CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. _ Convicted church killer Dylann Roof will plead guilty to state murder charges, the area's top prosecutor has confirmed.
Roof will plead guilty on April 10 at 1 p.m., said Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson. She announced the information through an email she sent to the families of the victims.
Roof was convicted on 33 charges, nine of them involving hate crimes, in federal court on Dec. 15 for the slayings of nine African-Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015. He was sentenced to death by a federal jury in January.
But Roof was still scheduled to face murder charges in state court. In the letter Wilson wrote, she told the victim's families that the state trial was to provide an "insurance policy to the federal conviction and sentence."
"The most effective way to do that is to secure a guilty plea for a life sentence and get the defendant into federal custody," Wilson said.
