The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the Supreme Court to refuse to hear a death-penalty appeal by an avowed white supremacist who gunned down nine people at a black church in South Carolina in 2015 in an effort to spark a race war.
Dylann Storm Roof, now 28, is the first individual in the United States ever to be sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
Roof, who is now on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, fired his lawyers during the penalty phase of his trial and represented himself in order to prevent the presentation of evidence showing he was mentally ill, even though such mitigating evidence may have helped him avoid execution….