South Carolina Seeks Death Penalty Against Dylann Roof

State prosecutors bringing charges against Dylann Roof who killed 9 black churchgoers in a racially motivated terrorist attack are seeking the death penalty.

The New York Times reports that Roof is facing charges from both the state of South Carolina and the federal government, and South Carolina has chosen to pursue the death penalty. It is still unclear if the federal government will pursue the death penalty against Roof for the June 17 shooting.

In announcing the decision, South Carolina's state solicitor Scarlett A. Wilson said that Roofs criminal past, racial motivation, and lack of remorse were the state's primary reasons for seeking the death penalty.

While the original motivation for the shooting was unclear at the outset as such shootings are a regular part of American life, it later emerged that Roof held strong and explicitly racist views. These views were laid out in a manifesto he published online and underscored by images of him burning the U.S. flag while also waving the Confederate flag and the flag of the apartheid government that used to rule South Africa.

The shooting has led to a charged debate about the Confederate flag and other reminders of the Civil War, such as memorials and street names. South Carolina, which is where the Civil War began, removed the Confederate flag from the state capitol after protests demanding it be removed. Before it was officially removed, a black woman actually climbed the flag pole where it was flying and took it down herself.

The flag was first placed on the capitol in the early 1960s in defiance of the court rulings and the advances of the Civil Rights Movement.