Dylann Roof Sentenced To Death In South Carolina Church Slaughter

Dylann Roof, the 22-year-old white supremacist who killed nine churchgoers on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, was sentenced Tuesday to death.

While a federal jury of three white jurors and nine black jurors voted for the death sentence, a judge will still have to formally approve the decision. The alternative sentence is life without the possibility of parole.

Roof was found guilty of committing the massacre, a racist attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, on Dec. 15; his lawyers did not fight the claim that he had committed the crime.

According to CNN, the courtroom was quiet when the verdict was announced. The jurors did not look at Roof. Family members of the victims held each other; some were crying.

Others in the courtroom described Roof's reactions throughout the hearings and sentencing as detached, stone-cold and removed.

In the sentencing hearing, Roof represented himself. He offered relatively few objections as the prosecutors presented witness after witness to deliver impact statements, reflecting on the loved ones Roof killed.

“It is not fair to allow that much testimony to be heard by the jury when I am not presenting any evidence — from my family or anyone else — in mitigation,” Roof said in a motion to Judge Richard Gergel, according to the New York Times. “If I don’t present any mitigation evidence, the victim-impact evidence will take over the whole sentencing trial and guarantee that I get the death penalty.”

“He is the one who chose to kill nine people,” said Julius Richardson, assistant United States attorney. “He is the one who chose to go into a church to do it, and he’s the one who chose to do it to particularly good people.”

But the judge expressed concern about the amount of impact testimony, which some reform advocates say biases juries towards more extreme sentences.

Roof, for his part, did little to soften his image for the jury. Mere hours before the sentence was delivered, he said to the courtroom of his crime, “I still feel like I had to do it."

According to his own writings, Roof became radicalized into white supremacy after the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman. He became increasingly consumed by fears of race-based crimes directed against whites, followed white supremacist websites and wanted to start a race war.

He hasn't given up this ideology and has not expressed remorse for his crimes.

A few brief lines from his closing statement were all that indicated a wish for clemency.

"From what I've been told, I have a right to ask you to give me a life sentence, but I'm not sure what good that will do anyway," he said. "But what I will say is only one of you has to disagree with the other jurors."

Many advocates for criminal justice reform object to the death sentence, even for a crime as heartless as Roof's. In reaction to the sentencing, the Rev. Jesse Jackson tweeted the following:

A study from the University of South Carolina found a racial divide in attitudes towards Roof's punishment. While 65 percent of black Americans in South Carolina preferred he receive a life sentence without parole, 64 percent of whites favored the death penalty.

According to New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb, the Emanuel AME Church that Roof attacked opposes the death penalty on principle.

Steve Hurd, the husband of Cynthia, one of Roof's victims, told The Intercept that his wife would not have favored the death penalty, and he feels the same way.

"All I can say is, if they give him death, that’s the easy way out,” he said.

But Malcolm Graham, Cynthia Hurd's brother, told the Associated Press that he approved of the death sentence. There is "no room in a civilized society for hatred, racism and discrimination," he said.

The death penalty itself is actually quite rare and has declined in use in recent years. In 2016, only 20 Americans were killed for crimes. Death sentences are typically followed by long appeals processes, which can delay the sentence for years.

As the graph above shows, black Americans are disproportionately likely to receive a death penalty as a share of the population of the compared to white Americans. This is one reason opponents of the death penalty and some proponents of racial justice argue against the practice.

Photo credit: Charleston County Sheriff's Office