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The appeal of Dylann Roof, 21, was denied by the Supreme Court.
Roof was convicted of murdering nine people in a Black church in 2015. The grounds of the appeal were based on Roof’s mental health.
Roof’s attorney kept information about Roof’s mental health from jurors and said: “He would be rescued from prison by White-nationalists — but only, bizarrely, if he kept his mental impairments out of the public record.”
The death sentence was categorized as “full horror” and racially based.
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In 2017, Roof became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime. Authorities have said Roof opened fire during the closing prayer of a Bible study at the church, shooting into the crowd of those assembled.
He was 21 at the time of the massacre.
A federal appeals court last year upheld Roof’s conviction and death sentence for the racially-motivated slaying of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation, saying the legal record cannot even capture the “full horror” of what he did.
In his appeal, Roof’s attorneys argued that he was wrongly allowed to represent himself during sentencing, a critical phase of his trial.
Roof successfully prevented jurors from hearing evidence about his mental health, “under the delusion,” his attorneys argued, that “he would be rescued from prison by White-nationalists — but only, bizarrely, if he kept his mental-impairments out of the public record.”
Roof, 28, is currently being held under maximum security in a Terre Haute, Indiana prison. He is on federal death row and awaiting execution.
