An Appeals Court Decides to Uphold the Charleston Church Shooter’s Death Sentence
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld Dylann Storm Roof’s conviction and death sentence in the 2015 murders of nine Black church-goers in Charleston, S.C.
A three-judge panel for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously denied Roof’s legal team’s effort to overturn the conviction and sentence on several grounds, including the lower court’s determination that he was competent to stand trial.
“No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did,” the panel wrote in a 149-page, unsigned decision. “His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose. We have reached that conclusion not as a product of emotion but through a thorough analytical process, which we have endeavored to detail here.”
