Dylann Roof is charged with murdering nine parishioners during a Bible study session at the Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, in July 2015.
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Defense attorneys for a former SC police officer accused in the shooting death of a black motorist who was running away have filed a motion seeking more thorough questioning of potential jurors.
Roof’s defense lawyers argued that the death penalty and federal death penalty laws were unconstitutional, claiming these violated the 5th and 8th amendments.
Roof’s federal death penalty trial is scheduled to begin November 7. Roof also faces federal charges including hate crimes. Prosecutors have said Roof, who lived in Lexington County, S.C. before the shootings and is now being held in the county lockup in North Charleston, hoped that his actions would lead to a race war.
Photos of Dylann Storm Roof from a white supremascist website emerged after he was collared for the Charleston massacre.
“This court should declare the FDPA (Federal Death Penalty Act) unconstitutional and order that this case proceed as a non-capital case”, attorneys stated in the motion.
The motion goes on to state that the “constitutional” challenge is the result of the prosecution’s refusal to accept Roof’s guilty pleas and willingness to serve multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Now, he’s facing nine counts of murder in state court and 33 federal charges, including hate crimes.
While the law provides that all citizens have an opportunity to sit on juries, juries willing to impose a death penalty don’t represent a cross-section of the community, the filing said.
In 2015, the number of prisoners executed in the United States fell to its lowest in 25 years (28) and the number of people sentenced to death dropped to its lowest point in 41 years (49), according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
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“Following the department’s rigorous review process to thoroughly consider all relevant factual and legal issues, I have determined that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty”. Roof’s defense team says they will drop the challenge if the government stops pursuing the death penalty, as The Christian Science Monitor has reported. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a death row inmate, John Wayne Connor, just last month.
