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.

Roof, 22, was convicted last month of 33 federal charges -- including hate crimes resulting in death -- in connection with the shooting spree at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston.

A Bible study group at "Mother Emanuel," which had welcomed Roof, was just beginning its closing prayer when the self-avowed Nazi and Ku Klux Klan sympathizer opened fire, killing nine people ranging in age from 26 to 87. The slayings once again exposed the deep divides in America over race and access to guns.

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.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who is herself black, said in a statement that "we hope that the completion of the prosecution provides the people of Charleston -- and the people of our nation -- with a measure of closure."

Tim Scott, one of South Carolina's two senators, added that "nineteen months ago, a heartless murderer attempted to start a race war." "Today that man was rightly sentenced to death," said Scott, who is black.

Capital punishment is only rarely meted out in federal cases, in part because violent crimes more typically are tried under state laws. Federal authorities have executed only three inmates since 1976.

Roof is also facing state murder charges in South Carolina, and prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty, but those proceedings were indefinitely put on hold last week.