A federal judge has granted a motion which will allow accused Emanuel AME Church shooter to represent himself in trial.
Rocking a gray-and-blue striped prison uniform Monday morning, 22-year-old Dylann Roof told Judge Richard Gergel that he understands that his attorneys have more skills and experience he doesn’t possess, but he wanted to represent himself as his attorneys serve as stand-by counsel.
Roof sat at the lead chair at the defense table as jury selection for the federal death penalty trial began. He is currently pleading not guilty on charges including hate crimes, the shooting deaths of nine and the attempted murder of three.
Jury selection was supposed to start on Nov. 7, but was suspended after Roof’s lawyers moved to have the suspect checked out by a doctor to see if he was suffering from a “mental disease or defect” that might make him unable to figure out what was going on in court.
Court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. James Ballenger gave a report on Roof’s mental competency in a two-day hearing last week. Documents were filed on Friday declaring that the court found Roof competent to stand trial.
“I must admit I’m not terribly surprised,” said Charleston School of Law Professor Miller Shealy. “To be declared incompetent to stand trial is difficult. One has to be quite mentally ill, one has to have some serious problem.”
Now that the the competency evaluation is complete, the process of whittling down 512 people to a jury of 12 and six alternates will resume Monday at 9 a.m.
The process will probably go into next year.