A federal jury convicted Dylann Roof in the racially motivated slayings of nine black church members in South Carolina, the Associated Press reports. The jury reached its verdict after less than two hours of deliberations. It convicted the 22-year-old white man of hate crimes and other charges. The same jury will return Jan. 3 to decide if Roof should be sentenced to death for the June 2015 attack at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Roof stared ahead as the verdict was read, much as he has throughout the trial. He is scheduled to face another death penalty trial in state court early next year.
Roof’s guilt in the killings was essentially uncontested; prosecutors showed the jury his interview with FBI agents in which he calmly confessed to the killings and complained that he was “worn out” after pumping more than 60 bullets into his victims. “There’s no win in this. We still have grieving families, a grieving community. There’s some closure, but there’s no win in this thing,” said Kevin Singleton, 43, whose mother, Myra Thompson, was killed, the Washington Post reports. “We just want to move forward and put this behind us and try to get on with our lives. Nothing good came out of any of this.”