Capital punishment for “atrocious crimes”. A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence of American Dylann Roof, who coldly shot nine black parishioners from a church in South Carolina in 2015, a massacre that shocked the planet.
“No clinical summary or in-depth legal analysis can fully account for the atrocity of Roof’s act. His crimes place him under the most severe sentence that a just society can render, ”concluded the judges of the Richmond court in their unanimous judgment.
Convinced of the supremacy of white men over other races he considers inferior, Dylan Roof opened fire 77 times in a Methodist church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, riddling nine black worshipers who came from the United States with bullets. welcome with open arms for a Bible study session. The young man was then 21 years old.
Remedies still possible
This shooting had all the more marked American and international public opinion as it had bloodied a symbolic place of the fight against slavery: the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church brings together the oldest black community in this historic city of the era of the plantations, located in the south-eastern United States.
The young extremist was sentenced in early 2017 to the death penalty, without having expressed regret or apologies.
Before the Court of Appeal, his lawyers tried to obtain the annulment of his sentence, arguing that the trial judge should never have acceded to the accused’s request to ensure his own defense. But the appellate magistrates swept this argument aside.
The convict, now 27 and held in a penitentiary, is not at risk of execution in the short term, as President Biden’s administration last month imposed a moratorium on federal executions. He can also still attempt an appeal to the full court of appeal, or to the United States Supreme Court.