Dylann Roof’s Only Defense: The Internet Made Me Do It

The fate of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist accused of murdering nine people at a black church in South Carolina last year, is now in the hands of a jury. The week-long trial was filled with dramatic testimony describing the grisly murders, and Roof’s defense, which hinges on little more than the influence the internet had on shaping his racist ideologies.

Roof’s defense team, led by famed anti-death penalty attorney David Bruck, called no witnesses during the trial and presented no evidence. During his closing arguments, Bruck did what he could to spare his client what many observers believe will be a death sentence. The crux of his defense, however, essentially was that Roof’s mind had been poisoned by racism he found online.

In defending Roof’s racist ideology, Bruck argued that it wasn’t framed by his family, or by his friends — his home was “not a breeding ground for extreme racism,” Bruck argued — but rather the racially charged, conspiracy theory websites he’d been visiting in the months leading up to the murders.

“He is simply regurgitating…bits and pieces of stuff he has downloaded from the internet directly into his brain,” Bruck said, according to local reporter Chad Mills, who has been live-tweeting the trial.

Bruck argued that Roof wasn’t a member of any racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan or other white supremacist groups; his racist views were molded in cyberspace. “The racist ideas that he downloaded online are unfortunately and tragically common,” Bruck argued.

Following his arrest, Roof told authorities that he had been researching the death of Trayvon Martin — the Florida teen fatally shot by George Zimmerman in 2012 — on the internet, which led him down a rabbit hole of white supremacist websites. “The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders,” the manifesto reads. “I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?”

The Council of Conservative Citizens is a white supremacist group that bills itself as a peaceful “paleoconservative” organization that opposes the mixing of races. It issued a statement after the shooting saying it was “unclear” why Roof had acted. But despite the CCC’s uncertainty, Vocativ discovered several instances where the president of the organization advocated for violence specifically against black people.

In one of the more than 450 comments Vocativ found on various white nationalist websites under what appear to be the online handle of CCC president Earl Holt III, the poster writes, “Old guys like me should dress in a disheveled manner, pretend to be intoxicated, hang-out in ‘the hood,’ and bring along a large-caliber handgun (with backup!) and help mitigate violent black crime at its source.”

In another, on the American Renaissance website, a commenter with the handle “Earl P. Holt III” wrote, “…If you do not have one, get your selves to a gun shop and get a good handgun for self-protection, and a shotgun for protecting your home. If you do not know how to use and handle one, then learn. Get you wife one, too! Then get your Concealed-Carry License.” That comment was from April 2015, around the same time Roof purchased the 45-caliber Glock pistol allegedly used in the attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Bruck’s closing argument may be his only shot at sparing Roof the death penalty if he’s convicted. Last month, the accused killer said he wanted to represent himself at trial, a request that was granted but opposed by Bruck and the defense team, which argued that Roof was not mentally fit to act as his own attorney, especially in a death penalty case. Roof then changed his mind and said he would only want to represent himself during the sentencing phase of the trial.