U.S. District Court Judge Richard M. Gergel grant­ed a request on November 28 from Dylann Roof (pic­tured), the 22-year-old charged with the mur­ders of nine mem­bers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to rep­re­sent him­self in his fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al. Judge Gergel described Roof’s deci­sion as ​“strate­gi­cal­ly unwise,” but said, ​“It is a deci­sion you have the right to make.” A crim­i­nal defen­dan­t’s right to self-rep­re­sen­ta­tion was estab­lished by the Supreme Court in 1975 in Farretta v. California, a non-cap­i­tal case where the Court held that a defen­dant may waive his right to coun­sel pro­vid­ed such waiv­er is know­ing, vol­un­tar­i­ly, and intel­li­gent. In Roof’s tri­al, the judge had tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed jury selec­tion in the tri­al on November 7, when Roof’s attor­neys request­ed a deter­mi­na­tion of Roof’s men­tal com­pe­ten­cy to stand tri­al. After a two-day hear­ing, which was closed to the pub­lic because state­ments Roof made to a psy­chol­o­gist might taint the tri­al, Judge Gergel found Roof fit to stand tri­al. Jury selec­tion is set to begin on November 28th, with 516 poten­tial jurors report­ing to the cour­t­house for ques­tion­ing. After Roof’s fed­er­al tri­al, the state of South Carolina also plans to try him. He faces a death sen­tence in both tri­als. While the Supreme Court has not addressed whether a cap­i­tal defen­dant may waive his right to coun­sel, death penal­ty experts have argued that such defen­dants should not be allowed to rep­re­sent them­selves, because of the com­plex­i­ty of cap­i­tal cas­es and the final­i­ty of the sen­tence. Cornell Law Professor John Blume wrote, ​“when it comes to a crim­i­nal defen­dant fac­ing soci­ety’s ulti­mate pun­ish­ment, the defen­dan­t’s more sym­bol­ic inter­ests in dig­ni­ty and auton­o­my are out­weighed by the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem’s inter­ests, as well as soci­ety as a whole’s inter­ests, in accu­ra­cy and fair­ness.” Last year, a Kansas judge per­mit­ted White Supremacist Frazier Glenn Cross to rep­re­sent him­self in a case in which he was charged with mur­ders at a Kansas City Jewish Community Center. His lawyers had intend­ed to present a men­tal health defense to the mur­ders. After a con­tro­ver­sial tri­al punc­tu­at­ed by out­bursts by the defen­dant, the jury sen­tenced Cross to death.

(M. Kinnard, ​“JUDGE: CHURCH SHOOTING SUSPECT CAN ACT AS HIS OWN ATTORNEY,” Associated Press, November 28, 2016; D. Victor, ​“Dylann Roof to Represent Himself at Trial in Charleston Church Shootings,” The New York Times, November 28, 2016; J. Blume and M. Clark, ​“Unwell: Indiana v. Edwards and the Plight of Mentally Ill Pro Se Defendants,” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 21:151, 2011; M. Meckstroth, ​“The Case Against Self-Representation in Capital Proceedings,” Minnesota Law Review, 99:1935, 2015.) See Representation.

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