Should Dylann Roof live or die? Behind legal arguments Tuesday, that was key issue

After some three hours of arguments on whether Charleston church killer Dylann Roof should have his death sentence overturned and get a new trial, a three-judge U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Richmond adjourned Tuesday afternoon without making any decision.

Nor did the judges hint when they might render a decision, after a hearing that touched on complex questions concerning Roof’s mental fitness, the decision-making of trial Judge Richard Gergel, Roof’s future danger to others if allowed a life sentence, states’ rights, the reach of the Interstate Commerce Clause, the difference between “harmless error” and “reversible error” and numerous other complex legal issues.

In one key issue — whether trial Judge Gergel was correct in limiting evidence of Roof’s lack of mental fitness — Roof attorney Sapna Mirchandani told the judges that Gergel had committed “an abuse of discretion.”

Defense briefs argue that Roof was seriously mentally ill, incapable of participating in his defense and that Gergel had wrongly given too much weight to the prosecution’s psychiatric evaluations of Roof in finding he was fit to direct his own defense.

“We ask the court to remedy that error by vacating the death sentence and remanding his case to the district court for a retrospective competency hearing,” Mirchandani told the judges.

But government attorney Ann Adams told the judges that “ample evidence” supports Gergel’s ruling that Roof was competent to stand trial, and the judge had acted properly in restricting mental fitness evidence the defense had tried to get before the jury.

“Roof had a rational and factual understanding of the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him,” Adams told the judges. “The district court noted his high I.Q., his ability to describe the proceedings in detail and .... understand the proceedings.”

Roof, 27, was sentenced to death in January 2017 by U.S. Judge Richard Gergel after a jury found him guilty of 18 death eligible federal hate-crimes and firearms charges.

In a subsequent proceeding to determine sentence, the same jury ruled Roof deserved the death penalty. Judge Gergel then pronounced the sentence.

Roof, who grew up in Columbia, was a self-described white supremacist who wanted to start a race war by killing African Americans, according to evidence at his trial which included a video confession to FBI agents and a manifesto he published online.

In June 2015, to implement his plan, Roof traveled to Charleston, entered a prayer meeting at an African American church and executed nine Black churchgoers, including beloved Democratic state Sen. Clementa Pinckney.

The crime attracted worldwide attention and caused the S.C. General Assembly to vote to take the Confederate flag — a symbol used by Roof in a number of photographs found among his possessions — off State House grounds.

In April 2017, three months after being condemned to death by a federal jury, Roof pleaded guilty to nine state counts of murder and was sentenced to nine consecutive life sentences. The guilty plea and sentences in state court, which will stand no matter what happens to his federal conviction and death sentence, spared the families of the victims the ordeal of another trial.

Roof is now on federal death row at a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.