Dylann Roof is the white supremacist who killed nine African-Americans while they were studying the Bible at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The Obama Justice Department prosecuted Roof. In doing so, it had to decide whether to seek the death penalty. Vanita Gupta, then the acting assistant attorney general, recommended against seeking the death penalty. However, the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, overruled Gupta. The legal issue was whether, in
