A federal grand jury has sentenced mass shooter Dylann Roof to death for killing nine black parishioners inside a Charleston church in 2015.

Roof was convicted of federal hate crimes last month. The same jury that handed down that decision took less than three hours to deliberate before deciding on the death penalty as Roof’s sentence.
The sentencing came after thoroughly strange closing statement from Roof in which he denied acting out of hatred:

Anyone that thinks I’m filled with hatred has no idea what real hatred is. They don’t know anything about me. They don’t know what real hatred looks like. They think they do, but they don’t […] I would say that in this case, the prosecution and anyone else who hates me, are the ones that have been misled.

Though it was always clear that Roof had done the crime he was accused of, the jury was forced to deliberate on whether he deserved the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole for the crime. In his closing statement, Roof reiterated that the jury had promised to do what they think is right, and that only one of them needed to dissent to stop the death penalty being applied to him.

He did concede that he “wasn’t sure what good it would do” to ask the jury to spare his life.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a statement about the verdict:

Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Getty Images.