This Won't End Well

It is too often true in the trenches of criminal defense that if our clients were good at making decisions they wouldn't be our clients.

Case in point:  Dylan Roof.  

Charged with killing 9 African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.  His motive, they say, was to start a race war.  It was, they say, an act of terrorism.  Regardless of what additional names you give to the murder, regardless of the motive, it was an horrific crime.

Bad decision to do that? Certainly.  Bad decision to hate that much (and that way)?  Certainly.  Bad decision to have that picture taken?  Certainly.

Anyhow, he's facing (you know this and I've written about it several times) capital trials in both federal and state court.

They began selecting the jury this morning in the federal trial.  From a pool of 512 (down from 747 who filled out questionnaires, which is down from the 3,000 who were originally summoned), they'll get down to a dozen jurors and 6 alternates.  It's a slow process under the best of circumstances.  So slow that testimony likely won't begin until January (so the reporters are saying), perhaps just a few days before the trial in state court is set to start.  (The state trial will be delayed.)

Of course, one thing might speed it up a bit.

Just before they started with the jurors this morning, the judge granted Roof's request to represent himself.  This is the same judge who just held a two-day, closed-door hearing on whether Roof was competent to stand trial - a lesser degree of competence, the Supreme Court says.  But, and with some reluctance (judges hate pro se defendants; their lack of legal training and acculturation makes them unpredictable and tends to complicate the trial), the judge warned Roof he was probably making a serious mistake and then gave him the green light.

Which he wanted because, you know, he knows better how to convince the . . . .  Aw, the hell with the snark.  You know the old saying.

Anyone who has himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client.

Jennifer Berry Hawes in the Post and Courier, wondered why Roof would want to represent himself.

Defendants typically seek to represent themselves in capital cases for three reasons, said Charleston attorney Chris Adams, who specializes in federal court defenses, including death penalty cases, and is secretary of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"They don’t have faith in their legal team, they want to die, or they want to conceal their mental illness," Adams said. "In this case, Mr. Roof had a great defense team, so I don’t think there would be any sane reason to not trust them."

No "sane reason" not to trust them.  Well, yeah.  But then ordinary sanity and the competence to stand trial or represent oneself aren't the same thing (as Chris well knows).  And trust?  Hell, the same government that wants to murder Roof is paying his lawyers to try and save his life.  It's not hard to see why he might have some trust issues.*

But as Chris rejects the trust thing, he offers another guess.

Instead, Adams figured that Roof "wants suicide by jury" to conceal mental health issues. "Since it is doubtful Mr. Roof will present his own case for life, the hearing becomes a charade as jurors are denied the information that is critical to their decision," added Adams, who isn't involved in the case.

But that doesn't seem quite right, either.  The record, such as it is, does not suggest that Roof wants to be murdered by prison personnel.  He has, after all, consistently offered to plead guilty if the governments would just take execution off the table and sentence him to death by incarceration.

But if not the suicide by jury part, the rest (perhaps with variation) seems plausible: He wants to be sure that nobody will hear mitigation evidence he'd rather conceal.  Maybe it's about his mental health.  Maybe it's about his mother.  Maybe it's about how he's been abused.  

Or maybe it's that he wants to be able to tell the jury that he did it and he's glad and fuck those niggers.  Heil!  Besides, it's federal court and Donald Trump can grant him a pardon, so what the hell.

Back when he was blogging at Hercules and the Umpire, Judge Kopf posted this picture of a sullen Dylan Roof with the lead in, "let me show you what evil looks like."

I'm more struck by this picture of a seriously fucked-up and pathetic kid.  Just the sort who'd want to keep his truths to himself.

But monster or not, evil or just pitiable in his self-absorbed mania, if he keeps representing himself, you can be pretty sure what the verdict will be.

The Lynch can be proud that she got a death sentence in an even-more-than-usual unfair fight.


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*No, I'm not saying they're legitimate.  But they're things that every lawyer who takes court-appointments and every public defender has to deal with from time to time.

There's No Business Like Justice Business

He's competent.  

That is, and per the statutory language, he is able "to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him [and] to assist properly in his defense."

So says the judge.  The guy was evaluated and the judge held a hearing (on more than one day, no less! Wowsers!).  

They begin picking a jury today.

Oh, sorry.  This is Dylan Roof.  The guy who they say walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. and blew away nine people because, they say, the people were African-American and because, they also say, Roof did it in order to start a race war.

Which is how it happens that a federal judge is going to oversee a capital trial for young Mr. Roof. Because Loretta Lynch want him to get executed by the feds.

Not for killing nine people (which is a lot, but nowhere near the record).  Not for killing them purposely.  Not for killing them during a Bible study or while they were in Church.  None of that.

Loretta Lynch wants the feds to kill him because his heart wasn't pure when he killed.  His motive was bad.  (As opposed to the noble motives that might drive other folks to kill nine people in church? OK, I'm probably not being altogether fair.  No, actually I am.  It is that stupid.)

Of course, the representatives of the good people of South Carolina also want to kill Roof.  Next-in-line to be UN Ambassador Nicky Haley was for it from day one.  The prosecutor took longer to sign on, but she was for it, too.  Still the feds get first shot at finding 12 jurors who'll look at Roof and say - as one judge put it in explaining why as a member of a three-judge panel he once voted against death -

FUCK YOU

Anyway, and as the Times reported, amid the rush to kill, what with all that enthusiasm and jockeying for first, er, shot at ordering up a gurney by the feds and the Southern Carolinians, it turns out that the representatives of the people don't really give a rat's ass what the people think.  Of course, that's always true in capital cases to the extent that we kick the folks who don't believe in killin' off the jury. What's being ignored here are the voices of the families of the murdered and the survivors.

There's a big movement for so-called "victim's rights."  They're enshrined in various state constitutions.  Paul Cassell's made a career advocating for them.  Politicians are enthusiastic. I mean, who can oppose treating those whose lives are destroyed by criminal acts with dignity and respect - with honoring and guaranteeing their needs.

Needs that won't much be helped by years of appeals and arguments and guaranteeing that Roof's hate is repeatedly front and center.  Needs that won't be helped by more hate and more killing.  Of a guy who's game to plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison - which will happen anyway, the only real question being how his life will be ordered to end.

And then there's the thing about not returning hate for hate and killing for killing.

Ah, but that's without the posturing.  Because hate.  Because victim's rights only count when the victims cry out for vengeance.  

The show begins today.



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And see Scott Greenfield from yesterday.

Loretta Lynch v. Connecticut

This week the Attorney General finally made up her mind.

Following the department’s rigorous review process to thoroughly consider all relevant factual and legal issues, I have determined that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty,

That's Dylan Roof, the kid who's charged with killing 9 people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina last year.

Roof, who's already facing capital charges in South Carolina courts - trial currently set to begin in January - now risks the possibility of another death sentence.  From the feds.  Because he didn't just kill 9 people.  He did it for bad reasons.  Teach that rotten kid a lesson.

It took a year of dithering rigorous review to determine that this was an appropriate use of federal resources.  So that we can get him killed twice. Or maybe it's because the AG doesn't trust those racist hicks in South Carolina to kill a white guy who killed black folk for kicks.  So the AG needs to arrange for a back-up.  You know, just in case.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut.  

• Where the legislature abolished the death penalty going forward but left it in place so that Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes (and incidentally the 9 other folks on death row there) could still be killed.  
• Until State v. Santiago the Connecticut Supreme Court said that the death penalty violated the state's constitution and said that the 11 guys on death row couldn't be executed, either.
• And then, after the personnel on the court changed, put Santiago on hold while reconsidering the matter in the case of Russell Peeler, which was not a good sign if you thought they had it right the first time.

Yesterday, the court spoke.  There are concurrences and dissents, but in its brief and unsigned opinion (footnotes omitted), the court said it would follow its precedent.

A jury found the defendant, Russell Peeler, guilty of, among other things, one count of capital felony in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1999) § 53a-54b (8) and one count of capital felony in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1999) § 53a-54b (9) in connection with the 1999 shooting deaths of a woman and her young son, and, following a capital sentencing hearing, the trial court, Devlin, J.,rendered judgment imposing two death sentences. This appeal of the defendant’s death sentences is controlled by State v. Santiago, 318 Conn. 1, 122 A.3d 1 (2015), in which a majority of this court concluded that, following the enactment of No. 12-5 of the 2012 Public Acts (P.A. 12-5), executing offenders who committed capital crimes prior to the enactment of P.A. 12-5 would offend article first, §§ 8 and 9, of the Connecticut constitution. See, e.g., Conway v. Wilton, 238 Conn. 653, 658–62, 680 A.2d 242 (1996) (explaining scope of and rationale for rule of stare decisis). Our conclusion that the defendant’s death sentences must be vacated as unconstitutional in light of Santiago renders moot the defendant’s other appellate claims. The judgment is reversed with respect to the imposition of two sentences of death and the case is remanded with direction to impose a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release on each capital felony count; the judgment is affirmed in all other respects. 

Connecticut is known, among other things, as The Constitution State.

The Attorney General is named Lynch.

You can't make this shit up.