Federal Push For Executions Unlikely To Affect Dylann Roof In Short Term

Chris Adams, a Charleston attorney who handles capital cases, said Bernard’s stay on death row, which lasted just over two decades, is typical. Even an extraordinarily fast death penalty case, like that of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, takes years to play out. McVeigh, who waived his right to an appeal, was put to death four years after he was sentenced.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said Roof is only in the first stage of a process that will likely extend across years and several levels of the justice system, including the potential for multiple reviews by the Supreme Court. What’s more, the case is not only emotionally and politically fraught, it is laced with complicated issues surrounding Roof’s mental health, as well as his competency to stand trial and represent himself in court, he said.

“At this stage, we are probably at least a decade away from completing just the normal appeals in a capital case,” he said.

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Still, Dunham and Adams understand the complaints of discriminatory justice, as the federal death penalty has long broken along racial lines. Death row includes disproportionate numbers of Black defendants who have been convicted of crimes involving White victims.

And while the federal government can pursue the death penalty anywhere, its capital cases skew toward crimes committed in states that have a state death penalty. Of the 13 executions the Trump administration has carried out this year or plans to conduct in the next month, all but two involve states with a death penalty. That includes Texas, where Bernard participated in the killing of a White couple. He was convicted by a jury that was almost entirely White.

“That sounds like a recipe for the death penalty, when you have a White victim and an African American defendant and an overwhelming number of White jurors,” said Adams, who is president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “What you see a lot of times is that the death penalty is for the person with the wrong racial dynamics in the courtroom, and it’s not for the worst of the worst offender or the worst of the worst crime.”