CHARLESTON, S.C. – A federal jury sentenced Dylann Roof to death on Tuesday for killing nine black parishioners during a massacre inside a church here last year.

Roof was convicted last month of 33 counts of federal hate crimes. The same jury that found him guilty on all counts last month deliberated Tuesday for just under three hours before deciding his sentence.

Earlier Tuesday, Roof, 22, had stood before the jury and delivered a halting and cryptic closing argument Tuesday suggesting that the prosecution “hates me” and that his murders of nine parishioners at a Bible study meeting in 2015 was not motivated by hatred of black people.

“Anyone that thinks I’m filled with hatred has no idea what real hatred is,” said Roof, a self-described white supremacist who has said he hoped his high-profile killings would incite a race war in America. “They don’t know anything about me. They don’t know what real hatred looks like. They think they do, but they don’t.”

“I would say that in this case, the prosecution and anyone else who hates me, are the ones that have been misled,” Roof said in a soft voice, standing before the eight women and four men who, shortly after, were to begin deliberating whether he will be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Wouldn’t it be fair to say that the prosecution hates me?” Roof said, noting that prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

Roof told the jury they might think, ” ‘Of course they hate you; everyone hates you. They have good reason to hate you.’ I don’t deny it.”

For the first time, Roof also seemed to obliquely raise the possibility that some emotional or mental condition may have led to his killing spree. Previously, Roof had clashed with his court-appointed attorneys who wanted to introduce evidence of mental illness.

“Um, I think it’s safe to say that no one in their right mind wants to go into a church and kill people,” said Roof, wearing a light blue cable-knit sweater and gray khakis, at the start of his seven-minute closing argument.

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