Lawyers for the gunman accused of killing nine black people at a church in a racist murder have argued their client should not face the death penalty because it is unconstitutional.
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The motion says Roof will withdraw the challenge and plead guilty in exchange for life in prison if the government agrees it won’t seek the death penalty. “It’s that it’s a federal death penalty case in the context of a hate crime – so you have this ambitious use of the death penalty – after [the Supreme Court case], when Breyer signaled that he thought the death penalty was unconstitutional”. Lawyers for Roof argue in a motion filed Monday, Aug. 1, 2016, that the death penalty and federal death penalty law are unconstitutional. Why the complication? The challenge comes from the prosecution’s unwillingness to accept Roof’s guilty pleas and multiple life sentences without parole. Most notably, a federal judge in Vermont just recently finished a nine-day hearing over issues raised by Donald Fell’s lawyers about the constitutionality of the death penalty in the federal stystem. However, the federal government rejected this request, and as of now the death penalty remains on the table.
Roof is facing federal and state charges after police say he shot and killed nine people inside Mother Emanuel last summer.
“The [Federal Death Penalty Act] may have been designed with as much care as possible under the circumstances, the capital sentencing process that the statute provides is constitutionally inadequate in practice”.
Judge Richard Gergel, who is presiding over the case, did not immediately rule on the filings.
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Roof faces federal hate crime charges in connection with the killings too – he had appeared in photos waving Confederate flags and burning or desecrating USA flags. “An essential element of his plan, however, was to find his victims inside of a church, specifically an African-American church, to ensure the greatest notoriety and attention to his actions”. Since potential jurors in capital cases must be willing to consider sentencing a person to death, those who outright oppose the death penalty in all cases are excluded from the jury. Jury selection in his state trial begins in January.
