The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Dylann Roof, who was convicted of killing nine people in a 2015 shooting at a Black South Carolina church.

Roof, 28, became the first person to be sentenced to death for a federal hate crime in 2017. He was 21 when he opened fire at a Bible study at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church in what officials now say was a “racially motivated” attack.

Roof had asked the court to handle disputes related to his mental health. 

He had previously demanded that evidence of his mental illness be excluded from his capital trial, and fired his legal team during sentencing. 

Roof’s appellate attorneys later argued that he was wrongly allowed to represent himself while “under the delusion” that he would be “rescued from prison by White nationalists.”

The federal appeals court upheld Roof’s conviction and death sentence last year, stating that the legal record failed to represent the “full horror” of the crime.

Roof is now on federal death row at a maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Ind. He can pursue other appeals.