This is not the first time Roof finds problems with his attorneys.
A federal court on Tuesday rejected a request filed by white supremacist church killer Dylann Roof asking to fire his attorneys who are of Indian and Jewish origin.
Roof, who killed nine black parishioners at Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church in 2015 and sentenced to death by a federal court, requested 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia to dismiss his attorneys.
According to the request filed by Roof, his attorneys – Indian American Sapna Mirchandani and Jewish American Alexandra Yates – are from ethnicities and this is causing “a barrier to effective communication,” The Washington Post reported.
“Because of my political views, which are arguably religious, it will be impossible for me to trust two attorneys that are my political and biological enemies,” the newspaper quoted a handwritten, three-page motion Roof filed on Monday.
The 23-year-old also added that Yates’s “ethnicity was a constant source of conflict” even with his “constant efforts to look past it.”
However, the court denied the request with a one page, 11-word denial memo saying “The Court denies the motion for substitution of counsel on appeal,” The State Reported.
The mass shooting in the historical Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston took place on the evening of June 17, 2015. Eight died at the scene and the ninth Daniel Simmons died at MUSC Medical Center. Police arrested Roof soon after the incident and he confessed to committing the massacre in hopes igniting a race war.
A federal court sentenced Roof, who never expressed any remorse, to the death penalty for the killings in January. He pleaded guilty on April 10th in the state court trial to avoid a second death-penalty trial. He got a life in prison without parole on April 10th 2017.
This is not the first time Roof finds problems with his attorneys. He previously had problems with his lead trial lawyer, David Bruck, who is also Jewish.