Appeal: Dylann Roof Thought He'd Be Freed After Race War

White supremacist appeals death penalty, with lawyers faulting judge's move
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jan 29, 2020 7:17 AM CST
Dylann Roof Appeal: Sentencing Was 'Tainted'
In this April 10, 2017, file photo, Dylann Roof enters the courtroom at the Charleston County Judicial Center to enter his guilty plea on murder charges in Charleston, SC.   (Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool, File)

White supremacist Dylann Roof on Tuesday appealed his federal convictions and death sentence in the 2015 massacre of nine black church members in South Carolina, arguing that he was mentally ill when he represented himself at his capital trial. In a 321-page legal brief filed with the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Roof's lawyers ask the court to review 20 issues, including errors they say were made by the judge and prosecutors that "tainted" his sentencing. One of their main arguments is that US District Judge Richard Gergel should not have allowed Roof to represent himself during the penalty phase of his trial because he was a 22-year-old ninth-grade dropout "who believed his sentence didn't matter because white nationalists would free him from prison after an impending race war," reports the AP.

Roof's appellate lawyers said Roof had been diagnosed with "schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, autism, anxiety, and depression," but that he "jettisoned" his experienced trial attorneys to stop them from presenting evidence of his mental illness to jurors. During the trial, Roof asked jurors to forget anything they’d heard from his legal team about his mental state, declaring, "there's nothing wrong with me psychologically." The appellate lawyers said his trial attorneys told the judge that in their decades of experience, "none had represented a defendant so disconnected from reality." Roof, they said, presented no mitigating evidence to the jury. "Instead, prosecutors told them Roof was a calculated killer with no signs of mental illness. Given no reason to do otherwise, jurors sentenced Roof to death," his attorneys wrote. "Roof's crime was tragic, but this Court can have no confidence in the jury's verdict."

(More Dylann Roof stories.)

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