US argues Supreme Court shouldn’t review Dylann Roof case

By MEG KINNARD
Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department say the nation’s highest court shouldn’t review the case of convicted church shooter Dylann Roof. Federal prosecutors made that argument in an expected filing with the U.S. Supreme Court. Roof was sentenced to death after his conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation. His lawyers have appealed his case to the high court, asking justices to decide how to handle disputes over mental illness-related evidence between capital defendants and their attorneys. Government attorneys say Roof wasn’t entitled to “control his counsel’s strategy” for winning his case “by dictating the mitigation evidence that they could introduce.”