A federal appeals court has upheld the death sentence for Dylann Roof, the man who killed nine members of a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015.
On Wednesday, according to WBTV, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an attempt from Roof and his attorneys to repeal his sentence.
“No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did,” the court said. “His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose.”
On June 17, 2015, Roof entered the historically Black Mother Emanuel AME Church. He then opened fire, killing the church’s pastor, state Sen. and Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight others.
The court is based in Richmond, Virginia.
In 2017, Roof became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime. Roof was 21 years old at the time.
Roof’s attorneys had also argued an appellate court should vacate Roof’s convictions and death sentence, or remand his case to court for a “proper competency evaluation.”
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