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Dylann Roof Sentenced to Death for Church massacre
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An admitted white supremacist was sentenced to death Tuesday for massacring nine black worshipers who'd invited him to study the Bible with them at a Charleston, S.C., church, ending a two-phase federal trial that exposed the killer's hate-fueled motives and plumbed the chasms of grief left by the victims' deaths.
The jury, the same that convicted Dylann Roof in the murders last month, announced its verdict after deliberating less than three hours.
Roof, 22, who represented himself in the penalty phase, did very little to persuade the panel to spare his life. He declined to present any witnesses or evidence, blocked standby defense lawyers' attempts to raise questions about his mental health, and suggested in his closing statement that arguing for life in prison wasn't worth the effort.
Roof now becomes the 63rd person on federal death row, and the first to be put there since Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015.
Nevertheless, it will likely be years before he is put to death; the federal government has put executions on hold out of concerns about lethal injection drugs, and appeals could put off the date even further. The last federal execution took place in 2003.
Prosecutors focused on the lives of the victims —
Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41
the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45
Depayne Middleton-Doctor, 49
Cynthia Hurd, 54
Myra Thompson, 59
Ethel Lance, 70
Susie Jackson, 87
Tywanza Sanders, 26.
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