Professor Deborah Denno, a leading death penalty expert, spoke to The Christian Science Monitor about the differences between the federal prosecutors’ approach to the case against Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and how people in Charleston view the crime.
The murder of nine people as they prayed in a Charleston, S.C., church struck much of America as the very definition of a hate crime.
The murders at historic Mother Emanuel did not result in the race war self-described white supremacist Dylann Roof said that he wanted to spark. Instead, their deaths, and the astonishing forgiveness from the families of those killed, so moved the state and the country that within weeks, the governor brought down the Confederate flag flying over the statehouse and had it placed in a museum as a relic of the past.
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Now, as the federal government seeks the death penalty for 33 charges against Mr. Roof, the case not only has the potential to set legal precedent but to make a statement.
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If convicted and sentenced to death, Roof, whose taped confession was shown in court Friday, would be the first person in the United States to face that sanction on a federal level for a hate crime.
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But Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor in New York, says that, however they view the death penalty, many Charlestonians appear to see Roof’s alleged attack as a reminder of an uglier era, not a sign of things as they are.
“I tend to side with the people in Charleston who are seeing this as a case involving an individual rather than a statement on race in this country,” says Professor Denno, author of “Biology and Violence.” “In fact, it’s glorifying sort of the Dylann Roofs of the world to say that this is something broader.”