Charleston church mass murderer Dylann Roof insisted to jurors Tuesday that he wasn’t a racist filled with “hatred” as he tried to sway them out of sentencing him to death.
“I think it’s safe to say no one in their right mind wants to go in a church and kill people,” said Roof during a brief and incoherent closing arguments in his death-penalty trial.
“You may remember in my confession I said I had to do it. I guess that’s not really true. I didn’t have to do it, no one made me do it. What I meant when I said that was I felt like I had to do it and I still feel like I had to do it.”
Roof went on to say that he didn’t actually hate black people but told cops he didn’t “like what black people do,” according to reporters’ accounts on Twitter.
“If I’m filled with as much hate as I allegedly am, why would I lie about that?” he asked.
He went on to say that he’s been victimized by federal prosecutors who “hate” him.
“Of course they hate you,” Roof said. “Everyone hates you. I would say that, in this case, the prosecution along with anyone else who hates me are the ones who have been misled.”
“Anyone, including the prosecution, who thinks I’m full of hatred has no idea what real hate is,” he added.
Jurors will decide whether to sentence Roof, 22, convicted of gunning down worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015, to death or life in prison without parole.
“I have the right to ask you to give me a life sentence,” said Roof. “I don’t know what good that would do anyway.”
Prosecutors summed up earlier in the day by reminding jurors of the terror each of the nine victims endured as Roof gunned them down one by one.
“You now know about the last moments that they had together,” Richardson said. “They welcomed the defendant with a kind word, a bible and a handout and a chair right beside Rev. [Clementa] Pickney.”