark a race war.
The 12-member panel ”“ three white jurors, nine black ”“ deliberated for a little less than three hours before unanimously deciding that the 22-year-old white supremacist should die for his crimes rather than spend his life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It will be up to the presiding judge to formally impose that sentence, but he is bound by law to follow the jury’s decision. U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel has scheduled the formal sentencing hearing for 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Read it all from the local paper.
May God have mercy on him and turn his heart to repentance before he has to face his maker.
Mother Emmanuel has been an inspiration in the way its dear people have given a Christian response to the violence wreaked on them and their families. May they find peace and healing knowing the presence of him who blesses those who mourn among them.
This report concerns me:
I read previously that Roof’s lawyers were so concerned that they wanted to put his mental state and history before the jury, something which the judge denied in the face of Roof’s opposition.
Is this a safe way of proceeding? Shouldn’t the jury have known about the possible mental issues?
Quite. Having insisted on conducting his own defence both in relation to guilt and sentencing, he made no attempt to defend himself, and what he did do he made a complete hash of: “disjointed and convoluted” was the way it was described.
It worries me having anyone facing criminal sanction without legal representation, and this is particularly so on a capital charge. That is independent of the strength of the case against that person. Sometimes the mentally questionable need the protection of the law and its procedures [designed to give safe convictions], even against themselves.
Pageantmaster, I can see your arguments; however, Roof was determined to be competent to stand trial, and therefore had the right to refuse counsel, which he did.
What I want to know, and no one has yet explained to me, is why he was tried first in federal court on the “hate crimes” charges. It seems to me that the case of the murders of nine innocents in South Carolina should have been tried first. Surely the lives themselves were more important than the hate charges.
I finally saw an answer to my question. SC prosecutors did charge Roof with nine counts of murder, and scheduled trial to begin Jan. 17. However, federal prosecutors jumped in and scheduled an earlier trial on the federal hate crimes charges, so the SC trial was postponed. Whether it will be held is now under discussion. This sounds backwards to me. The primary crime is the murders.