Lawyers representing Dylann Roof, the white man accused of killing nine black members of a historic Charleston, S.C., church last summer, filed a motion challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty after federal prosecutors declined his offer to serve life without parole.
In the 34-page motion filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, Roof’s lawyers acknowledged that “the facts of this case are indisputably grave.’’ But they argued that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional.
The challenge to the system stemmed from the government’s refusal to accept guilty pleas from Roof in exchange for multiple sentences of life in prison without a possibility of parole, the filing said.
“Should the government’s death notice be withdrawn at any point in the future,’’ the filing said, “Mr. Roof will withdraw this motion and plead guilty as charged to all counts in the indictment.’’
The defense team — which includes David Bruck, a nationally renowned death penalty lawyer — drew on academic research and earlier court cases to argue that the death penalty is unreliable, excessive, and undermined by lengthy delays.
The team cited a dissenting opinion in a landmark death penalty case last year in which a divided Supreme Court upheld the use of lethal injection drugs. In the dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said it was time to reconsider whether capital punishment was constitutional.
Bruck, one of three lawyers who signed Roof’s filing Monday, has played a role in hundreds of death penalty cases and argued seven of them before the Supreme Court. He helped defend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Marathon bombings trial.
Whether a challenge like Roof’s could prevail in front of the Supreme Court, should it rise there on appeal, is a subject of intense speculation.
The defense team is clearly “reading the tea leaves,’’ said Evan Mandery, author of “A Wild Justice,’’ a history of challenges to capital punishment.
“You have two odd events,’’ added Mandery, who is also a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s that it’s a federal death penalty case in the context of a hate crime — so you have this ambitious use of the death penalty — after Glossip, when Breyer signaled that he thought the death penalty was unconstitutional.’’
New York Times
