A COURT upheld the death sentence for Dylann Roof for the 2015 Charleston church shooting on Wednesday.

The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the sentence for Roof, who killed nine members of the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roof and his attorneys tried to appeal the death sentence in May, according to WBTV.

“No cold record or careful parsing of statutes and precedents can capture the full horror of what Roof did,” the court’s ruling read.

“His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose.”

Roof became the first person to be ordered to be put to death for a federal hate crime after the shooting.

He was found guilty of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes and firearms violations.

In an appeal filed in 2020, Roof argued that he was mentally ill when he represented himself at his capital trial.

The appellate attorneys said Roof had been diagnosed with “schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, autism, anxiety, and depression,” but that he “jettisoned” his experienced lawyers during his trial.

In this latest appeal, the court was not convinced to drop the death sentence.

"Dylann Roof murdered African Americans at their church, during their Bible-study and worship,” the court’s decision stated.

"They had welcomed him. He slaughtered them. He did so with the express intent of terrorizing not just his immediate victims at the historically important Mother Emanuel Church, but as many similar people as would hear of the mass murder."

"He used the internet to plan his attack and, using his crimes as a catalyst, intended to foment racial division and strife across America," the decision added.

"He wanted the widest possible publicity for his atrocities, and, to that end, he purposefully left one person alive in the church 'to tell the story.'"

The ruling also noted that when he was arrested, Roof "frankly confessed, with barely a hint of remorse," WBTV reported.

The church’s pastor, Reverand Clementa Pinckney, and eight parishioners died in the shooting.

The other victims of Roof's rampage were Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, the Rev DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, the Rev Daniel Simmons, the Rev Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson.

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