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Federal court upholds death sentence for Charleston AME church shooter

25 August 2021
Dan Ackermann

A federal appeals court upheld the convictions and death sentence for Dylann Roof, who was found guilty of murder for killing nine members of a Black church congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, according to AP.

Why it matters: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel's ruling sustains the first death sentence for a federal hate crime, but it is unknown if Roof will be executed after Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a moratorium on the death penalty in July.

Roof's attorneys argued in the appeal that he was wrongly allowed to represent himself during sentencing and prevented jurors from hearing evidence about his mental health, according to AP.

  • His attorneys asked that his convictions and death sentence should be vacated or his case should be sent back to court so a jury can hear evidence regarding his mental impairments.
  • The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled the trial judge was right to find Roof was competent to stand trial during sentencing.
  • “No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did. His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose,” the panel wrote in its ruling.

Flashback: In 2017, Roof was sentenced to nine life sentences, one for each worshipper at Mother Emanuel AME Church that he shot dead. He was also sentenced to death on federal hate crime charges because he had purposefully targeted Black victims.

The big picture: Though Roof's sentence was upheld, all federal executions have been halted while the Department of Justice reviews its death penalty policies and procedures.

  • Garland said in July that "serious concerns" have been raised about the use of the death penalty, "including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases."

What's next: Roof can ask the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the panel's ruling, petition the Supreme Court or seek a presidential pardon, according to AP.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.