Horrific images depicting the bloody aftermath of the Charleston church massacre were shown to the jury on Thursday on the second day of the federal trial of Dylann Roof, the 22-year-old white supremacist accused of murdering nine black parishioners during a brutal hate crime.
The series of 360-degree photographs taken from inside the Mother Emanuel church, where Roof opened fire on a group of congregants during a Bible study class, showed the bodies of eight of those killed lying in pools of blood, surrounded by bullet casings.
They revealed that seven of the victims, including 87-year-old Susie Jackson, had been shot dead at one end of the room, as they attempted to hide underneath a cluster of large round tables. The group’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, was pictured at the other end of the room, his face to the floor, with a stream of blood flowing from his body.
Felicia Sanders, one of the survivors of the attack, said Roof had opened fire on Pinckney first just as the group closed their eyes to pray and then shot at other victims through the tables they had taken cover underneath.
Brittany Burke, then an agent with the South Carolina law enforcement division (Sled) and the lead crime scene investigator on 17 June 2015, described the scene as “very hectic” with bullet cartridges and magazine casings “sprayed throughout the room”. There was so much evidence, she said, that she and her colleagues ran out of evidence markers and had to use index cards to complete their evaluation of the scene. But after nine hours of work, her team recovered 74 casings and seven magazines, all but one of which had been emptied, Burke said. One further magazine was found in Roof’s car after he was apprehended by law enforcement.
Burke told the court that the medical examiner had recovered 54 bullets in total from the victims’ bodies. She proceeded to state that 11 bullets were recovered from the eldest victim, 87-year-old Susie Jackson, who was seen lying on the floor next to her nephew Tywanza Sanders in one of the images shown to the court.
Some of the victims’ families had left the courtroom before the graphic images were shown. Others sobbed as prosecutors ran through the evidence. Roof looked straight ahead, away from the witness stand and away from the screens displaying the images.
Earlier on Thursday, attorneys for Roof unsuccessfully attempted to force a mistrial during a second day of heated proceedings.
In a motion filed to the court on Thursday morning, Roof’s attorneys argued that earlier testimony from Sanders may have prejudiced the jury to sentence the young man to death.
Sanders, who told the court on Wednesday that she had watched her son die during the shooting, said that Roof was “evil, evil, evil as can be” as he refused to look at her throughout her evidence. She added, under questioning from defence attorney David Bruck, that “there’s no place on Earth for him except the pit of hell”.
The defense motion argued that while the “strength and authenticity of the witness’s emotion was both apparent and entirely understandable … such statements simply do not belong in a courtroom”.
During fiery exchanges between the defence and the prosecution on Thursday morning, US assistant attorney Jay Richardson said Sanders’ remarks were not a reference to sentencing and argued that hell “is also where he’s [Roof] going if he dies of natural causes or if the state does it”.
Judge Richard Gergel rejected the mistrial application but offered brief general guidance to the jury, telling them that sentencing “is only your decision. It is not the decision of this court, the attorneys or the witnesses.”
The motion also confirmed that Roof’s mother, who attended court on Wednesday, had collapsed after opening arguments. “She was admitted to the hospital with a heart attack,” the motion said.
Roof faces 33 charges, including hate crimes, murder, attempted murder and obstruction of religion, and could face the death penalty. He has also been charged in a state murder case, which also carries the death penalty and is scheduled follow this trial.
The guilt phase of the trial is not expected to last more than six days. The court will then commence a sentencing phase, where Roof has indicated he will represent himself, making it more likely, experts say, that he will be sentenced to death.
During Thursday morning’s proceedings the jury were shown CCTV footage of some of the victims and survivors arriving at the historic Mother Emanuel in Charleston, South Carolina, in the hours before the massacre occurred.
First to arrive, the CCTV footage indicated, was 45 year-old mother of three Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, followed shortly by the eldest victim, 87 year-old Susie Jackson, who seen walking slowly up the the steps into the church.
The church’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, who welcomed Roof into the church and invited him to sit next to him during the Bible study class, was seen mingling with congregants outside the church.
The footage also captured the moment that Roof arrived in the church’s parking lot and walked into the building. He spent about 50 minutes inside the building, first listening to the Bible study class and then opening fire, using eight magazines worth of ammunition, shooting victims “over and over again”, according to Richardson. The CCTV footage showed Roof exiting the building calmly with an object that appeared to be a pistol in his hand, glancing briefly around and then jumping into his car.
The final footage played to the jury was of one of the parishioners, Reverend Daniel Simmons, 74, being rushed out on a stretcher at around 9.30. Simmons died shortly after.