After being sentenced to death in federal court for hate crime charges, the avowed white nationalist's final admission of guilt in a Charleston courtroom brings to a close another chapter in the story of the Mother Emanuel killings nearly two years after the attack.
The 23-year-old white supremacist, already sentenced to die on a federal conviction, received nine consecutive life terms without possibility of parole and three consecutive 30-year prison terms.
The convicted mass murderer will be transferred to a federal prison in IN where he will sit on federal death row. Though Roof's federal trial ended in January with a death sentence, Gergel had been reluctant to release records about his mental status while the state case was pending.
A judge Tuesday unsealed hundreds of pages of documents concerning Roof's mental status. Family members of the victims did provide more words. They spoke on forgiveness in the face of this tragedy.
Moments earlier, the families of the victims and the current pastor of the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church entered impact statements.
"We visit the crime scene every day", Manning said. Love is stronger than hate. "Hate will never win".
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The grandfather of Roof, Joe Roof, added, "We are just sick over what has happened to these families". We have them in our prayers every night, every meal. It's the only thing we can do.
Newly-released documents in the Dylann Roof federal trial include a handwritten letter to prosecutors in which he claimed his defense attorneys used scare tactics, threats, manipulation and outright lies against him. He readlily acknowledged his crimes were racist acts undertaken for the objective of "waking up white people. shooting up a black church was the most outrageous thing he could do". During the federal trial, Assistant U.S. AttorneyJay Richardson said Dylan reloaded seven times during the shooting, pulling the trigger more than 75 times.
Before sentencing Roof, Judge Nicholson heard members of historically black Emanuel AME Church describe the toll the June 2015 shooting took on them and their community. Roof had hoped the massacre would "start a race war", he told the police.
Roof told prosecutors he wanted no part of this strategy, which he labeled "a lie".
His racist viewpoints were discovered after the shooting in an online manifesto and echoed during his federal trial.
"I want everyone to understand that nothing is all bad, and Dylann is not all bad", the elder Roof said. He has been held at the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston County awaiting his state trial.
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