Jurors in the federal trial of a man accused of killing nine people in a black South Carolina church in 2015 saw surveillance footage Thursday that allegedly showed Dylann Roof entering the church and leaving again after the mass shooting.
A security camera outside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston captured the scene the evening of June 17, 2016, as each of the 11 other Bible study participants arrived. According to the Post and Courier, some could be seen talking on their phones, and others chatted with one another as they walked into the historic church known in the city as "Mother Emanuel."
Also seen on the video was Roof, the man accused of firing upon the congregants as they closed their eyes in a final prayer that night. Two adults and a child in the room during the shooting survived. The remainder of the session participants died, including the church’s pastor.
Roof, 22, faces the death penalty in the case, in which he is charged with 33 separate counts, including hate crimes. Testimony in his trial began on Wednesday.
The Post and Courier reported that the video showed a black Hyundai pulling into a parking space outside the church at 8:17 p.m. A man, identified as Roof with his signature bowl haircut, got out, dressed in a gray long-sleeve shirt and carrying a fanny pack.
The motion-activated camera came on again at 9:07 p.m. and captured Roof leaving the church. That time, however, he eased the door open and looked cautiously around before heading back to his car.
In his hand was a black pistol.
The footage from outside the church was a key part of law enforcement’s identification of Roof, a self-described white supremacist, as a suspect in the mass slaying. He was taken into custody in Shelby, North Carolina, the day after the shooting.
The second day of testimony in Roof's trial began Wednesday morning after the judge in the case denied a defense request for a mistrial, the Post and Courier reported. Defense lawyer David Bruck argued that prosecutors had erred by soliciting testimony from a survivor, Felicia Sanders, in which she described the defendant as "evil."
Sanders and her 11-year-old granddaughter survived the shooting, but she saw her son, Tywanza Sanders, 26, and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, gunned down.
Felicia Sanders testified that Roof sat through Bible study until the final prayer, at which time he pulled his pistol from his fanny pack and opened fire.
“Seventy-seven shots in that room from someone we thought was looking for the Lord,” Sanders testified. “But the whole time he was just evil, evil, as evil as can be.”
Bruck argued that Sanders' statements were prejudicial, and that they suggested a sentence for Roof before his guilt had been established, the Post and Courier reported. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel declined to strike the comments from the record but said he would remind jurors that Roof's punishment, if convicted, was theirs alone to determine.
The defense also objected to another comment Sanders made on the stand, in which she again called Roof evil and stated: “There’s no place on earth for him except the pit of hell.”
Gergel ruled, however, that Bruck himself elicited that statement from Sanders since it came during his cross-examination of her on the witness stand, the newspaper reported.
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