Roof gets legendary death penalty lawyer Bruck; Judge Gergel to preside
It is shaping up to be a court battle for the ages.
Legendary death penalty lawyer David Bruck has been appointed lead defense lawyer for accused racist killer Dylann Roof, according to federal court records.
Records filed this morning also showed that U.S. Judge Richard Gergel of Columbia, who now presides over court in Charleston, will be the trial judge.
Bruck, who got his start in South Carolina defending death penalty cases in the early 1980s, won a life sentence in the nationally publicized 1990s case of child killer Susan Smith, now in state prison for drowning her children in a Union County lake.
Since then, Bruck has been involved in hundreds of death penalty cases across the country, including most recently the case of the Boston Marathon bomber.
Roof, 21, of Columbia, accused of nine counts of murder in state court in the shooting deaths of nine African-Americans on June 17 at a Charleston church, Mother Emanuel AME. He was indicted Wednesday for federal hate crimes violations and killing people in a church.
Roof also has been indicted in state court for nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.
All the crimes, state and federal, that Roof is accused of are death penalty eligible. However, a formal decision to seek the death penalty has not been made by either state or federal prosecutors.
Bruck has also written high-profile opinion pieces for newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post criticizing the death penalty.
Arraignment on the federal charges has been set for 1:30 p.m. Monday at the U.S. courthouse in Charleston before Magistrate Judge Bristow Marchant.
KEY CASES
David Bruck, a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law, has spent most of his career representing defendants in death penalty cases.
Among his cases, Bruck:
▪ Won a life sentence for convicted S.C. child killer Susan Smith in the 1990s.
▪ Helped represent Boston Marathan bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev last year. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death.
▪ Won six victories in the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn death penalty convictions.
This story was originally published July 23, 2015 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Roof gets legendary death penalty lawyer Bruck; Judge Gergel to preside."