In the federal case against him, Dylann Roof was just convicted on all thirty-three charges. He will attempt to defend himself (without the assistance of attorneys) during the penalty phase of the trial. He already tried and failed to plea down to a life imprisonment sentence. And, even if he isn’t executed by the federal government, he also is facing a death penalty case from the South Carolina government.
Chances are, then, that he’ll eventually die for his crimes.
That’s not what most of the survivors and family members want to see. And it’s not what we should want either.
His crimes against the parishioners of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church are barbaric enough to warrant the strongest available penalty. If a single person is executed for anything anywhere in this country, then certainly Roof deserves no less of a fate.
But even if you can satisfy yourself that the death penalty is sometimes a just punishment, and you’re certain that this case is a slam-dunk as to guilt, the death penalty is still inappropriate because its use in one case justifies its use in other cases where things may not be as open and shut.
We should stop executing people. We’re never going to have a foolproof and just system for establishing guilt, or even for making the decision on whether to charge one person and not another. Dylann Roof thought he had a well thought out rationale for executing people. He was wrong.
The federal government, especially, should take a lesson from that.
It’s not about what Dylann Roof deserves. It’s about what we all deserve, and that’s a criminal justice system that doesn’t have the hubris and the conceit to believe that its perfect enough to kill people.
I watched some of the film footage of Roof’s entry into the church and listened to testimony from the woman he left to tell the story. It was chilling. I felt my heart sink as I heard how cold-blooded he was and how those people spent the last moments of their lives in terror.
I hope that as people of faith they had a moment of peace before they died, that he didn’t win by stealing their dignity. And selfishly, I wished he had run away and killed himself.
I am not a supporter of the death penalty. It’s hypocritical to kill people because they killed people. I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison. I wouldn’t mind if he suffers a long sentence filled with guilt and mental torment, but I expect he’s fine with what he did.
yes, he should die
nor anyone else, for exactly the reasons you lay out.
In some hypothetical, ideal justice system that never has and never will exist, in which guilt and relevant circumstances could always be reliably and precisely determined in order to apply the ultimate penalty with perfect even-handedness, a case could be made for death being the “just” penalty in some cases.
Things like DNA and other exonerations, the Innocence Project, and statistics demonstrating racial and other biases at every stage of the process from investigation to what charges are brought to verdicts to sentences to execution leave no morally defensible case for government executing people for any crime, no matter how heinous.
Should have been eliminated long ago (as it has in civilized nations).
It’s interesting that most legal opposition seems to follow the “cruel and unusual punishment” path when it seems to me the even more compelling argument would be “equal protection”, given the mass of evidence of intensely unequal and biased application mentioned above. (Can’t imagine the argument hasn’t been raised, but also can’t understand how it could fail to prevail given the evidence currently known, though it apparently has so far.)
Booman…
You write:
I totally agree.
But…you also write:
I want to alter that statement…just a couple of words. OK?
There.
That’s better.
Isn’t it?
I mean…how can you expect one part of the government to stop killing individual people when other parts are doing so on unbelievable scales, Booman? Like…in the millions over say the last 50+years? And many of the murdered are demonstrably totally innocent???!!!
What’s that you say?
It’s war???!@!!! So it’s ok?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
P.S. Find a new party. Yours has so much murderous karma attached to it that I fear it will never recover.
Don’t kill him. Don’t make him a martyr. He should be disappeared to Supermax.
You know he wouldn’t last very long there.
What happens when Trump pardons him? What then?
On that point, I wonder how many people Trump will pardon and starting when.
There will be no nadir in the Trump presidency; things will always get worse.
Comrade Roof gets a Cabinet position?
Over the years, I’ve found a number of arguments against the death penalty to be persuasive. But really, if anybody should ever be executed, it’s people like Dylan Roof. And there isn’t a scintilla of doubt about his guilt.
The only reason not to that I’ve heard is that it would make him a martyr. But so what? A martyr for Satan?
If the State of South Carolina want to do away with him, he fully deserves it.
“he deserves it” makes up no slightest part of the argument made against.
Perhaps you might want to go back and review it.
I know, but I questioned the “but” …
“But even if you can satisfy yourself that the death penalty is sometimes a just punishment, and you’re certain that this case is a slam-dunk as to guilt, the death penalty is still inappropriate because its use in one case justifies its use in other cases where things may not be as open and shut.”
To me that’s almost logical, but not quite. If things aren’t as open as shut, we shouldn’t. But if they are, and considering the nature of the crime, we should.
And who gets to decide? You?
I am entitled to my opinion, I believe. That’s why I write comments here.
The State of South Carolina gets to decide.
There is no logic in telling someone you should not kill people; and, to prove it to you, I am going to kill you–which is what the death penalty message sends.
It all depends on what you think “justice” is about, doesn’t it?
It is vengeance, retribution, penitence, rehabilitation, correction….aren’t those all points of the endless debates about the death penalty?
This is a federal case, not one by the State of South Carolina. There is no cause for celebrating the US Attorney and Loretta Lynch actually doing their jobs, even though in this zeitgeist there should be.
One is so outraged by this crime that one thinks that death really is too good, too much of a relief, to the young man to really serve some primitive sort of justice. One seeks the penitence of having to sit in solitary confinement with the pictures of the people he killed on the walls of his cell for the rest of his life. And one hopes that he would treat a pardon from a President Trump as the equivalent of a death sentence instead of freedom, a placing a permanent target on his back that he would never know who or when vengeance would happen. But he doesn’t seem that reflective. More of a James O’Keefe with a gun instead of a video camera and editing equipment.
Son, ya made the news again; you’re just like that James Earl Ray guy, counting off the years with anniversary notices of your crime after five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five, forty, fifty years in your cell. Or you’ll be like Charles Colson, find Jeeee-zusss, and be the redeemed hero of the majority conservative movement and continue to spread your poison.
When does the death stop? Capital punishment for Dylann Roof won’t do it one way or the other.
Nor would dragging him out of his detention, taking him to the nearest live oak tree and lynching him.
Tell me. Exactly what is justice for Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight of his church members?
I think the worst punishment of all would be for Dylann Roof to be treated by the penalty jury as they would decide about a black convictee facing a penalty for nine publicly visible murders. That context would put a lot of deserved pressure on the “twelve men/women good an true.”
The difficulties of justice are why juries deliberate, and so few do deliberation adequately.
instead of a video camera and editing equipment”.
That’s very unkind to O’Creep . . . and absolutely deservedly so. Also a very well observed insight.
Having served on a jury in a quite serious felony (though not death-penalty) case (one of the harder things I’ve ever had to do), I can attest to the truth of both parts of this:
I would be sympathetic to this line of reasoning in some cases. In this case, there is no doubt whatsoever about this person and his guilt. No question whatsoever about his guilt.
Raising doubt is appropriate in many cases. There is no doubt in this case.
Quite obviously, no question about his guilt was raised.
If you wanted to address the morally compelling reasons that actually were raised, perhaps that would be a better use of everyone’s time, including even yours!
Agreed. I believe there are cases when the death penalty is a just punishment. I believe this is one of those cases. But our system is corrupt, capricious, and inefficient, and as such, it should not be allowed to kill anyone.
○ FBI/DOJ Microscopic Hair Comparison Analysis Review
○ NC Bar admonishes innocence advocate Christine Mumma