Charleston church shooter appeals death sentence, lawyers say Dylann Roof is delusional
Lawyers for Dylann Roof, convicted of killing nine people at an historically black church in Charleston, say the then-22-year-old was mentally ill and never should have been allowed to represent himself in court.
Lawyers for Roof are appealing the conviction and the death sentence handed down by a federal jury in 2017 to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a 321-page brief to the court, Roof’s lawyers describe him as a “ninth-grade dropout diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, autism, anxiety, and depression.”
Lawyers said Roof “believed his sentence didn’t matter because white nationalists would free him from prison after an impending race war.”
Roof was convicted in the massacre of nine people, all of them black, at the Mother Emanuel AME Church.
Just after 8 p.m. on June 17, 2015, Roof went into Mother Emanuel AME. He sat with a group doing a bible story for an hour before he stood up and started shooting.
Church pastor and South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr., Rev. Sharonda Singleton and Rev. Myra Thompson died in the the massacre.
Roof is now appealing that conviction and has a new public defender on his case.
The appellate brief, filed in the court in Richmond, Virginia, argues that the court knew about Roof’s mental illness. “And yet, the court allowed Roof not only to stand trial, but to represent himself,” the lawyers write.
“Though Roof’s mental state was the subject of two competency hearings, and five experts found him delusional—findings swiftly dismissed by the court, in its rush to move the case along,” according to the filing.
Lawyers argue that jurors did not get to hear evidence of Roof’s mental state. They say Roof fired his own attorneys and decided to represent himself because he did not want that evidence of his mental illness to come out.
“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. Roof’s crime was tragic, but this Court can have no confidence in the jury’s verdict,” the lawyers said.
The attorneys he fired during the 2017 trial said they had never “represented a defendant so disconnected from reality,” according to the brief.
Prosecutors have until Feb. 18 to respond to the brief.
