CHARLESTON, S.C. — The death-penalty trial of admitted white-supremacist killer Dylann Roof got under way Wednesday morning with his lawyer conceding the facts were “open and shut” — and saying the only question left was the issue of punishment.
Defense lawyer David Bruck told jurors that he expected them to find Roof, 22, guilty but hoped they would spare him from execution for slaughtering nine black churchgoers in a bid to touch off a race war last year.
“Remember, life means life in prison,” Bruck said, according to tweets from a WIS10 TV reporter covering the trial.
Bruck’s opening statement came after prosecutor Assistant US Attorney Jay Richardson vividly described Roof’s deadly rampage during a Bible study session at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
As the victims stood to pray, Roof pulled out a Glock .45-caliber pistol and repeatedly shot the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who had given Roof a Bible and a seat next to him, Richardson said.
Roof continued firing at other victims, coolly replacing the hangun’s magazine when he ran out of bullets, but intentionally left one woman, Polly Sheppard, alive “to tell his story,” Richardson said.
Roof also told a dying victim, Tywanza Sanders — who tried in vain to stop the massacre — why he did it, saying, “Y’all are raping our white women. Y’all are taking over the world,” the prosecutor said.
Before heading to the church on June 17, 2015, Roof typed out a manifesto that was posted online via a Russian computer server that Richardson described as a “call to arms” directed at white people.
As spectators were leaving the tightly packed courtroom following the conclusion of opening statements, two women collapsed in their seats in the courthouse.
Paramedics took one, a victim’s relative, for hospital treatment, while the other — an unidentified white woman — remained at the courthouse, officials said.
The prosecution’s first witness Wednesday afternoon will be Sanders’ mother, Felecia Sanders, who is the only other adult to survive the bloodbath.
Sanders and her 11-year-old granddaughter both escaped death by hiding under the round table around which everyone had gathered in the church basement.
Sanders was in the courtroom for opening statements, along with Gary Washington, the son of victim Ethel Lance. Washington is deaf, and followed the proceedings with the help of a sign-language interpreter.