The U.S. government announced Wednesday the indictment of 21-year-old Dylann Roof on federal hate-crime charges, adding a civil rights dimension to the state murder charges already filed by South Carolina authorities in the June 17 killing of nine African American worshipers in Charleston.
A federal grand jury in Charleston indicted Roof on suspicion of using a weapon in a racially motivated hate crime and committing murder in an attempt to obstruct victims' free exercise of their religious beliefs. The second charge carries the possibility of a federal death sentence, though it has been rarely invoked.
Atty. Gen.