CHARLESTON, South Carolina — An unrepentant Dylann Roof was sentenced to death Tuesday for fatally shooting nine black church members during a Bible study session, becoming the first person ordered executed for a federal hate crime.

A jury deliberated for about three hours before returning with the decision, capping a trial in which the 22-year-old avowed white supremacist did not fight for his life or show any remorse. He served as his own attorney during sentencing and never asked for forgiveness or mercy or explained the massacre.

Hours earlier, Roof threw away one last chance to plead for his life, telling jurors, “I still feel like I had to do it.”

The slain included the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church pastor and a state senator, as well as other pillars of the community: a high school track coach, the church sexton, a librarian and an aspiring poet. They all shared deep devotion to the church, known as Mother Emanuel, and passed that faith along to their families, many of whom offered Roof forgiveness when he appeared in court just days after the attack.

As Roof spoke Tuesday for about five minutes, every juror looked directly at him. A few nodded as he reminded them that they said during jury selection they could fairly weigh the factors of his case. Only one of them, he noted, had to disagree to spare him from a lethal injection.

“I have the right to ask you to give me a life sentence, but I’m not sure what good it would do anyway,” he said.

When the verdict was read, he stood stoic. Several family members of victims wiped away quiet tears.

Roof told FBI agents when they arrested him after the June 17, 2015, slayings that he wanted the shootings to bring back segregation or perhaps start a race war. Instead, the slayings had a unifying effect, as South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its Statehouse for the first time in more than 50 years. Other states followed suit, taking down Confederate banners and monuments. Roof had posed with the flag in photos.

Malcolm Graham, whose sister Cynthia Hurd was slain, said the jury made the right decision.

“There is no room in America’s smallest jail cell for hatred, racism and discrimination,” he said from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The journey for me and my family today has come to an end.”

One of Hurd’s other brothers, Melvin Graham, said the jury’s decision “was a very hollow victory” because his sister is still gone.

“He decided the day, the hour and minute my sister was going to die. Now someone is going to do it for him,” he said.

Roof specifically selected Emanuel AME Church, the South’s oldest black church, to carry out the cold, calculated slaughter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson said.

The 12 people he targeted opened the door for a stranger with a smile, he said. Three people survived the attack.

“They welcomed a 13th person that night … with a kind word, a Bible, a handout and a chair,” Richardson said during his closing argument. “He had come with a hateful heart and a Glock .45.”

The gunman sat with the Bible study group for about 45 minutes. During the final prayer – when everyone’s eyes were closed – he started firing. He stood over some of the fallen victims, shooting them again as they lay on the floor, Richardson said.

The prosecutor reminded jurors about each one of the victims and the bloody scene that Roof left in the church’s lower level.

Nearly two dozen friends and relatives of the victims testified during the sentencing phase of the trial. They shared cherished memories and talked about a future without a mother, father, sister or brother. They shed tears, and their voices shook, but none of them said whether Roof should face the death penalty.

The prosecutor reminded jurors that Clementa Pinckney would be remembered for singing goofy songs and watching cartoons with his young daughters. In a sign of perhaps how important that testimony was, jurors re-watched a speech by Pinckney in which he talked about the history of Emanuel and its mission.

The jury convicted Roof last month of all 33 federal charges he faced, including hate crimes. He never explained his actions to jurors, saying only that “anyone who hates anything in their mind has a good reason for it.”

Roof insisted that he was not mentally ill and did not call any witnesses or present any evidence.

In one of his journals, he wrote that he did not believe in psychology, calling it “a Jewish invention” that “does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they don’t.”

His attorneys said he did not want to present any evidence that might embarrass him or his family.

After he was sentenced, Roof asked a judge to appoint him new attorneys, but the judge said he was not inclined to do so because they had performed “admirably.”

“We are sorry that, despite our best efforts, the legal proceedings have shed so little light on the reasons for this tragedy,” the attorneys said in a veiled reference to the mental health issues they wanted to present.

A judge will formally sentence him during a hearing Wednesday. Roof also faces a death penalty trial in state court.

The last person sent to federal death row was Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2015.

Story: Med Kinnard, Jeffrey Collins

WASHINGTON — Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions fervently rejected “damnably false” accusations of past racist comments Tuesday as he challenged Democratic concerns about the civil rights commitment he would bring as Donald Trump’s attorney general. He vowed at his confirmation hearing to stay independent from the White House and stand up to Trump when necessary.

Sessions laid out a sharply conservative vision for the Justice Department he would oversee, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration, gun violence and the “scourge of radical Islamic terrorism” and to keep open the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

But he also distanced himself from some of Trump’s public pronouncements.

He said waterboarding, a now-banned harsh interrogation technique that Trump has at times expressed support for, was “absolutely improper and illegal.”

Though he said he would prosecute immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and criticized as constitutionally “questionable” an executive action by President Barack Obama that shielded certain immigrants from deportation, he said he did “not support the idea that Muslims, as a religious group, should be denied admission to the United States.”

Trump earlier in his campaign called for a temporary total ban on Muslims entering his country but has more recently proposed “extreme vetting.”

Sessions asserted that he could confront Trump if needed, saying an attorney general must be prepared to resign if asked to do something “unlawful or unconstitutional.”

Nothing new came out of the hearing that seemed likely to threaten Sessions’ confirmation by the Republican Senate.

Yet as he outlined his priorities, his past – including a 1986 judicial nomination that failed amid allegations that he’d made racially charged comments – hovered over the proceedings. Protesters calling Sessions a racist repeatedly interrupted and were hustled out by Capitol police.

Sessions vigorously denied that he had ever called the NAACP “un-American.” He said he had never harbored racial animus, calling the allegations – which included that he had referred to a black attorney in his office as “boy” – part of a false caricature.

“It wasn’t accurate then,” Sessions said. “It isn’t accurate now.”

He said he “understands the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it.”

“I know we need to do better. We can never go back,” Sessions said. “I am totally committed to maintaining the freedom and equality that this country has to provide to every citizen.”

Politics got its share of attention, too, with Sessions promising to recuse himself from any investigation there might be into Democrat Hillary Clinton, whom he had criticized during the presidential campaign.

Trump said during the campaign he would name a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s use of a private email server, but he has since backed away. The FBI and Justice Department declined to bring charges last year.

Sessions, known as one of the most staunchly conservative members of the Senate, smiled amiably as he began his presentation, taking time to introduce his grandchildren, joking about Alabama football and making self-deprecating remarks about his strong Southern accent.

He has solid support from the Senate’s Republican majority and from some Democrats in conservative-leaning states.

But he faces a challenge persuading skeptical Democrats that he’ll be fair and committed to civil rights, a chief priority of the Justice Department during the Obama administration, as the country’s top law enforcement official.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked whether he could be trusted to enforce the laws he has voted against, including expanded hate crime protections. He said he could, noting that he accepted the Roe v. Wade opinion on abortion as the law of the land even though he personally opposed it.

Feinstein said, “There is so much fear in this country. I see it, I hear it – particularly in the African-American community, from preachers, from politicians, from everyday Americans.”

If confirmed, Sessions would succeed Attorney General Loretta Lynch and would be in a position to reshape Justice Department priorities not only in civil rights but also environmental enforcement, criminal justice and national security.

He said he supported continued use of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for terror suspects, a sharp departure from an Obama administration that has supported prosecuting militants in American courts.

And he hinted he’d be less eager than Obama’s Justice Department to prod city police departments into court-enforceable improvement plans, known as consent decrees, to resolve allegations of pervasive civil rights violations. He said he did not consider it fair to criticize an entire department for what might be the actions of just a few.

“We need to be sure that when we criticize law officers, it is narrowly focused on the right basis for criticism,” he said, adding that “to smear whole departments places those officers at greater risk.”

Sessions was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and before that served as Alabama attorney general and a U.S. attorney.

He’s been a reliably conservative voice in Congress, supporting government surveillance programs and opposing a 2013 bipartisan immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

In a dramatic turn, Senate colleague Cory Booker of New Jersey – one of three black senators – is to testify against Sessions on Wednesday. Booker’s office says that will be an unprecedented instance of a senator testifying against a colleague seeking a Cabinet post.

In a statement, Booker accused Sessions of having a “concerning” record on civil rights and criminal justice reform.

Story: Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick

CHICAGO — Conceding disappointments during his presidency yet offering vigorous encouragement for the nation’s future, Barack Obama issued an emotional defense Tuesday night of his vision to Americans facing a moment of anxiety and a dramatic change in leadership.

Obama’s valedictory speech in his hometown of Chicago was a public meditation on the trials and triumphs, promises kept and promises broken that made up his eight years in the White House. Arguing his faith in America had been confirmed, Obama said he ends his tenure inspired by America’s “boundless capacity” for reinvention, and he declared: “The future should be ours.”

His delivery was forceful for most of his speech, but by the end he was wiping away tears as the crowd embraced him one last time.

Reflecting on the corrosive recent political campaign, he said, “That potential will be realized only if our democracy works. Only if our politics reflects the decency of our people. Only if all of us, regardless of our party affiliation or particular interest, help restore the sense of common purpose that we so badly need right now.”

He made no mention of Republican Donald Trump, who will replace him in just 10 days. But when he noted the imminence of that change and the crowd began booing, he responded, “No, no, no, no, no.” One of the nation’s great strengths, he said, “is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.”

Earlier, as the crowd of thousands chanted, “Four more years,” he simply smiled and said, “I can’t do that.”

Soon Obama and his family will exit the national stage, to be replaced by Trump, a man Obama had stridently argued poses a dire threat to the nation’s future. His near-apocalyptic warnings throughout the campaign have cast a continuing shadow over his post-election efforts to reassure Americans anxious about the future.

Indeed, much of what Obama accomplished over the past eight years – from health care overhaul and environmental regulations to his nuclear deal with Iran – could potentially be upended by Trump. So even as Obama seeks to define what his presidency meant for America, his legacy remains in question.

Even as Obama said farewell to the nation – in a televised speech of just under an hour – the anxiety felt by many Americans about the future was palpable, and not only in the Chicago convention center where he stood in front of a giant presidential seal. The political world was reeling from new revelations about an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

Steeped in nostalgia, Obama’s return to Chicago was less a triumphant homecoming and more a bittersweet reunion bringing together Obama loyalists and loyal staffers, many of whom have long since left Obama’s service, moved on to new careers and started families. They came from across the country – some on Air Force One, others on their own – to be present for the last major moment of Obama’s presidency.

Seeking inspiration, Obama’s speechwriters spent weeks poring over Obama’s other momentous speeches, including his 2004 keynote at the Democratic National Convention and his 2008 speech after losing the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton. They also revisited his 2015 address in Selma, Alabama, that both honored America’s exceptionalism and acknowledged its painful history on civil rights.

After returning to Washington, Obama will have less than two weeks before he accompanies Trump in the presidential limousine to the Capitol for the new president’s swearing-in. After nearly a decade in the spotlight, Obama will become a private citizen, an elder statesman at 55. He plans to take some time off, write a book – and immerse himself in a Democratic redistricting campaign.

Story: Josh Lederman, Darlene Superville

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The United Arab Emirates says an attack on a guesthouse belonging to the governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province wounded its ambassador and “a number of Emirati diplomats.”

The UAE’s Foreign Ministry made the statement Tuesday night, describing the attack as “heinous.”

It identified the wounded ambassador as Juma Mohammed Abdullah al-Kaabi. Al-Kaabi first presented his credentials to Afghan authorities in June.

The statement did not say how many Emirati diplomats were wounded. It said they were there as part of a humanitarian mission.

Emirati combat troops deployed to Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.

Afghan officials say two explosions inside the governor’s compound killed five people and wounded 12.