president zelenskyy in lithuania as the alliance declares ukraine s future is in nato. our nbc news reporters are following all of the latest developments and we begin with ukraine s big ask at the nato summit. nbc s kelly cobiella is following that story from kyiv. so what is president zelenskyy walking away with after this summit? reporter: yeah, well, chris, we all know that he wanted those promises from nato that they would have a firm time line for joining the alliance. he said there were a lot of positive outcomes, even though he didn t get what he went there to achieve. just take a look at some of the things that he did get, and chief among them is this security guarantee from g7 countries. unwavering support pledged from the g7 and security guarantees which essentially mean they have committed to supporting ukraine s right to self-defense, focusing on air defense artillery, armored vehicles, air combat, intelligence sharing and reconstruction and recovery, so long-t
the aggravating markets are just so overwhelming, the prosecution has a good chance of meeting its burden of beyond a reasonable doubt, just as it did in the guilt phase. and in either case, the appeals process kicks in? not only does the appeals process kick in, but it is even much more complicated in a death penalty case. you can expect death penalty appeals to last for decades. i mean, the statistics are that of all the people on federal death row, a tiny fraction of them are ever actually executed. i m talking a handful in the last several decades, so you re just not going to see statistically a lot of people put to death. that s because the appeals process is so robust. you have direct appeals and collateral attack and hab yous petitions. the likelihood of success on appeal is tiny but in the united states, the defendant is entitled to all of those appeals
the term of the supreme court ends in october, and begins june or july, and they get a vacation, and the law does not stop because the justices are on break, and things come up, and death penalty appeals and things come up on emergency, and so they have circuit justices who are responsible for each circuit, and a judge who is responsible for the 5th circuit, and he is going to decide this, but if there is something of the magnitude, the whole court will decide this, but where the majority said this is procedurally complex, and the opinion at the center is that particularly chief justice john roberts wrote, because it is procedurally complex, this is exactly the kind of case where we should put in a stay, and preserve the status quo and have us look at this in the full docket and have full briefing and oral arguments and not decide it on the fly here. and what does that tell you
just in the last few minutes, that federal jury that convicted dylan roof several weeks ago, in connection to that massacre at charleston church in 2015, now coming in with a unanimous verdict that he will receive the death penalty by lethal injection as we just reported. this will become the first federal death penalty conviction for a hate crime. that coming down again just in the last few minutes. joining me now by phone, it s criminal defense attorney brian weiss. he experienced with death penalty cases and with death penalty appeals, brian, i think the story here at least sounds like there wasn t much of a defense. there wasn t really any defense offered by dylan roof. he swore off a legal counsel. he represented himself, made no attempt to look for any kind of leniency here from the jury. was there any spence? this is where the jury was going to go? no, steve, because there was no real defense, that was really no doubt.
i want to start with what s next for dzhokhar. we know that the case is automatically appealed. what does that mean specifically? well, what that means specifically, all the paperwork is going to be filed. interestingly, christi, a lot of people don t know there will be a new set of lawyers for the case. why? because they want a fresh set of eyes. and the appeal process is so incredibly complicated that there are lawyers that actually specialize in just death penalty appeals. so you re going to see probably a three-month delay between now and the sentencing. there will be motions filed for the appeal automatically. you ll also see other motions filed before the sentencing. and then after the sentencing happens, probably sometime in august. you ll see the appeal process truly kick into full steam. and it could take years, christi. in fact, of the 80 federal defendants sentenced to death