Suspect in S.C. church shooting faces death penalty
No date yet set for trial of Dylann Roof
COLUMBIA, S.C.—Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced they intend to seek the death penalty against accused hate crimes Charleston church killer Dylann Roof.
“Dylann Storm Roof has expressed hatred and contempt towards African Americans, as well as other groups, and his animosity towards African Americans played a role in the murders charged in (July’s) indictment,” the notice said.
Roof, 22, who is from Columbia, is white. The nine victims were black, as are the three survivors.
“Roof targeted men and women participating in a Bible-study group at the Emanuel AME Church in order to magnify the societal impact of the offenses,” the notice said.
David Bruck, one of Roof’s lawyers, said Tuesday the defense team would have no comment on the government decision.
In what appeared to a new government allegation, Tuesday’s notice also said that in preparing for June’s mass killings at a black church, Roof “attempted to incite violent action by others.”
Other factors contributing to the government’s decision, the notice said, to seek the death penalty are that Roof intended to kill more than one person “in a single criminal episode,” that he acted “after substantial planning and premeditation” and that among his victims were three people in their 70s and 80s, people “particularly vulnerable due to old age.”
Federal charges in the case accuse Roof of driving to Charleston, sitting through a Wednesday night Bible study gathering, then shooting and killing nine parishioners. He is an avowed white supremacist who has published his extremist racial views on the Internet, according to his federal indictment. In his Internet manifesto, Roof said he hoped to start a race war.
Among the victims was the late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Mother Emanuel, so called because it is the oldest AME church in the South, founded in 1816, and one of the largest black congregations south of Baltimore.
The killings, which have been recognized as one of the more notorious mass killings in recent American history, sparked nationwide outrage
and led to the lowering of the Confederate flag in front of South Carolina’s State House in Columbia.
It’s rare for the federal government to carry out an execution in a death penalty case. Since 1988, the government has sought the death penalty against 502 defendants. So far, only three have been put to death. Eleven others have been sentenced to death and are appealing.
The seven-page notice of intent was the climax of more than nine months of deliberations at the highest levels of the U.S. Justice Department.
Last July, Roof was indicted on hate crimes murder charges for the June 17 killings.
“The nature of the alleged crime and the resulting harm compelled this decision,” said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch late Tuesday afternoon in a statement on the decision.