CHARLOTTE, N.C. —
Wednesday was bittersweet for Charlotte City Councilman Malcolm Graham, as a federal appeals court upheld the death penalty sentence and murder conviction for Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015.
Roof killed nine members of Mother Emanuel AME, a historically Black church in the heart of downtown Charleston. In 2017, he became the first person in the U.S. to be sentenced for a federal hate crime, according to WLTX in Columbia.
Graham's sister, Cynthia Marie Graham-Hurd, was one of the victims killed in the shooting. He spoke with WCNC Charlotte just hours after Roof's sentence and conviction were upheld in court.
“It’s bittersweet, right,” Graham said. “I sat through the trial for well over four months ... was there when the verdict came down from the jury of death. I thought it was appropriate then, and I think it's appropriate now. We live in a society of laws and the rule of law has to come into play. It says really loud and clear that racism, bigotry and discrimination that leads to death should be met with death.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Williams, one of the lead prosecutors on the case, said the mass shooting was one of the worst events in South Carolina’s history, according to a report from the Associated Press.
“Our office is grateful for the decision of the court, a decision that ensures, as the Court stated, that ‘the harshest penalty a just society can impose’ is indeed imposed,” Williams said in a statement.
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