Mass killer Dylann Roof will have a closed-door competency hearing to determine if he will continue to represent himself in the penalty phase of his trial, a judge ruled Monday.
US District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston, SC, cited the widespread use of social media in the case and said he’d have to sequester jurors if he opened up the proceedings.
“I can’t walk down the street without hearing people talk about this case,” the judge said.
But he promised to release a transcript after Roof is sentenced.
“This is an incredibly sensitive moment in this proceeding,” Gergel said. “We are putting in the hands of 12 people the life and death of a person.”
Journalists and family members of the nine slaying victims protested the decision.
During a court hearing last week, the 22-year-old Roof said he would make an opening statement in Tuesday’s start of the penalty phase of his trial, but he would offer no new evidence or witnesses to speak on his behalf.
His defense attorney, David Bruck, whose only role has been as standby counselor, immediately asked for a competency hearing to see if Roof still has the capacity to represent himself.
“This defendant’s announcement (on Wednesday) that he will not defend himself against the death penalty — following a government presentation that is expected to involve more than 38 additional witnesses and hundreds more exhibits — raises in especially stark fashion the question of whether the defendant is actually unable to defend himself,” Bruck wrote in a motion regarding the Monday hearing.
After Gergel accepted the motion, Roof underwent a battery of tests by forensic psychiatrist James Ballenger, who conducted a similar examination in November.
Ballenger requested the first competency hearing after Roof demanded the dismissal of his team of four lawyers, who offered a mental health defense. Roof was able to block the psych defense and act as his own counsel. In December, a jury found Roof guilty of fatally shooting nine black people and wounding another during his 2015 attack on Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Roof, a white supremacist, confessed to the massacre, saying he wanted to start a race war.
Federal prosecutors have asked for the death penalty in the case.
Jurors will be required to weigh death versus a sentence of life imprisonment.
With Post wire services