DYLANN ROOF GUILTY OF 9 BLACK MURDERS - ALL LIVES MATTER

DYLANN ROOF FOUND GUILTY OF 9 BLACK MURDERS - ALL LIVES MATTER:

THANK YOU NIKKI HALEY.

ROOF NEEDS THE DEATH PENALTY SENTENCE.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT ELIMINATE CONSEQUENCES WHEN IT COMES TO ACTS OF PREMEDITATED MURDER.


Sources: Fox News, YouTube


***** DYLANN Roof convicted in Charleston church mass


A jury in South Carolina Thursday convicted Dylann Roof in the shootings that killed nine black church members during a Bible study in Charleston last year, a verdict that could lead to a death sentence for the self-avowed white supremacist.

The jury of nine white people and three black people deliberated less than two hours before returning a verdict, finding him guilty on all counts against him.

Roof, 22, faced 33 federal charges, including hate crimes and obstruction of the practice of religion.

Roof just stared ahead as the verdict was read, much as he has throughout the trial. Victims's relatives held hands and squeezed one another's arms.

One woman nodded her head every time the clerk said "guilty."

The same jury is set to return Jan. 3 to consider whether Roof should be sentenced to die for the June 2015 attack at Emanuel AME Church.

He is slated to face another death penalty trial in state court early next year.

Minutes after the verdict was read, Roof told U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel he wanted to represent himself during the penalty phase.

He said at the start of the trial that he wanted attorneys in the guilt phase, but not in the penalty phase.

His lawyers said in a court filing they feared he wanted to avoid embarrassing testimony that the defense might have presented to try to get a jury to spare his life.

"It is my hope that the survivors, the families & the people of South Carolina can find some peace in the fact that justice has been served," Gov. Nikki Haley tweeted.

The verdict came after days of emotional testimony from people who survived the shooting and witnessed the aftermath.

During closing arguments earlier in the day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams told jurors Roof waited until the Bible study group had its eyes closed for prayer before he opened fire.

DYLANN ROOF CONFESSED TO 9 MURDERS (NOT INSANE)

DYLANN ROOF CONFESSED TO 9 MURDERS (NOT INSANE):

FORGIVE HIM BUT HE STILL DESERVES THE DEATH PENALTY.

LAUGHING WHILE CONFESSING HIS CRIMES DOESN'T MEAN HE'S CRAZY.


Sources: ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Youtube


***** Dylann Roof Laughed During Church Slaying Confession to FBI


Dylann Roof wanted the world to know he hated black people and thought they were criminals.

He thought about attacking drug dealers, but they might shoot back.

So, he told the FBI, he picked a historic black church in Charleston he had learned about online.

In a videotaped confession shown Friday during his death penalty trial, Roof laughed several times and made exaggerated gun motions as he recounted the massacre.

He explained that he wanted to leave at least one person alive to tell what happened and complained that his victims "complicated things" when they hid under tables.

Forty-five minutes into the interview, an FBI agent decided to tell him nine people died in the June 17, 2015, shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

"There wasn't even that many people in there," Roof said incredulously. "Are you lying to me?"

The blurry video made it hard to see his face. After being told the details, an agent asked how he felt.

"Well, it makes me feel bad," said Roof, who earlier in the confession estimated he might have killed five.

Roof's lawyers have conceded that he carried out the attack and are concentrating on convincing jurors to spare his life in the second phase of the trial.

Later Friday, Roof's handwritten journal was read aloud. It was full of dubious, offensive racial claims about blacks and Jews, from stories about African-Americans enjoying slavery to segregation keeping white people from being dragged down.

"How could our faces, skin color and body structure be so different, but our brains exactly the same?" Roof wrote.

His video confession came about 17 hours after the shooting. FBI agents drove to Shelby, North Carolina, where he was arrested. The plane that would take him back to Charleston was not going to arrive for a few hours. So FBI agent Michael Stansbury got permission to take a chance and interview him immediately.

It paid off. After reading Roof his rights and engaging in brief small talk, an agent asked Roof what he was doing on the night of the killings.

"I went to that church in Charleston and, uh, I did it," he said.

Roof said he wanted to kill black people because they rape white women daily. Agents asked why he chose Emanuel AME. He said online it was listed as the oldest black church in the South, and there probably would not be any white people there.

"I knew that would be a place to get a small amount of black people in one area," Roof said, later adding, "They're in church, they weren't criminals or anything."

Earlier testimony from survivor Felicia Sanders said Roof sat through the Bible study beside pastor Clementa Pinckney and opened fire as the rest of the group of 12 closed their eyes for a final prayer.

"I was sitting there thinking about whether I should do it or not. That's why I sat there for 15 minutes. I could have walked out," Roof said.

Church surveillance videos indicate Roof was actually inside for about 45 minutes.

Roof, as he has for much of the trial, hardly looked up as the confession played, mostly just shuffling papers in front of him.

He told FBI agents questioning him that he could never look at the families of the victims. And throughout the trial, he has not looked at the dozens of family members in the courtroom.

Roof meticulously prepared for the shootings. He carried eight magazines that could each hold 13 bullets. But he only loaded 11 bullets so he could shoot 88 times — a revered number among white supremacists, standing for Heil Hitler because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

In the confession, Roof said he left bullets in a magazine so that he could kill himself after the slayings but changed his mind when he didn't immediately see any police.

At one point, an agent asked if Roof thought about killing more blacks.

"Oh no. I was worn out," Roof said.

A crime scene technician testified that she found two handwritten notes in Roof's car — one to his mother and one to his father. He told his dad: "I love you and I am sorry. You were a good dad."

To his mother, he said: "As childish as it sounds, I wish I was in your arms."

Roof's mother suffered a heart attack while watching opening statements Wednesday. Her condition is unclear.

Roof said the killing of Trayvon Martin was a turning point in his life. Martin, a young unarmed black man, was killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012. Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting. Roof said he started researching black crime against whites on the internet.

He told the agents he didn't talk about his racist beliefs with his friends or family.

"They probably won't agree with me — you know what I'm saying?"

NIKKI HALEY AS UN AMBASSADOR - EXCELLENT CHOICE

NIKKI HALEY AS UN AMBASSADOR - EXCELLENT CHOICE:

SHE WILL FIND OUT WHERE ALL THE MONEY IS GOING.


Sources: Fox News, NY Times, PBS, YouTube


***** Nikki Haley’s Path: From Daughter of Immigrants to Trump’s Pick for U.N.


Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina is the daughter of immigrants, favors free markets and global trade, and earned international attention for speaking out against the Confederate battle flag in the aftermath of the 2015 massacre at a black church in Charleston. During Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, she sharply criticized his demeanor and warned what it might mean for American diplomacy — even suggesting that his tendency to lash out at critics could cause a world war.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump named Ms. Haley as his choice for ambassador to the United Nations, a move that will probably serve to both assuage and confound the president-elect’s critics, raising questions about the tone and direction of his foreign policy. As an Indian-American woman, she would also add ethnic and gender diversity to the appointments, so far predominantly of white men, he has made to other top posts in the administration.

In a statement, Ms. Haley said she had accepted Mr. Trump’s offer because she felt good about South Carolina’s economic standing. She added that this month’s elections had brought “exciting changes to America.”

“When the president believes you have a major contribution to make to the welfare of our nation, and to our nation’s standing in the world, that is a calling that is important to heed,” the statement said.

Little is known about how Ms. Haley views America’s role in the world. But an equally important mystery is what her clout might be in the Trump administration.

Has Mr. Trump placed her in a post he considers marginal? Or will Ms. Haley — along with a still-to-be-named secretary of state — be able to temper the more radical views of Mr. Trump’s other aides?

Despite the unknowns, many diplomats, scholars and rights advocates who have been anxiously awaiting Mr. Trump’s choices were relieved at the announcement. They saw in Ms. Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants, someone unafraid to express her beliefs even if they differ from Mr. Trump’s.

“If confirmed, we hope she will raise that voice on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people who suffer from hunger, violence and injustice around the world,” the advocacy group Oxfam said in a statement.

Many diplomats said they saw Ms. Haley as something of an enigma, whose views on the world have not yet been publicized.

But her stance is public on a few issues — including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, refugees, and reproductive rights — and they offer a window into how she may carry out her role.

She signed state legislation to thwart a pro-Palestinian disinvestment campaign against Israel, known as Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, or B.D.S. — which made Israel one of the first to welcome her nomination for the post.

Ms. Haley has expressed concern about the security checks in place for Syrian refugees resettled in her state, but she is not among those Republican governors who have sued the Obama administration to block resettlement.

She describes herself as “pro-life” and has supported legislation in her state to restrict abortion rights. That position raises questions about whether the United States would reimpose a funding ban on groups that promote family planning overseas, and to what extent the United States would undermine a key United Nations goal to advance sexual and reproductive rights.

The reaction from Republicans in South Carolina’s congressional delegation on Wednesday demonstrated the broad appeal Ms. Haley has earned among conservatives statewide and in Washington. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Mr. Trump’s harshest critics in the past, praised the nomination, writing on Twitter that Ms. Haley would be a “strong voice for UN reform and stand for American interests throughout the world.”

But others tempered their admiration for Ms. Haley with concern about whether her public service credentials, which are limited to South Carolina government, would translate to the world stage.

“My very practical reaction is that she’d be the least experienced U.N. ambassador in the history of the country,” said Bakari Sellers, a CNN commentator and a Democrat who befriended Ms. Haley when they served together in the State House of Representatives. “You go from Samantha Power” — the current United Nations ambassador — “who was very well versed in foreign policy and our geopolitical relationships, to Nikki Haley, who hasn’t been in that depth ever.”

Ms. Haley’s admirers note that she repeatedly traveled abroad as governor to promote the state as a desirable place for investment. Her highest-profile trip, perhaps, was a 2014 visit to India, the birthplace of her parents. Her husband, Michael, has served in Afghanistan as an officer in the South Carolina National Guard.

More generally, Ms. Haley has overcome concerns that she would be a one-dimensional insurgent outsider, similar to worries that dog Mr. Trump. Her 2010 campaign was given a major lift by an endorsement from former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the polarizing darling of the Tea Party movement. But Ms. Haley has forged a middle path that embraces the conciliatory racial attitudes favored by the left and the business-friendly ethos of the right.

This balancing act faced perhaps its greatest test in June 2015, after nine African-Americans were shot and killed at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The white supremacist charged in the massacre, Dylann S. Roof, had posed with the Confederate battle flag in pictures. And for years, blacks and liberals in South Carolina had pleaded with the conservatives who dominate the state government to take the flag down from a prominent spot it occupied in front of the State Capitol.

s. Haley, the first ethnic minority and first woman to be elected as the state’s governor, had previously sided with fellow Republicans, who argued that the flag was not a racist symbol.

But the Charleston massacre hit home personally. She had been a friend of State Senator Clementa C. Pinckney, a Democrat and pastor of the church, who was one of the dead. Ms. Haley had a change of heart.

“I couldn’t look my son or daughter in the face and justify that flag flying anymore,” Ms. Haley told The New York Times in June 2015.

At her urging, and after much passionate debate, the State Legislature agreed to remove the flag.

Ms. Haley was born in the small city of Bamberg, S.C., to immigrants from Punjab State in India. She has said the locals in South Carolina were often unsure of her place in what is often a Southern binary of black versus white. When Ms. Haley was about 5, she and her sister entered a Little Miss Bamberg pageant where, traditionally, a black queen and a white queen were crowned.

The judges decided the sisters fit neither category, so they were disqualified.

From a young age, Ms. Haley worked for her family’s clothing business, and she eventually received an accounting degree from Clemson University. She was elected to the State House in 2004.

In 2009, she declared she was running for governor and prevailed despite lingering biases. A Republican state senator at the time called her a “raghead” on a radio show. A Democratic state representative said that voters did not consider her a minority, but more of a “nice conservative with a tan.”

Ms. Haley, a nimble campaigner who is equally at home among C.E.O.s and denim-clad bikers, easily won re-election in 2014, arguing that her maintenance of South Carolina’s anti-union, low-regulation atmosphere had been the key to an economic comeback. Under her leadership, the state continued looking beyond its boundaries, very often abroad, to attract new industries to replace a fading textile industry.

It is a record that might seem at odds with Mr. Trump’s skepticism of global trade deals and his promise to subject imports from Mexico and China to steep tariffs.

But there are other areas of agreement. In 2014, Ms. Haley criticized federal plans that would force power plants to cut carbon emissions.

Also like Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley has weathered accusations of sexual impropriety without suffering at the polls. In her first run for governor, two Republican operatives made separate and unproven accusations that they had sexual encounters with her.

She strongly denied the assertions.