The man who gunned down 9 black church members in Charleston, South Carolina was sentenced to death today by the jury, making him the first person to get the death penalty for federal hate crimes, according to the Associated Press.
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof smuggled a semiautomatic handgun into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston and opened fired. Nine people were killed including the pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney.
In December 2016, Roof was found guilty of 33 counts of federal hate crime charges related to the church shooting. The 22-year-old insisted on representing himself in the penalty phase, and told jurors he did not have mental health problems.
In a video confession shot shortly after he was arrested, Roof admitted that he had targeted blacks in his crime.
(NTD Television)
