Up Next

In this image from the video uplink from the detention center to the courtroom, Dylann Roof appears at the Centralized Bond Hearing Court on June 19, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina. Roof is charged with nine counts of murder and firearms charges in the shooting deaths at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17. Photo by Grace Beahm-Pool/Getty Images, File
3 min read

Charleston church shooter found guilty on all charges

Dylann Roof will defend himself during the sentencing phase in January

Clinton Yates @clintonyates
Topics:
Dylann Roof Mass Shootings Black Lives Matter All Day

Up Next From Culture

    5:14 PMThe man who walked into a Charleston, South Carolina, church and massacred nine people has been found guilty by a jury in the federal trial on the shootings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. This case had enough twists to make a reasonable person believe that, even with a confession on video, Dylann Roof might somehow walk away scot-free. That didn’t happen. He was found guilty on 33 counts.

    Roof, 22, plans to defend himself during the next phase of the trial: the sentencing process. Because the death penalty is on the table, he will quite literally be arguing for his life. To be clear, this wasn’t just a case of a kid who was misguided with a gun and snapped. This was a long-planned, thoughtfully orchestrated decision that came complete with a manifesto. If you’ve forgotten exactly what his deal was, he’s one of those guys who’s so obsessed with the concept of supremacy that he believes that any situation in which black people are allowed their own agency is an instant threat to all white people everywhere.

    He is the type who thinks that racism is only equal to calling people the N-word or burning crosses on front lawns. The type of person who doesn’t understand that his own home state had one of the biggest slave ports in the country and is still a place where the legacy of those atrocities is not exactly well-addressed. Without getting too far into normalizing the depths of his racism, his goal was to start a war between whites and blacks. And as a FBI agent told him after he was brought in for questioning, he failed.

    “Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every white person is treated as if they had a slave-owning ancestor. This applies in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive,” Roof once wrote.

    Worth noting has been the resiliency of not just Charleston, but the church community specifically that was ripped apart by a murderous racist. Some of them have been present throughout the trial, even though it’s been difficult to even look at Roof’s face. It’s easy to forget that there were in fact three survivors in this situation. Here are some reactions.

    Some news agencies chose to use the specific phrase “white supremacist” in describing Roof. Others didn’t.

    For many black people, there was a natural gut reaction that is clearly rooted in years of systemic racism and oppression not only holding us back, but not being adjudicated correctly when it takes black lives.

    At one point, the judge said that there were victims on both sides, a spurious categorization that we can only presume comes in the fact that Roof’s life is effectively over as we know it, as well. Either way, people noticed.

    https://twitter.com/knflkkollective/status/807395678775373825

    https://twitter.com/EdmondScofield/status/809499533423935488

    https://twitter.com/clintorious_BIG/status/809499728689774592

    Ultimately, no verdict will bring back the nine lives lost on that awful Wednesday.

    The sentencing phase begins Jan. 3, 2017.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.