Two of the farthest left black members of Congress are calling for a reprieve for Dylan Roof, the white supremacist who shocked America by shooting nine people after praying with them in Charleston’s Mother Emmanuel Church.
Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush — both members of the so-called ‘squad’ of progressive Democratic representatives — have called on new president Joe Biden to save the lives of Roof and 48 others currently on federal death row.
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could also be spared if Biden agrees to the move. His death sentence was overturned on appeal and the Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to take up his case for a final decision.
The plea from Pressley and Bush — supported by 35 Democrats in the House, including Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman — comes after former president Donald Trump ordered the execution of 13 killers in his last weeks in office in a legally mandated capital punishment spree unprecedented in modern times.
Before that flourish, only three federal prisoners have been put to death since 1963, the most notable being Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001.
‘State-sanctioned murder is not justice, and the death penalty, which kills black and brown people disproportionately, has absolutely no place in our society,’ said Pressley whose Massachusetts district covers the spot where the marathon bomb exploded, killing three and injuring hundreds more.
Two other notorious white nationalist murderers, Christopher Cramer and Ricky Fackrell would also be spared if their bid is successful.
Among the others are Chicago’s ‘Medicare Murderer’ Ronald Mikos, Kaboni Savage who was behind a spectacular firebomb attack in Philadelphia and dirty New Orleans cop Len Davis who ordered a hit on a woman who witnessed him beating a suspect.
Biden is known to oppose the death penalty and is unlikely to allow it during his term in office, but Bush and Pressley are pushing him to commute the sentences making it impossible for any future president to order their deaths.
Roof, 26, is currently the most infamous — and the youngest — of the killers facing lethal injection in the death chamber inside the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
He was just 21 when he went inside the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the south on the evening of June 17, 2015 and asked to take part in a Bible study class.
After around an hour the group started to pray and Roof took out a gun and started shooting, allegedly shouting: Y’all wanted something to pray about? I’ll give you something to pray about.’ He reloaded his gun five times, killing eight at the scene and injuring four, one of whom later died in the hospital.
Roof later said it was because he wanted to start a race war. A website titled The Last Rhodesian showed pictures of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism along with a hate-filled manifesto he had written, in which he said he had been radicalized by the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Roof is currently appealing his death sentence, saying the judge should have prevented him representing himself at his trial.
Of the 49 prisoners on death row, 21 are listed as white, 20 black, seven Latino and one Asian by the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center. All are men. Three, including Tsarnaev, have had their death sentences overturned but that decision is still subject to appeal from prosecutors.
Tsarnaev, 27, and his older brother Tamerlan, planted pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. The bombs exploded causing mass panic. Many of the 280 injured lost limbs.
The brothers, American citizens who had immigrated from the Russian republic of Chechnya, then went on the run and killed MIT police officer Sean Collier during a bid to steal his gun. Three days after the bombings as cops tried to arrest Tamerlan, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove at them, dragging his brother under the vehicle for 30 feet. Tamerlan died in the hospital.
Tsarnaev, who was shot during the arrest attempt, was arrested the next day, hiding in a boat.
, Martin Gould, January 26, 2021
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
