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US church attacker sentenced to death

A white supremacist has been sentenced to death for the racially motivated killings of nine black people at a South Carolina church in 2015.

Dylann Roof was convicted last month of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes, after opening fire on a Bible study group.

Earlier, Roof addressed the jury, saying "I don't know what good it would do anyway" if they spared his life.

The jury deliberated for nearly three hours before reaching their verdict.

"I felt like I had to do it and I still feel like I had to do it", Roof earlier told the jury.

The judge will issue a formal sentence on Wednesday morning.

After the sentence was announced, the 22-year-old killer stood and requested to be appointed new lawyers and to file for a retrial.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel replied that "I am strongly disinclined" and instructed Roof to "think about it overnight".

He also said that Roof's current lawyers, whom he had dismissed during sentencing in order to act as his own lawyer, had "performed admirably".

Nearly two dozen friends and relatives of those gunned down at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston testified during the sentencing phase about how Roof's crimes have affected their lives.

But none of them had appealed to the jury to return a death sentence.

Source: BBC News:

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