‘Chilling’ Confession: Was Dylann Roof Radicalized By ‘Fake News’?

Prosecutors showed jurors Dylann Roof‘s videotaped confession on the third day of his federal trial for killing nine people in the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

As part of his confession, Roof said he considered himself a White supremacist, admitted to researching “Black on White crime” and “Black churches” online, which led him to Emanuel.

Roof said the Trayvon Martin case had “woken him up” and he decided to do something about it.

The accused shooter’s defense team has not disputed the facts surrounding the case. Meg Kinnard, political and legal affairs reporter for The Associated Press, told Roland Martin during Monday’s edition of NewsOne Now that Roof’s attorneys seem to be focused on the sentencing phase of the case.

Kinnard said, “David Brooke has said he doesn’t plan to put up much of a defense, maybe not calling a single witness.”

According to Kinnard, “Prosecutors expect their could case would wrap up as early as Wednesday” and stated, “If the defense is not planning to do much … the jury could then get the case by the end of this week, maybe as early as the end of Wednesday or early Thursday.”

Attorney A. Scott Bolden, former Chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party, predicted, “There will be a conviction for all or most of the 33 counts he’s facing and then look for the jury to deliberate in regard to whether he is going to be put to death or get a life sentence.”

Bolden reminded viewers, “The Feds have not put anyone to death in decades and this would be the first case in over some period of time and this will probably be the one” in which a person convicted of a crime will be executed by the federal government.

NewsOne Now panelist Lauren Victoria Burke, political analyst and writer for NBCBLK, addressed Roof’s admission to Googling Black on White crime and said, “If anybody thinks that fake news and Breitbart doesn’t do any damage––he [Dylann Roof] said that he Googled Black on White crime and that’s all that Breitbart [does] … all they do is repeat those stories over and over again.

“That’s what he somehow caught onto and this was a motivator to murder nine people for absolutely nothing,” she said.

Watch Roland Martin and NewsOne Now‘s ongoing coverage of the Dylann Roof trial in the video clip above.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

Watch NewsOne Now with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

SEE ALSO:

Should Families Of Emanuel AME Shooting Victims Forgive White Supremacist Dylann Roof?

‘Chilling’ Confession: Was Dylann Roof Radicalized By ‘Fake News’?  was originally published on newsone.com