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Dylann Roof Jury Picked; Charleston Trial Set to Begin Trial of Dylann Roof, Suspect in Charleston Church Killings, Begins
(about 4 hours later)
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal court seated a jury Wednesday morning for the death penalty trial of Dylann S. Roof, the self-avowed white supremacist accused of killing nine black parishioners during a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church here in June 2015. CHARLESTON, S.C. — Faced with perhaps his only chance to persuade jurors to spare the life of Dylann S. Roof, the avowed white supremacist accused of killing nine black parishioners attending a Bible study class last year, a defense lawyer used his opening statement on Wednesday to concede Mr. Roof’s guilt, suggest doubts about his stability and argue for a sentence of life in prison.
The jury includes nine whites and three African-Americans. Ten of the jurors are women. “In fairness and in mercy, our society does not invoke the death penalty if there are reasons to choose life, a life in prison,” said the lawyer, David I. Bruck, the leader of the court-appointed defense team that Mr. Roof plans to jettison during the anticipated second phase of his federal trial, when jurors will decide whether he should be executed.
The opening of Mr. Roof’s trial comes as the city’s race relations are already on edge two days after a judge declared a mistrial in the case of Michael T. Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who shot an unarmed black man as a bystander recorded the confrontation on video. The deadlocked jury in that trial, held across Broad Street in the Charleston County courthouse, consisted of 11 whites and one African-American. “We err in favor of life,” Mr. Bruck said softly as Mr. Roof, dressed in the striped uniform of the county jail, sat silently, staring down at the defense table. “We do not behave like the person who committed this crime.”
Lawyers for Mr. Roof, 22, asked Judge Richard M. Gergel late Tuesday afternoon to delay his trial out of concern that the federal jury might try to compensate for the verdict in the Slager case. “The risk that the defendant’s soon-to-be-empaneled jury will feel pressure to respond to widespread frustration and anxiety aroused by the Slager mistrial is too great to ignore,” they wrote. Judge Gergel quickly rejected the request, calling it “utterly far-fetched and illogical.” Earlier, the lead prosecutor, Julius N. Richardson, an assistant United States attorney, introduced each of the nine victims of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, showing their photographs, describing their lives and explaining how they had come to gather in the church’s fellowship hall on the night of June 17, 2015. But he spent much of his time discussing Mr. Roof, 22, who has been charged with 33 federal counts and also faces a separate death penalty trial in state court.
Eighteen months after the church shootings devastated the historic 198-year-old congregation and its city, the case against Mr. Roof — conducted to date on paper in 768 docket entries, many of them sealed — finally unfolded in open court. Although his guilt has not been in question, many here, including Mr. Roof’s lawyers, have expressed hope that the proceedings might provide insight into his motivations. “We will prove to you that the defendant’s attack was cold and calculating,” said Mr. Richardson, whose presentation emphasized the defendant’s premeditation.
The Justice Department has charged Mr. Roof with 33 federal criminal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death, claiming that he sat with the worshipers for nearly an hour on the evening of June 17, 2015, and then, without warning, pulled out a Glock .45 caliber handgun and fired 77 times. He hurled racial insults as he methodically shot one victim after the other. “It was done with malice in his heart, in his mind,” Mr. Richardson said, “racist retribution for perceived offenses against the white race.”
The dead included the church’s pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also a state senator, three other members of the ministerial staff and five church regulars. The boyish gunman fled in his black Hyundai Elantra and was captured without incident the next day in North Carolina with the alleged murder weapon on his back seat. Two women and a child survived the blood bath in the church’s ground floor fellowship hall, while Mr. Pinckney’s wife and younger daughter escaped by hiding in his adjacent office. Mr. Richardson, speaking methodically with composed indignation, said that Mr. Roof, who confessed after his arrest, staged his attack after months of planning because he had grown convinced that “white supremacy groups were just talk.”
And so on a Wednesday night, after sitting with his targets and studying the parable of the sower for almost an hour, Mr. Roof opened fire with a Glock .45-caliber handgun as they bowed their heads in benediction.
“The defendant left behind a scene that nobody can fathom, yet he walked out calmly, looking both ways as he exited,” Mr. Richardson said.
Mr. Bruck made no effort to dispute Mr. Richardson’s summary of the case. “The story Mr. Richardson just finished telling you really did occur,” he said. “Dylann Roof really is the person.”
Mr. Roof’s case is being heard by a jury of 18, including six alternates. The panel consists of 13 whites and five blacks. Thirteen of the jurors are women; five are men.
Although they are expected to spend days hearing gruesome testimony — Felicia Sanders, a survivor of the attack, began her testimony on Wednesday — the focus of the trial will come once the jury decides Mr. Roof’s guilt or innocence. If Mr. Roof is found guilty, the panel will turn its attention to sentencing.
The Justice Department announced in May that it would seek a death sentence for Mr. Roof, and rejected his offer to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison. The government’s decision has been the subject of some skepticism in South Carolina, where survivors of the attack and many family members of the victims opposed the death penalty.
Mr. Roof and his defense team have been at uneasy odds over the lawyers’ desire to try to save his life by presenting evidence of mental instability. After a week of legal wrangling, Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court agreed to Mr. Roof’s request that Mr. Bruck and his team represent him during the initial guilt phase of the trial and that he represent himself during the subsequent penalty phase.
Knowing he would be sidelined when he normally could present evidence of Mr. Roof’s family background and psychological history, Mr. Bruck — one of the country’s foremost capital defenders — used his opening statement to plant notions that the rampage was the work of a disturbed man. He asked jurors to “go deeper than the surface of this awful crime.”
“Ask yourself if this really is a logical plan at all,” Mr. Bruck said. “On what planet does someone have to be to think you could advance a political agenda by attacking these nine people who are the most kind, upstanding — I will use the word noble — people you could possibly find in this community or any other.
“What is the likely effect of that? Ask yourself that. How much sense does this crime make; does it make any sense at all, and if not, what does that tell you?”
Mr. Richardson’s 49-minute statement yielded few revelations about the attack, in which Mr. Roof fired 77 times, hurling racial insults as he shot one victim after the next.
The dead included the church’s pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney, 41, who was also a state senator, three other members of the ministerial staff and five church regulars. One by one, Mr. Richardson talked about the victims: the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, a high school speech pathologist and track coach; Cynthia Hurd, 54, a county library manager; Susie Jackson, 87, a church matriarch who sang in the choir; Ethel Lee Lance, 70, a longtime church member and sexton; the Rev. DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49, a college enrollment counselor; Tywanza Sanders, 26, a recent college graduate; the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a retired pastor who filled in part-time at the church; and Myra Thompson, 59, an English teacher and guidance counselor.
The boyish gunman fled in his black Hyundai Elantra and was captured without incident the next day in North Carolina. Two women and a child survived the blood bath in the church’s ground floor fellowship hall, while Mr. Pinckney’s wife and younger daughter escaped by hiding in his adjacent office.
The opening of the trial came with the city’s race relations already on edge two days after a judge declared a mistrial in the case of Michael T. Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who shot an unarmed black man as a bystander recorded the confrontation on video. The deadlocked jury in that trial, held across Broad Street in the Charleston County courthouse, consisted of 11 whites and one African-American.
Mr. Roof’s lawyers asked Judge Gergel late Tuesday afternoon to delay his trial out of concern that the federal jury might try to compensate. “The risk that the defendant’s soon-to-be-empaneled jury will feel pressure to respond to widespread frustration and anxiety aroused by the Slager mistrial is too great to ignore,” they wrote. Judge Gergel quickly rejected the request, calling it “utterly far-fetched and illogical.”
By midmorning on Wednesday, 18 months after the shootings devastated the 198-year-old congregation and its city, the case against Mr. Roof — conducted to date on paper in 768 docket entries, many of them sealed — finally began to unfold in open court. Although prosecutors have made plain that they believe the attack was racially motivated, many here, including Mr. Roof’s lawyers, have expressed hope that the proceedings might provide additional insight into his motivations.
In a white supremacist online manifesto discovered shortly after the massacre, Mr. Roof, who lived in Eastover, near Columbia, said that he had chosen Charleston because it was the state’s most historic city and for many years — until the 20th century — had a substantial black majority. But what was not revealed was how he came to target the church known as Mother Emanuel, one of the oldest independent black congregations in the South, where a failed slave revolt was incubated in 1822 and where visitors to the pulpit have included Booker T. Washington in 1909 and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1962.In a white supremacist online manifesto discovered shortly after the massacre, Mr. Roof, who lived in Eastover, near Columbia, said that he had chosen Charleston because it was the state’s most historic city and for many years — until the 20th century — had a substantial black majority. But what was not revealed was how he came to target the church known as Mother Emanuel, one of the oldest independent black congregations in the South, where a failed slave revolt was incubated in 1822 and where visitors to the pulpit have included Booker T. Washington in 1909 and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1962.
The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty for Mr. Roof, who had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison. The government’s decision has been the subject of some skepticism in South Carolina, where survivors of the attack and many family members of the victims oppose the death penalty. “Well aware of Mother Emanuel’s significance to the African-American community he chose that church because of the impact it would have and the manner in which it would resonate across the nation,” Mr. Richardson said.
If Mr. Roof is found guilty, the trial will move into a second phase, when jurors will decide whether he should be put to death. He is facing a second trial in state court, where prosecutors are also seeking the death penalty. But when Mr. Roof appeared at the church around the time of the Wednesday night Bible study, Mr. Richardson said, no one perceived him as a threat.
Given the destruction that Mr. Roof is said to have wrought, family members of the victims who got their first look at him during the jury selection process have remarked on the hollowness of his expression and the slightness of his 5-foot-9, 120-pound frame. “They welcomed the defendant, Dylann Storm Roof,” Mr. Richardson said. “He seemed to the 12 to be harmless.”