RTX2UVH6
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof opened fire on a group of people attending a Bible study course at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine of them. The above photograph, courtesy of the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, was distributed the day of his arrest, on June 18, 2015. Reuters

A jury in the federal trial of 22-year-old white supremacist shooter Dylann Roof, who opened fire last summer on a group of black congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, found him guilty of all 33 federal counts Thursday afternoon.

Roof likely faces the death penalty at his sentencing hearing on Jan. 3.

After initially asking Judge Richard Gergel if he could represent himself, Roof backtracked, opting for a lawyer during the guilt portion of the hearing. For the sentencing portion, however, he will appear without an attorney.

The jury, selected a week prior to the sentencing portion of the hearing, consisted of two black women, eight white women, one white man and one black man.

The verdict ended a stretch of emotional testimony, including the recording of a 911 call made by survivor Polly Sheppard, a 72-year-old Emanuel AME congregant. In her witness testimony, Sheppard recalled that Roof told her on the night of the shooting that he would spare her life, so that she could live “to tell the story.”

Jurors also watched Roof’s confession video, in which he laughed as he admitted to the shooting the congregants.

Roof’s attorney David Bruck pushed for a life sentence, as opposed to the death penalty, in his arguments Thursday morning and claimed that the Columbia native had been motivated by fear rather than hate. The gunman, Bruck argued, held a contorted view of reality and had been radicalized by the racist things he’d grown up reading in books and online.

Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, turned this argument on its head, describing Roof as a martyr for a racist, hateful cause. Roof’s eagerness to confess, as shown in the video, was evidence of not mental illness, but rather his extremist racial hatred, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams argued.

Roof still faces a state trial on 13 charges, including nine for murder, on Jan. 17. Like their federal counterparts, state prosecutors will also pursue the death penalty.

RELATED STORIES