Convicted church shooter Roof picked death over autism label
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Dylann Roof had his first appeal of his death sentence for killing nine people in a racist attack on praying worshippers in a Charleston church rejected Wednesday by the same judge who presided at his trial.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel also ordered the release of hundreds of pages of Dylann Roof’s psychological records as well Wednesday.
They included Roof’s insistence he would rather die than have an autism diagnosis made public and he wanted a federal trial so his picture — and what he thought was his unusually large forehead — would be kept off television.
In his first appeal, Roof argued that his crime didn’t fit the definition of interstate commerce needed to make a federal case because he bought the gun and bullets in South Carolina and did not travel out-of-state to the church.