On Thursday, South Carolina prosecutors confirmed that they will push for the death penalty for Dylann Roof, the young man who shot and killed nine African-Americans at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston last June. Lawyers will cite the fact that Roof killed more than two people and endangered the lives of others.
The announcement comes years into the state’s freeze on capital punishment due to its failure to secure a lethal injection drug.
Like many other states that have run out of pentobarbital, the sedative in a three-drug cocktail that induces a coma-like state, South Carolina has been unable to carry out the death penalty since 2013. Increased pressure on compounding pharmacies to stop distributing alternative drugs like midazolam, a controversial anesthetic used in several botched executions, has made it difficult to carry out the sentence. Prisoners have the option to die by electrocution, but the state is prohibited from forcing them to choose that method.
The last execution in the state was in 2011. There are currently 44 people on death row.
After the racially motivated massacre, the state slapped Roof with nine murder counts. The federal government also charged him with a hate crime. And within days of the shooting, Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed the death penalty as the most appropriate form of punishment for the shooter.