Centralized Bond Hearing Court via AP
He is worried that their courtroom testimonies will ensure he receives a death sentence.
Dylann Roof feels that it is “not fair” that he has to listen to testimony from the AME shooting victims’ families, he wrote in a court filing that was unsealed Thursday.
Roof is arguing that because he was not presenting any counter evidence to their testimonies, it would ensure that he receive the death penalty, the Washington Post reports. He was convicted in December of federal hate crimes for the June 2015 murders of nine Black people at the Emanuel AME Church, a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. Jurors are now deciding if Roof will receive the death penalty or spend a lifetime in prison.
He has shown no remorse nor offered an apology. He reiterated his lack of remorse in a jailhouse journal that was read in the courtroom Wednesday.
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“I would like to make it crystal clear I do not regret what I did,” Roof wrote in the prison journal seized by authorities in 2015. “I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed.”
According to the Post, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel warned prosecutors he was worried about the number of testimonies presented.
“I’m concerned both about the number of witnesses and the length of their testimony and the length collectively of their testimony, and I want you to revisit your strategy here, because at some point I’m going to cut you off if it gets too long,” he said.
Judge Gergel hasn’t imposed any limits of their testimonies as of yet.
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