Accused South Carolina church shooter defended by attorneys again

A death penalty trial has two parts: a guilt phase and sentencing phase.

Prosecutors say the confession video was recorded by law enforcement not long after Roof was captured the morning after the shootings in Shelby, North Carolina.

Testimony has ended for the day.

The ruling reinstated a defense team that includes attorney David Bruck, who also defended the man sentenced to die for his role in bombing the Boston Marathon, as The Two-Way has reported. He agreed to allow Roof’s parents, grandmother and grandfather, who is a lawyer, to be in the courtroom for the trial even though they are potential witnesses.

Lawyers for Dylann Roof want to delay picking a jury in his federal death penalty trial because of the publicity surrounding the mistrial in a former police officer’s case.

Dylann Roof’s first real test acting as his own attorney is coming as he faces off with prosecutors over pretrial motions in his federal death penalty trial over the killing of nine black parishioners at a SC church.

The portrait of Dylann Roof that emerged Friday from a taped confession was that of a confused, wannabe warrior who soaked up hate on the internet and waged a mission of no clear goal against people who had done him no wrong.

The first video, above, shows Roof entering the church while wearing a fanny pack-type holster. Then after Gergel ruled, the 22-year-old described by his lawyers as a “ninth-grade dropout” quietly slid back into the far left chair at the defense table.

Judge Gergel said Monday that he would allow Roof’s attorneys to represent him in the guilt phase, which begins Wednesday. He urged the jurors to convict Roof on 33 federal counts, including hate crimes.

Authorities have said Roof meant to start a race war, a goal outlined in racist rantings found in a leather-bound journal the back floorboard of his auto after his arrest along with the gun he used.

While some defendants wait until they’ve been sentenced to resign themselves to the death penalty, others act during the trial to swing the jury in the direction of capital punishment.

If Roof’s request is denied and he is forced to represent himself at trial, he would have the opportunity to question witnesses and family members of the victims.

A panel of 12 jurors, five black jurors and one person of another race were selected, according to court officials who said the alternates will not be picked until the end of the trial. Martin, a young unarmed black man, was killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012.

On Monday, a jury couldn’t come to a verdict in the monthlong murder trial of Michael Slager. Homeland Security patrol the streets outside the Federal Courthouse Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, in Charleston, S.C., during Dylann Roof’s trial. Clementa Pinckney, and attempting to kill three others at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015.

Roof’s lawyers have tried to spotlight his age at the time of the crimes – 21 – or that he didn’t resist when he was arrested.