The man charged with the shooting deaths of nine black churchgoers in Charleston “self-radicalized” in the months before the attack and grew more entrenched in his beliefs in white supremacy, according to court papers prosecutors filed this week in federal court.
(FOX)- The information filed Monday was part of a list of more than a dozen expert witnesses that prosecutors intend to call in Dylann Roof’s federal death penalty trial later this year.
Roof, 22, is charged in the June 2015 deaths of nine black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church. He also faces a possible death sentence if convicted of murder charges in state court.
Roof’s actions, according to the government, were “consistent with the concept of leaderless resistance and martyrdom advocated by white supremacy extremist groups and self-radicalization leading to violence.” Experts in white supremacy, the government notes, are expected to testify on Roof’s “extremist ideology, including a belief in the need to use violence to achieve white supremacy.”
Roof’s increasing tendency toward white supremacist ideology, the government alleges, came in Roof’s “travel to such race-relevant destinations as the site of his crimes and locations that have connections to the antebellum and Confederate eras.” Experts will also comment on patterns in Roof’s travel, personal interests and dress, which the government says will show as being “consistent with the adoption of white supremacist beliefs through self-radicalization.”
Authorities have long said they believed Roof was the author of an online manifesto in which he embraced Confederate symbols and talked about white supremacy. Handwriting analysis experts are expected to testify that he wrote another similar document while jailed after his arrest.