RELIGION

Charleston church shooting suspect's trial set to begin

Associated Press
Published | Updated

FILE - In this June18, 2016 file photo, Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Sheby Police Department in Shelby, N.C. The trial for Roof, a white man accused of killing nine black people at the church, started Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE- In this June 18, 2015 file photo, two Charleston police officers stand in front of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. The trial for Dylann Roof, a white man accused of killing nine black people at the church, started Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Charleston, SC. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this June18, 2016 file photo, Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Sheby Police Department in Shelby, N.C. The trial for Roof, a white man accused of killing nine black people at the church, started Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, at the federal courthouse in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File) (The Associated Press)

The death penalty trial for a white man who said he wanted to start a race war by killing black people in their South Carolina church is set to begin.

Jury selection and opening statements are scheduled for Wednesday in Dylann Roof's federal death penalty trial in Charleston.

The city is already bruised by a former police officer's racially charged murder trial that ended in a hung jury Monday.

But Roof's trial shouldn't be so hard fought. His lawyers have offered for Roof to plead guilty several times if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Authorities say Roof killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015 after spending an hour with them in Bible study.