Charleston church shooter’s latest attempt at SCOTUS appeal rebuffed

WASHINGTON (WCSC) — Court documents show that Dylann Roof’s attempt to appeal his sentencing based on a judge’s alleged desire to oversee the trial has failed after the Supreme Court said they would not hear his case.

Roof, who was convicted in the 2015 killing of nine Black parishioners at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church and sentenced to death, had sought the recusal of a federal judge, Richard Gergel.

This was because one of Roof’s former lawyers had claimed that Gergel had expressed a desire to oversee the case, which Roof’s team argued was a sign of bias against the defendant. They hoped to argue his conviction and sentencing were unconstitutional because of that alleged bias.

Lower courts had previously ruled that any claims of Gergel having expressed a desire to oversee the case were only hearsay. They additionally asserted that even if Gergel had indeed said he wanted to oversee Roof’s case, that in and of itself wasn’t tantamount to any sort of bias against Roof.

Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear Roof’s appeal. Roof’s case was among the many other cases the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on, an action that does not indicate any opinion from the court but rather constitutes a refusal to intervene in Gergel’s presiding over the case.

After he was captured in Shelby, North Carolina, Roof confessed to the killings of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, who was also a state senator; Susie Jackson, 87; the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74; Ethel Lance, 70; the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49; Myra Thompson, 59; Cynthia Graham Hurd, 54; the Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45; and Tywanza Sanders, 26.

A self-proclaimed white supremacist, he told investigators he had hoped to start a race war with the shooting.

Roof remains on the federal government’s death row, being one of only three convicts whose death penalties the Biden administration did not commute to a life sentence in December 2024.

No date has been set for Roof’s execution and he and his defense team remain entrenched in the now nearly decadelong appeals process.