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Dylann Roof Trial

  • Charleston County religious leaders met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month as the feds warn of an increased risk of attacks on houses of worship.
  • Dylann Roof's chances for a new appellate hearing continue to dwindle. Roof is challenging his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday refused to reconsider recusing itself from his appeal. Roof's attorneys wanted the judges who opted to sit out his case to reinstate themselves to consider his petition for a new hearing. One of the court's judges prosecuted Roof's case as an assistant U.S. attorney in 2017, when Roof became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
  • Dylann Roof wants the entire appellate court that recused itself from hearing his case to reconsider that decision. Roof's attorneys have made that request in new documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as he challenges his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation. All of the judges on the court have recused themselves from the case. One of them, Judge Jay Richardson, was lead prosecutor on Roof's case. Roof's lawyers say the court should still be able to decide whether he should get a new appellate hearing.
  • Attorneys for the federal government have opposed Dylann Roof's request for a new appellate hearing, arguing that the South Carolina man was properly convicted and sentenced for the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black congregation. Federal prosecutors argued in court documents filed Thursday that a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals correctly ruled last month that the government had proven its case against Roof, despite his protestations on several points. In 2017, Roof became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
  • Dylann Roof has filed the next step in his federal appeal. On Wednesday, Roof's lawyers filed a petition with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to challenge the court's confirmation of his conviction and death sentence for the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation. Last month, a three-judge panel of the court unanimously upheld Roof's conviction and sentence, rejecting arguments that the young white man should have been ruled incompetent to stand trial in the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Now, Roof wants the full court to consider his appeal.
  • His attorneys argue the "delusional belief" of the man on federal death row for the racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation should have meant he couldn't represent himself at trial. Attorneys for Dylann Roof told an appeals court Tuesday that Roof's theory that he'd be saved by white nationalists — but only if he kept mental health evidence out of his defense — should have shown his trial judge he wasn't competent. Roof is on federal death row for the 2015 slayings at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston. The federal government says he was properly found competent and should stay on death row.
  • The Charleston church killer says his two attorneys "are Jewish and Indian respectively. It is therefore quite literally impossible that they and I could have the same interests relating to my case."
  • 22-year old Dylann Roof will plead guilty to state murder charges during an April 10th hearing. This comes several months after a federal court sentenced…
  • The second phase of jury selection starts today in the federal trial of Dylann Roof. He’s the white man charged with hate crimes in the shooting deaths of…
  • The white man who murdered nine black people in a church in Charleston, S.C., is the first person to receive the death penalty in a federal trial that included hate crimes charges.