In court, church shooting defendant both confident and unsure

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Long pauses sometimes separate his sentences as he reads notes written by his attorneys, then gathers his thoughts. From time to time, stutters punctuate his words.

At other moments, Dylann Roof sounds confident — as he did Thursday morning when he asked the judge to delay a planned Tuesday trial start for his capital case.

“I would like to ask you for two days' delay before the pretrial. I just, I need more time to prepare,” Roof said, later adding, “When I chose to represent myself, I didn’t ask for a delay before jury selection.”

He would, however, like the process of picking jurors to slow down. The federal judge overseeing the case declined.

Roof could face the death penalty should he be found guilty of killing nine black worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. In serving as his own lawyer, the 22-year-old is uttering the most substantial comments he’s made in public since his arrest.

There is little doubt Roof is intelligent. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel has called him as much in open court, and in documents noted he has an “extremely high IQ,” free of cognitive impairment.

Accused S.C. church shooter to be own attorney in trial

Throughout the proceedings, the admitted white supremacist remains attentive and engaged, making no outbursts or inappropriate statements.

But many case watchers well-versed in death penalty litigation question whether deep-seated mental health problems are behind the “beyond the pale” shootings at Mother Emanuel. With his demand to represent himself, they doubt jurors will ever hear of them.

Capital defendants typically choose to represent themselves for three reasons, said Charleston attorney Chris Adams, who has handled about 75 death penalty cases across the country, keeping all those clients off death row.

In the first, defendants have no faith in their attorneys, an option Adams rejects in the Roof case. Roof was represented by a team widely regarded as among the best in the country not only for their legal knowledge, but also for their compassion and dedication.

Some want “death by jury,” he said, while others hope to hide a mental health condition from a public forum. High intelligence does not preclude mental impairment, he added, noting “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski was known both as a domestic terrorist and a math prodigy.

Dylann Roof found competent to stand trial in church shootings

“I was just heartsick,” Adams said of learning Roof would represent himself. “I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before and it never works, it never goes well.”

White supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. was sentenced to death last year for killing three people in Kansas, two of them at Jewish center. He told jurors he regretted not killing more people and saluted with a “Heil Hitler” when he was found guilty.

Roof’s defense team this summer announced its intent in court paperwork to introduce evidence relating to a mental disease or defect, though any possible affliction has not been disclosed.

WHAT’S AHEAD

In media accounts, Roof’s expressions have sometimes been described as smirks or slight smiles, but to watch him in court is to see his face occasionally pull into subtle grimaces or winces that aren’t always connected to the issues at hand.

As proceedings continue, he often addresses the judge when asked for a motion to strike or keep a prospective juror, though as a third day opened this week, he began with a long pause in addressing the court.

“I was going to ask you if you would let my standby counsel assist me in posing more questions to jurors and making objections to strike jurors,” Roof said.

This phase of jury selection, one where the judge questions prospects to find 70 viable jury candidates before that pool is winnowed down, was originally expected to last about two weeks. At its current pace, it will likely conclude Friday.

Gergel has told Roof that with his decision to dismiss his attorneys he has waived his right to counsel. Any system that would allow those lawyers to act as co-counselors has the potential to be chaotic and a manipulation of the system, Gergel said.

Roiling from murder trials, South Carolina searches for healing

In his response to Gergel, Roof stuttered, starting, “You should consider what my, ... ” the last words unintelligible.

At other moments, he has confidently asked the judge to question prospective jurors about their willingness to disagree with fellow members or objected to particular individuals, often after looking at the notes written by the defense team, who are allowed to advise him, but have been stripped of decision-making powers.

At one moment, when Roof was going to let an individual who indicated he would defer to other panelists go unchallenged, defense attorney David Bruck nudged Roof sharply.

“Strike,” Bruck said to Roof.

After listening to Bruck’s whispers, and a long pause, Roof said, “Yes, I would move to strike him.” The motion was granted.

Later, Roof took several moments to conjure his thoughts to the judge. “There was a question, it just slipped my mind,” he said, and after a pause offered, “Oh, yes, I remember.”

The question centered on an individual’s ability to disagree with other jurors, a question he had asked several times before.

LOW BAR

Roof last week underwent a two-day competency hearing at the request of his attorneys, one conducted against his own wishes, according to court documents.

Eight witnesses testified, and at the conclusion of the session, Roof asked the judge, "Is there any way that someone could write a document that would take away all responsibility from my lawyers, but still keep them as my lawyers and then they could do whatever I say, but they wouldn't have any responsibility, and then I could sign it?"

He later requested and was granted leave to serve as his own attorney, with his defense team relegated to the role of “standby counsel.”

The bar for competency is low, said James Hilkey, a private psychologist in Durham who served as the chief psychologist for 25 years at the North Carolina federal penitentiary in Butner.

Hilkey has no connection to the Roof case and declined to comment on it directly, but said in general someone can sound intelligent and still have some serious psychological problems.

Complications arise in Charleston church shooting trial

Competency involves two prongs of understanding, he said, one that relies on a factual understanding of the role of the judge, prosecutors and other court matters, different than a rational understanding of the procedures.

“When you look at the rational prong, that’s where sometimes a person may have a delusional system or some other mental problems that really affect competency,” he said. “Those take a while to assess, even to a professional observer.”

Defendants who might have a viable insanity or diminished capacity defense sometimes fail to recognize that issue or seek to conceal it in acting as their own attorney, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

“A person who has a mental or emotional disturbance and does not believe he or she has a mental or emotional disturbance will not only not present that evidence, but will often present a defense that makes things worse because their perception or reality is skewed and he or she lacks awareness of how the evidence will be perceived by others,” Dunham said.

“That affects their competency to make litigation decision themselves, it affects the manner in which they present the evidence, it affects what they do in cross examination, it affects their behavior and how they are perceived by the jury,” he added.

Black Americans choose life for Dylann Roof: Ellis Cose

Adams, the capital defense attorney based in Charleston, added that a defendant can suffer from a severe mental illness but also be competent enough for self-representation under existing law.

A lack of legal prowess not only can lead to an undesired outcome before a jury, but also curtails appeals, he said.

“If you don’t put up objections, you have nothing to appeal, and then you can’t even attack yourself as being a lousy lawyer later when you’re properly medicated and decide you want to live, when your family convinces you they want you to live and you have nowhere to litigate because you waived all those rights.”

Roof, after the Thursday questioning of a juror, asked the judge if a “standby attorney” might speak for him, a moment the judge allowed reluctantly.

The matter was sensitive and Roof was unwilling to read a Facebook post that the defense team believed was written by the prospective juror, explained Kimberly C. Stevens, an assistant federal public defender based in Asheville.

She read the sentence Roof was unwilling to say out loud: “Dylann Roof, the disgusting man who committed this crime.”

The juror, when shown that post by the judge, admitted to authoring it. He had previously said he did not write about Roof on Facebook.

With the Facebook revelation, with its word Roof could not bring himself to say, the juror was stricken.