The Justice Department has made a decision to seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof who stands accused of killing nine parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina.
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“The nature of the alleged crime and the resulting harm compelled this decision”, Lynch said in a brief statement.
The killings, which have been recognized as one of the more notorious mass killings in recent American history, sparked nationwide outrage and led to the lowering of the Confederate flag in front of South Carolina’s State House in Columbia.
Roof, who is white, appeared in photos waving Confederate flags and burning or desecrating USA flags, and purportedly wrote of fomenting racial violence.
The officer has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised racial tensions in the United States.
When Roof was charged days after the shooting, some relatives of the slain worshippers tearfully offered words of forgiveness during an initial court appearance. In this case the approval is also redundant since the state of SC has already said it will apply the death penalty if Roof in convicted.
Despite the pile of charges, it’s pretty rare for the government to seek the death penalty in a federal case.
Roof’s lawyers previously said he would plead guilty provided the death penalty and face a lifetime in prison, provided the death penalty was ruled out.
Last July, Roof was indicted on hate crime murder charges for the June 17 killings.
The now 22-year-old’s explanation for the shooting was that he wanted to cause a “race war”, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to the media last year. State and federal prosecutors typically agree on which should take a back seat.
It’s unprecedented for two death penalty cases to proceed through the separate court systems, he said.
On Tuesday, Malcolm Graham, brother of shooting victim Cynthia Hurd, said federal prosecutors had talked to family members before announcing the decision and that he felt it was “an appropriate punishment”.
The government previous year successfully asked for the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the confessed co-author of the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb attacks that killed three people and wounded 264.
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No date has been set for the federal trial as yet, however a status hearing is scheduled in June.
