Dylann Roof
(AP) -- COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Attorneys for convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide how to handle disagreements over mental illness-related evidence between capital defendants and their attorneys, an issue that has played a role throughout his case over the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
When a capital defendant who has been ruled competent to stand trial and his attorneys “disagree on whether to present mitigating evidence depicting him as mentally ill, who gets the final say?” Roof's appellate team wrote in their petition, filed late last month with the high court.
Justices' consideration is “needed to resolve a deep divide among the lower courts over who — client or lawyer — gets to decide whether mitigation evidence will be introduced at a capital penalty hearing.”
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