U.S. files 33 counts over S.C. massacre

Indictment cites racial motivation

Dylan Roof, appearing in court July 16 in Charleston, S.C., was indicted Wednesday on federal charges including hate crimes, in the killing of nine people at a church in Charleston.
Dylan Roof, appearing in court July 16 in Charleston, S.C., was indicted Wednesday on federal charges including hate crimes, in the killing of nine people at a church in Charleston.

WASHINGTON -- The man accused of killing nine black church members last month in Charleston, S.C., was indicted Wednesday on 33 federal counts, including hate crimes, firearms violations and obstructing the practice of religion, making him eligible for the death penalty.

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AP

In announcing the charges Wednesday at the Justice Department, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the families of the victims would be consulted as prosecutors decide whether to seek the death penalty under the new counts.

Dylann Roof, 21, was motivated by racial hatred and a desire to commit a "notorious attack" when he opened fire inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, according to the federal grand jury indictment.

The charges announced Wednesday by Attorney General Loretta Lynch are in addition to state murder charges filed against Roof days after the shooting.

The Justice Department has not decided whether its prosecution will happen before the state's case, Lynch said. But because South Carolina has no state hate-crime law, federal charges were needed to adequately deal with a defendant who "decided to seek out and murder African-Americans because of their race," she said.

The federal grand jury indictment accuses Roof -- who is white and had appeared in photos waving Confederate flags -- of setting his sights for months on murderous attacks on blacks because of their race and of wanting to carry out violence in a black church.

The indictment describes a personal manuscript attributed to Roof, which decried integration and used racial slurs to refer to blacks. He planned to increase racial tensions throughout the country and seek retribution for perceived wrongs he thought had been committed against white people, Lynch said.

"I have no choice," the manifesto reads. "I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me."

The manifesto also talks about a belief that blacks are inferior to whites, that they were happy when they lived under slavery and that whites need to take the country back. Blacks are "the biggest problem of America," it says.

When it came to picking a target, the indictment says, Roof purposefully selected the historic church -- a centuries-old religious institution rooted in South Carolina history -- "in order to make his attack more notorious," according to the indictment.

Lynch also said Roof took advantage of his victims' generosity.

"Met with welcome by the ministers of the church and its parishioners, he joined them in their Bible study group," Lynch said. "The parishioners had Bibles. Dylann Roof had his .45-caliber Glock pistol and eight magazines loaded with hollow point bullets."

The federal indictment issued Wednesday names each of the victims: Emanuel pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Ethel Lee Lance, the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr. and Myra Thompson.

It also names two of the people who survived the massacre, Felicia Sanders and Polly Shepard, and a surviving minor who is identified only by the initials K.M.

Several of the counts against Roof -- including weapons violations and obstructing the practice of religion resulting in death -- are punishable by death. Under federal law, a hate crime does not, by itself, carry a possible death sentence.

The indictment also notes that three of the victims of the shooting were between the ages of 70 and 87. According to the federal death-penalty statute, one of the aggravating factors that can warrant a death sentence is if victims are "particularly vulnerable due to old age."

Lynch said the Justice Department's decision over whether to pursue the death penalty would be made after consulting with victims' families, some of whom expressed forgiveness for Roof when he appeared in court after the shooting.

The Justice Department has filed a couple of hundred hate-crime cases in the past five years. But even in circumstances in which the motive seems clear-cut, it can still be challenging to prove that a defendant was primarily driven by a victim's race or religion as opposed to other factors, such as drug addiction or mental illness.

Last year, a federal appeals court in Ohio overturned hate-crime convictions against Amish men and women accused in beard- and hair-cutting attacks against fellow Amish people who were thought to have defied the community leader.

The court held that the jury had received incorrect instructions about how to weigh the role of religion in the attacks and that prosecutors should have had to prove the assaults wouldn't have happened but for religious motives.

Their sentences were reduced.

But prosecutors in the Roof case appear to have a lot to work with, said Jens Ohlins, a law professor at Cornell University who has followed the case.

It's going to be, he predicted, "very, very easy for a federal jury to conclude that the crime was committed for racial reasons because of the mountains of evidence that Roof left behind."

Beyond the federal charges, South Carolina Solicitor Scarlett Wilson of Charleston County has won state indictments against Roof on nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Wilson has said she is considering state death-penalty charges against Roof but has not made a decision.

State court documents recently filed in Charleston County in Roof's case make clear that Wilson also is looking at the motive in the case.

In a July 17 order, issued in response to a Wilson motion, state circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson ruled Roof must produce handwriting samples in accordance with State Law Enforcement Division procedures and in the presence of an expert in handwriting analysis.

Nicholson's order said searches of Roof's known residences and vehicle turned up "handwritten notes, lists, etc." that the state "believes could contain relevant evidence of guilt and motive" in Roof's case.

"Accordingly, it is important that the State confirm the authorship of the collected handwritten material by expert comparison to known exemplars of the defendant's handwriting," the motion said.

Under state law, a solicitor like Wilson unilaterally decides whether to file death-penalty charges.

Last week, a judge scheduled his trial in the state charges for July 11, 2016, a little more than a year after the church massacre.

Information for this article was contributed by Eric Tucker and Meg Kinnard of The Associated Press; by Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times; by John Monk of The State; and by Mark Berman, Sari Horwitz and Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post.

A Section on 07/23/2015

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