Dylann Roof

A Prayer Circle Targeted

Emanuel AME is one of the oldest Black churches in the South and a landmark of Black religious and political life in Charleston.^[8] On the evening of June 17, 2015, it hosted a weeknight Bible study in the church’s fellowship hall.^[5][9]

Roof walked into the church and joined the group.^[9] Survivors later testified that the shootings began when the parishioners closed their eyes to pray during the study.^[1][6] At some point after sitting through roughly 45 minutes of Bible study, he opened fire with a handgun.^[5][9]

Authorities said he ultimately fired 77 shots as many worshippers tried to hide under tables.^[9] All nine parishioners killed were African American.^[4] Among them were longtime congregants like Susie Jackson, who sang in the choir, and the beloved pastor Pinckney.^[2][5] A tenth person was injured but survived.^[5]

In the days that followed, the shooting was investigated and charged as a hate crime.^[2][3] Federal prosecutors later alleged that Roof specifically targeted the Black Bible study “in order to interfere with their exercise of religion.”^[3]

From Minor Charges to Open Extremism

Roof was born on April 3, 1994, and grew up in South Carolina.^[5] As a young adult he drifted on the margins: former classmates described him as someone who had Black friends but who also made racist jokes and “Southern pride” comments that increasingly troubled people who knew him.^[10]

In early 2015, a few months before the massacre, he landed on police radar for low‑level offenses around a Columbia shopping mall. Twice that year, security at the Columbiana Centre called officers about Roof.^[10] On February 28, he was dressed in all black and “acting bizarrely” in stores; when officers searched him—with his consent—they found several strips of Suboxone, a powerful medication used to treat opioid addiction.^[10] He was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession and banned from the mall.^[5][10]

On March 13, Columbia police again encountered Roof while he sat in his parked car near a downtown park. A search of the vehicle turned up a forearm grip for an AR‑15‑style rifle and six unloaded magazines, but no charges followed because possessing the items was not illegal.^[5][6]

Despite the drug arrest, Roof was able to obtain a handgun. According to authorities and relatives, he turned 21 in April 2015 and received a gun from his father for his birthday, later purchasing the pistol used in the attack with birthday money at a retail shop in West Columbia.^[5][10] FBI Director James Comey would later say Roof’s February drug case was incorrectly entered as a felony in a database, then treated as a misdemeanor, contributing to lapses that allowed the purchase to go through.^[5]

On April 26, Roof was arrested again at the Columbiana Centre—this time for trespassing in violation of his ban, which the mall extended for three more years.^[5][10]

Meanwhile, his visible identification with white supremacy hardened. On Facebook, his profile photo showed him in a dark jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid‑era South Africa and white‑ruled Rhodesia, both symbols popular with modern white supremacists.^[7][10] Other photos posted online showed him posing with a Confederate flag and a car bearing a “Confederate States of America” plate.^[5][10]

“I Think This Is the Guy”: The Manhunt and Capture

The night of the shooting, Charleston’s police chief quickly labeled the attack a hate crime.^[11] Authorities released photos of the suspect and his car from the church surveillance system, and Roof’s father and uncle contacted police to identify him and the vehicle.^[12]

By the next morning, the search had spread across state lines. In Shelby, North Carolina—about four hours’ drive from Charleston—florist Debbie Dills was driving to work when she noticed a black Hyundai with South Carolina plates and a small Confederate flag.^[13] The driver, with a distinctive blond bowl haircut, looked like the man in the wanted photos she had seen on the news.^[13]

“I think this is the guy from Charleston who shot the people. I’m right beside him,” Dills told her boss on the phone as she tailed the car, later recalling her words.^[13] She followed the vehicle for about 35 miles while her boss alerted King’s Mountain police.^[13] Officers soon converged on the highway and pulled the car over. Roof did not resist when they arrested him.^[13]

A.45‑caliber pistol was found in the car.^[5] Roof was taken back to South Carolina, where he was housed on suicide watch in protective custody at the Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston.^[12]

A Digital Trail of Hate

As investigators searched his belongings and online footprint, a portrait emerged of a young man animated by racist ideology and a desire for notoriety.

First Court Appearance and Public Forgiveness

Two days after the shooting, Roof appeared via video before a Charleston judge for a bond hearing, facing state charges including nine counts of murder and a weapons offense.^[12][15] Relatives of all nine victims addressed him, many through tears.^[15]

In an extraordinary display that drew national attention, some family members told Roof they forgave him even as they described their anguish.^[16] That mixture of grief and grace would become a recurring theme in the courtroom as the legal process unfolded.

Hate‑Crime Indictment and a Federal Trial

On the federal side, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced five days after the shooting that a grand jury had indicted Roof on 33 counts, including hate‑crime charges and obstruction of the free exercise of religion—charges that carried the possibility of a federal death sentence.^[3][6]

In July 2015, at his federal arraignment, his lawyer David Bruck told the court that Roof wished to plead guilty, but the defense was waiting to see whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty.^[3][5] The government eventually did.

Roof’s federal trial began in Charleston on December 7, 2016.^[4][5] Over days of testimony, survivors and relatives reconstructed what had happened inside Mother Emanuel.^[1][6] One survivor described how the attack began when the group closed their eyes to pray.^[6] Others spoke about the enduring void left in their families and congregation.^[1]

Jennifer Pinckney, widow of Clementa Pinckney, told jurors how she shielded the couple’s young daughter in her husband’s office as shots rang out in the nearby fellowship hall.^[6] Throughout the proceedings, observers described Roof as placid and, at times, unapologetic as he listened to the testimony.^[1]

In December, the jury found him guilty on all 33 counts, many of them related to hate crimes and obstruction of religion.^[4][6]

Competency, Self‑Representation, and the Penalty Phase

The question of Roof’s mental state shadowed the case without ever altering its course. As trial approached, his own standby counsel asked the judge to order a competency evaluation, over Roof’s objections.^[4] After two days of closed‑door testimony, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel ruled that Roof understood the nature of the proceedings and was competent to stand trial.^[4][16]

The State Case: An “Insurance Policy” of Life Sentences

Even after the federal verdict, Roof still faced a separate state trial on nine murder charges, where local prosecutors had also been seeking the death penalty.^[17][19] That proceeding had been on hold until the federal case concluded.^[19]

Behind the scenes, 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson began talking with victims’ families about a different path. In a letter to them, she described her goal as securing an “insurance policy” to the federal conviction by obtaining a state guilty plea and life sentence, then moving Roof into federal custody, where his death sentence could be carried out.^[19][20] Many relatives, some opposed to the death penalty on religious grounds, also expressed a strong desire to avoid reliving the evidence in a second capital trial.^[6][19]

On April 10, 2017, Roof appeared in a Charleston courtroom and pleaded guilty to state murder charges and related counts.^[5][6][19] Judge J.C. Nicholson imposed nine consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.^[5][6]

Before sentencing, members of Emanuel AME told the court about the toll the attack had taken on their lives and community.^[6] Pastor Eric Manning spoke of how its impact had been “far reaching” but said the church’s resilience would continue to inspire others.^[6]

Relatives of the dead again showed a spectrum of responses. Blondelle Gadsden, whose sister Myra Thompson was killed, spoke of hoping Roof would repent.^[6] Eva Dilligard, whose sister Susie Jackson died in the shooting, said she believed Roof deserved the death penalty.^[6]

Roof’s grandfather, Columbia attorney Joe Roof, also addressed the court, telling the judge, “I want everyone to understand that nothing is all bad, and Dylann is not all bad,” and saying he and his wife prayed nightly for the Emanuel families.^[6]

Under the plea agreement, Roof received life in prison on the state charges, sparing survivors and families the ordeal of another trial.^[6] Wilson’s deal cleared the way for him to be transferred into federal custody.^[19][20]

From Charleston Jail to Federal Death Row

After the state plea, Roof, then 23, returned to the local jail while formally placed in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, pending transfer to a federal Bureau of Prisons facility.^[1][6] Prison officials and local records show he had been held at the Al Cannon Detention Center since shortly after his arrest.^[12][21]

Within weeks, marshals moved him out of South Carolina.^[6][21] Male federal death‑row prisoners are typically housed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, home to the federal execution chamber.^[21] By late April 2017, records confirmed Roof had arrived there.^[5][21]

He joined a small group of men awaiting execution under federal sentences.^[21] As of a later report, he was held under maximum security at Terre Haute, on federal death row and awaiting execution.^[18]

Appeals, a Supreme Court Rebuff, and a Narrowing Death Row

Roof’s case continued through the courts for years after the verdicts. In August 2021, a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld his convictions and federal death sentence, writing that the legal record could not fully capture “the full horror” of what he had done.^[5][18]

His lawyers petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that he had been wrongly allowed to represent himself during sentencing and that disputes over his mental health had been mishandled.^[18] In October 2022, the Court denied his appeal without comment.^[5][18]

While those appeals played out, the federal government’s approach to the death penalty shifted. In 2021, the Justice Department instituted a moratorium on federal executions to review protocols and procedures.^[22] In December 2024, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row, converting their punishments to life without parole.^[22] Three men were expressly excluded from clemency: the gunman in the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber—and the shooter who killed nine worshippers at Mother Emanuel in Charleston.^[22] The White House later noted that cases involving terrorism and hate‑motivated mass murder fell outside the scope of the commutations.^[5][22]

Roof therefore remains under a federal death sentence even as executions are paused.

The Church and the Families Left Behind

Even amid trials and appeals, Emanuel AME’s congregation has worked to keep its focus on remembrance and resilience. Pastor Manning told the court that the church’s capacity to endure would continue “to inspire not only the church members … but we would pray the entire state, country and world.”^[6]

Survivors carry the memories of that night in their own bodies. Felicia (Felecia) Sanders, who lost both her son and her aunt in the attack, has described how she survived by playing dead on top of her granddaughter during the gunfire.^[2] Years later, when told that the state would accept Roof’s guilty plea and forgo a second death‑penalty trial, she responded with two words passed through her attorney: “Praise God.”^[1][19]

Loved ones like the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother was killed at Mother Emanuel, have spoken of relief that Roof will never be free again, coupled with an ongoing grief that no sentence can erase.^[19]

The man who tried to trigger a race war now spends his days alone in a cell in Indiana, his writings and actions chronicled in court records rather than inspiring imitators on the streets.^[6][18] The community he attacked, meanwhile, continues to gather for Bible study and prayer in the same fellowship hall where the shooting began—insisting that their story is not defined by the killer but by the lives he tried, and failed, to extinguish.