Charleston, SC (WLTX) - Jurors in the Charleston church massacre trial were shown graphic photos of the crime scene Thursday, giving a disturbing glimpse of the scene investigators encountered on the night of the killings.
Dylann Roof, 22, is facing nine federal counts of murder in the deaths of the parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Prosecutors say Roof, who's white, opened fire on the victims during a Bible study on June 17, 2015 because they were black.
Brittany Burke, a former crime scene investigator with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, said she arrived at Mother Emanuel around 3 a.m. on June 18, roughly six hours after the shooting. Prosecutors used her testimony to walk jurors through most of the photographic evidence taken from the scene.
Burke called what she encountered that night "chaotic."
The prosecution and Burke showed pictures of where the gun shell casings and casings had fallen, some of which had been moved before she got there.
For what came next, most of the loved ones of the victims left the courtroom.
Burke began showing what she saw inside, including a pool of blood near one of the victims. Jurors saw one-by-one the photos Burke and the other crime scene investigators took of the bodies of the victims, identifying all of them for the court.
She said it took roughly nine hours to catalog the scene. When it was done, her team collected 74 shell casings, each one representing a fired shot.
Family members returned after those images were finished being shown.
Later, the jury heard from Keon Gordon, a Summerville native and friend of Tywanza Sanders, a 26-year-old man killed in the attack. Gordon says the morning after the killings, he discovered Snapchat video that Sanders had uploaded just before he died. Prosecutors spotlighted a section of the recording where Roof could be seen among those attending the Bible study.
The jury also heard from the officers who arrested Roof in Shelby, North Carolina just before 11 a.m. on July 18.
Court began Thursday with a defense motion for a mistrial, after Roof's lawyers objected to a statement made by Felicia Sanders, Tywanza Sanders, about Roof. She had told the court during defense cross-examination Wednesday that Roof "deserved to be in the pit of hell."
Roof's attorneys felt the comment might make the jury impose a harsher penalty on Roof. Judge Richard Gergel rejected the request, but did tell jurors they needed to make up their own mind about what penalty Roof deserved.