The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Dylann Roof, who was convicted of killing nine people in a 2015 shooting at a Black South Carolina church.
Roof, 28, became the first person to be sentenced to death for a federal hate crime in 2017. He was 21 when he opened fire at a Bible study at Charlestonās Mother Emanuel AME Church in what officials now say was a āracially motivatedā attack.
Roof had asked the court to handleĀ disputes related to his mental health.Ā
He had previously demanded that evidence of his mental illness be excluded ź¦from his capital trial, and fired his legal team during sentencing.
Roofās appellate attorneys that he was wrongly allowed to reāpresent himself while āunder the delusionā that he would be ārescued from prison by White natiāonalists.ā
The federal appeals court upheld Roofās conviction and death sentence last year, stating that the legal record failed to rš ·epresent the āfull horrorā of the crime.
Roof šis now on federal death row at a maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Ind. He can pursue other apš„peals.