Death sentence confirmed for U.S. church shooter

Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and death sentence of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black people at a South Carolina church in 2015, Reuters quoted court documents in a report.

The three-judge U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals panel issued the ruling against Roof, who argued that he was not competent to stand trial and represent himself and that the U.S. District Court where he was found guilty abused its discretion.

“No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose.”

In December 2016, a jury found Roof guilty of 33 federal charges for the mass shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in June 2015.

The young extremist was sentenced in early 2017 to the death penalty, without having expressed regret or apologies. He was 21 years old when he committed the crime.

Convinced of the supremacy of white men over other races he considers inferior, Dylan Roof had opened fire 77 times in a Methodist church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, riddling nine black faithful who had come to welcome him with bullets.

Roof’s cold killing of nine black parishioners of the church in 2015 is a massacre that shocked the planet.

The shooting had all the more marked American and international public opinion as it had bloodied a symbolic place of the fight against slavery: the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church brings together the oldest black community in this historic city of the era of the plantations, located in the south-eastern United States.

“Dylann Roof murdered African Americans in their church, during their Bible study and worship. They had welcomed him. He slaughtered them. He did so with the express intention of terrorizing not only his immediate victims in the historically significant Mother Emanuel Church, but as many like-minded people who would hear of the mass murder,” the panel wrote in its ruling.

“No clinical summary or in-depth legal analysis can fully account for the atrocity of Roof’s act. His crimes place him under the most severe sentence that a just society can render,”concluded the judges of the Richmond court, in their unanimous judgment.

“No cold recording or careful analysis of laws and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did. His crimes qualify him for the harshest sentence a just society can impose,” the judges wrote.

However, the convict, now 27 and held in a penitentiary, is not at risk of execution in the short term, as President Biden’s administration last month imposed a moratorium on federal executions.

Following his federal trial, Roof was sentenced to nine consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty in 2017 to murder charges, leaving him to await execution in federal prison and sparing his victims and their families the burden of a second trial.

Last month, however, Attorney General Merrick Garland declared a moratorium and halted all federal executions while the Justice Department reviewed its execution policies and procedures. The review comes after a historic string of death sentences at the end of the Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in six months. A federal lawsuit has also been filed over the execution protocols – including the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injection.

President Joe Biden, as a candidate, has said he will work to end federal executions. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in March he continued to have “serious concerns” about the matter.

Biden has ties to the case. As vice president, Biden attended the funeral of one of those killed, State Senator Clementa Pinckney, who was also pastor of the congregation. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden frequently referred to the shooting, saying a visit to Mother Emanuel had helped him heal in the aftermath of the death of his son, Beau.

Roof’s lawyers could ask the entire 4th Circuit to reconsider the panel’s decision. If his direct appeal fails, Roof could file what is known as a 2255 appeal, or a request for the trial court to review the constitutionality of his conviction and sentence. He could also go to the United States Supreme Court or seek a presidential pardon.

Reverend Kylon Middleton, a close friend of Mother Emanuel Pastor Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who was killed in the massacre, said Roof’s appeal reopened some of the psychological wounds felt by relatives of the victims and survivors. Middleton said he was personally opposed to the death penalty, but accepted it as the punishment Roof received.

“We just want whatever consequence or justice that has been served on the basis of the court’s decision to be final,” Middleton said.