Roof’s lawyer: He wants to plead guilty

Dylann Roof’s lawyer David Bruck told a Charleston federal magistrate Friday morning in a hushed courtroom that his client wants to plead guilty to federal hate crimes in the June killings of nine African-Americans at a downtown Charleston church.

But Bruck said that until he knows whether the federal government will seek the death penalty, he cannot advise Roof on how to plead.

In lieu of a plea from Roof, Magistrate Judge Bristow Marchant entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Roof, who is 21, white and from the Columbia area, is accused of driving to Charleston, sitting through a Wednesday night Bible study gathering, then shooting and killing nine parishioners June 17 at the historic “Mother” Emanuel AME church.

He faces a 33-count federal indictment charging him July 22 with hate crimes and firearms violations, some of which make him eligible for the death penalty should he be found guilty. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty by the U.S. Justice Department, which has an extensive review process for death penalty-eligible cases, could take months.

By announcing publicly that Roof wants to plead guilty, Bruck sent a message to prosecutors and to the victims’ families: You can avoid a long guilt-or-innocence trial where the focus is on Roof and a lot of painful and graphic details about the crime, or Roof can plead guilty, get a life sentence and the emphasis will be on the victims and their lives.

Just before court in another room at the federal courthouse, Bruck and his fellow defense attorney, Michael O’Connell, met privately with victims’ families and some of their lawyers, including Steve Schmutz and Andy Savage, and federal prosecutors, including the U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, Bill Nettles.

In that meeting, which lasted only a few minutes, Bruck told the families his goal is to find a way to get his client a life sentence and that he is looking for a way to remove the death penalty from consideration, according to sources familiar with the meeting. The sources were not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.

Friday’s onlookers included relatives of victims and the three survivors, their lawyers, journalists, prosecutors and a few onlookers. The arraignment served as the first time the government’s charges were formally presented to Roof. From now on, federal Judge Richard Gergel will preside.

When Marchant gave relatives and representatives of the victims and survivors a chance to speak, six came forward, including Gracyn Doctor, daughter of the slain the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49.

“I would like to let this young man know that though he has taken the most precious thing in my life, he will not take not take my joy,” Doctor said, deliberately not looking at Roof behind her as she spoke.

“Sin will not win, and I pray the Lord will have mercy on his soul,” Doctor said.

Friday was Roof’s first appearance in federal court and the first time relatives of the people killed have spoken to Roof in person. At a June 19 bond hearing in state court after he was arrested, victims spoke, moving a nation with their offerings of forgiveness. But at that time, Roof was in a nearby room, connected to the proceedings by closed-circuit television.

At a later state hearing, held in mid-July at the Charleston County courthouse across the street, Roof and the relatives were in the same courtroom, but the relatives did not address the court.

Roof, dressed in gray-and-white-striped Charleston County jail garb, was manacled in chains hand and foot for the hearing that lasted about 20 minutes.

He spoke several times, answering “yes,” in a quiet, somewhat hoarse voice to Marchant’s questions about whether he was indigent and thus qualified for court-appointed lawyers and whether he wished for Bruck and O’Connell to represent him.

Roof waived bond and is being held until trial.

Roof was transferred earlier in the morning to federal court under heavy guard and, except for a few seconds when he left the jail, was largely out of public view until he entered the courtroom shortly after 11 a.m. Members of his family, who live in Columbia, were not present.

Since just after Roof’s arrest, his father, Benn Roof, a Columbia contractor, has declined to speak to reporters, as has his grandfather, Columbia lawyer Joseph Roof.

Bruck, a professor at Washington & Lee University School of Law, has been involved in hundreds of state and federal death penalty cases through the years after getting his start in South Carolina in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He represented Susan Smith, the S.C. mother serving a life sentence for killing her two young sons. And this spring, he represented the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, who was sentenced to death.

Top U.S. Justice Department civil rights prosecutor Paige Fitzgerald, who was in court Friday, was named to the case this week. She won a national law enforcement award in 2008 for her work in a successful cold case against a former Ku Klux Klansman for the racially motivated murders of two young black men killed in Mississippi more than 40 years earlier.

Death penalty trials have two stages, one for guilt or innocence, and a second stage in which a jury decides whether a guilty defendant should get the death penalty. For legal reasons, a defendant cannot make an informed decision on how to plead until prosecutors announce what they will do.

Although the federal hate crimes filed against Roof potentially carry the death penalty, as do the state murder charges, neither federal nor state prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty. Both state and federal prosecutors, however, say they are considering seeking the death penalty.

The federal indictment says Roof on June 17 concealed a weapon and sat next to the church’s pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, then waited for some time before before opening fire, killing Pinckney and eight others.

Roof grew up in Columbia, bouncing between public schools in Lexington and Richland counties, and didn’t get beyond the ninth grade. His lawyers have said he has a high school equivalency degree.

Roof’s family is represented by John Delgado. Beyond issuing a statement expressing grief about the killings, each has refused to speak to reporters beyond initial statements just after the killings.

Law officers are exploring how Roof came by his white supremacist views, displayed on what officials say was his website.

The federal indictment, considerably more detailed than state indictments in the case, cites racist statements, racist slurs and Confederate flag and other photographs of and by Roof published on his website.

“In the months before June 17... Roof decided to attack African-Americans because of their race,” the 15-page indictment says. “He further decided to attack African-American worshipers in an African-American church in order to make his attack more notorious.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 11:14 AM with the headline "Roof’s lawyer: He wants to plead guilty."