Lack of lethal injection drugs among prosecutor’s reasons for skipping 2nd Roof trial
South Carolina’s inability to carry out death penalty was one of the reasons the Charleston-area solicitor chose not to continue with a second death penalty trial against Dylann Roof, she said Monday.
Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson repeatedly had said she would seek the death penalty against Roof even though the federal government was seeking to do the same. But she said on Monday there were several reasons why she hashed out a plea agreement with Roof instead of proceeding with a state trial.
“Our mission, and over the past few weeks since the federal government obtained the federal conviction, was to see what we could do to ensure the surest path to Dylann Roof’s execution,” Wilson said. “With us securing a life sentence just in case – in the very, very unlikely event that something were to happen to the federal conviction – we have our conviction in place.”
On Monday, Roof pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in state court for the slayings of nine African-American parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston the night of June 17, 2015. As part of the plea agreement, Roof was sentence to nine sentences of life in prison.
But Roof was sentenced to death by a federal judge in January, after a jury found him guilty on 33 counts, nine of them involving hate crimes. Wilson said she – and at times her staff – attended that trial. She said it was one of the most “gut-wrenching” experiences she has had in her life.
Putting the survivors and the families of those killed in the shooting through a second death penalty trial “was not the smartest, wisest or most compassionate thing to do,” when a federal judge had already imposed a death sentenced on Roof, a Columbia-area white supremacist.
Wilson also said she believed the federal government is now “more committed” to the death penalty than in the past, and that she expects it will be implemented.
But she added that South Carolina also doesn’t have the drugs to carry out the execution.
South Carolina’s last supply of lethal injection drugs expired in 2013. The state has been unable to obtain alternative drugs, because pharmaceutical companies that previously compounded the drugs have been pressured into ending the practice.
“It may be that in the future that we are able to secure the drug that is used for executions, but it’s not our present,” Wilson said.
“If South Carolina and the state courts were the only option for pursuing the death penalty, I would have pursued it,” she said. “But because we have a death sentence in place now, I do not believe it’s necessary.”
This story was originally published April 10, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Lack of lethal injection drugs among prosecutor’s reasons for skipping 2nd Roof trial."