A federal appeals court upheld the death sentence of convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof on Wednesday against a plea from his attorneys to vacate his punishment.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond declined to return Roof’s case to a lower court as his legal team sought a competency evaluation of Roof, arguing that he was mentally unfit when he represented himself in court during his sentencing after being convicted of killing nine people inside a black church in South Carolina in 2015.
Roof, now 27, was “under the delusion” that he would ultimately be “rescued from prison by white-nationalists — but only, bizarrely, if he kept his mental-impairments out of the public record,” his attorneys argued.
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The court ruled, however, that U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel did not err when he ruled Roof competent to represent himself.
“Dylann Roof murdered African Americans at their church, during their Bible-study and worship,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “They had welcomed him. He slaughtered them. He did so with the express intent of terrorizing not just his immediate victims at the historically important Mother Emanuel Church, but as many similar people as would hear of the mass murder.”
Roof was sentenced to death in January 2017 for the killings.
All of the judges who sit on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recused themselves from the Roof appeal, according to the Associated Press. Judge Jay Richardson, who prosecuted roof’s case as U.S. assistant district attorney and called him “an extraordinary racist,” is a 4th Circuit judge.
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The group of judges that issued Wednesday’s ruling comprised judges from other circuits who sat in for the recused 4th Circuit judges.
While Roof’s death sentence was upheld, it could still be appealed up to the Supreme Court.
Both President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have expressed opposition to the death penalty. The Justice Department moved to pause federal executions in July pending a review of policies and procedures associated with the process.
