Appeals court upholds death sentence for Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld Dylann Roof's conviction and death sentence for the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black church congregation in Charleston, South Carolina.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond affirmed Roof's conviction and sentence in the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The 4th Circuit found that the trial judge did not commit an error when he found Roof was competent to stand trial, and the panel issued a scathing rebuke of Roof's crimes. "Dylann Roof murdered African Americans at their church, during their Bible-study and worship. They had welcomed him. He slaughtered them. He did so with the express intent of terrorizing not just his immediate victims at the historically important Mother Emanuel Church, but as many similar people as would hear of the mass murder," the panel wrote in is ruling.