Anti-death penalty veterans added to Roof’s legal team

Two lawyers with long records of death penalty defense have joined the legal team of accused mass killer Dylann Roof.

Roof is facing the federal death penalty in the June 2015 killings of nine African-Americans at a historic downtown Charleston church.

The lead attorney is still nationally-known death penalty expert David Bruck, who practiced more than 20 years in South Carolina before setting up an anti-capital punishment project center in Virginia.

In recent weeks, Bruck has been joined by:

▪ Kimberly Stevens, an Asheville, N.C. lawyer who has represented defendants in 35 death penalty cases, according to her profile.

▪ Emily Paavola, legal director of Justice 360 of Columbia, an anti-death penalty nonprofit group that works on S.C. death penalty cases and pushes for changes. Paavola graduated from Cornell Law School, where she was taught by John Blume, an S.C. native who, like Bruck, is a nationally-known anti-death penalty lawyer.

Those additions come after Sarah Gannett, a long-time federal public defender with extensive appellate experience, joined Roof’s team in June.

In late July, Michael O’Connell, a Mount Pleasant criminal defense attorney, left Roof’s team. Working with Bruck, he had represented Roof since July 2015. O’Connell declined comment on the decision.

With Bruck, Stevens, Paavola and Gannett, Roof now has four court-appointed lawyers. All of them were approved by U.S. Judge Richard Gergel, who has said he wants experienced lawyers defending Roof.

Mistakes by attorneys not versed in death penalty matters can result in reversals of jury verdicts and expensive retrials.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jay Richardson and Nathan Williams are the main part of the prosecution team. They are joined by Stephen Curran, Paige Fitzgerald and Nicholas Murphy, all of whom work for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington.

This story was originally published August 16, 2016 at 8:30 AM with the headline "Anti-death penalty veterans added to Roof’s legal team."