Charleston church shooter Dylan Roof has appealed his death sentence due to believing he would be released from prison after a possible “race war.”
According to CNN, Dylan Roof’s attorneys filed a 321-page motion with the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals and said the federal court made an error in deciding whether he was competent to stand trial, arguing that he was capable of representing himself during his hearings.
“When Dylann Roof represented himself at his capital trial, he was a 22-year-old, ninth-grade dropout diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, autism, anxiety, and depression, who believed his sentence didn’t matter because white nationalists would free him from prison after an impending race war,”
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His attorneys also stated that the trial was “in a rush to move the case along” in order to prevent jurors from examining evidence surrounding Roof’s competency hearing.
“Roof’s crime was tragic, but this Court can have no confidence in the jury’s verdict,”
Roof was sentenced in 2017 after being convicted of federal murder and hate crimes. During his sentencing, he claimed that “there was nothing wrong with [me] psychologically. Prosecutors used his journal as evidence for the shooting and it stated he showed no remorse for his actions.
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