DOJ to pay $88M in SC massacre
Attorney: Settlement figure in ’15 church attack has meaning
WASHINGTON — Families of nine victims killed in a racist attack at a Black South Carolina church have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre.
The Justice Department will pay $88 million, which includes $63 million for the families of the nine people killed and $25 million for five survivors who were inside the church at the time of the shooting, it was announced Thursday.
“This is what the law is about. We cannot bring back those nine victims. We cannot erase the scars that those survivors have,” Bakari Sellers, one of the lawyers for the families who helped broker the agreement, said at a news conference in Washington. “But what we do here today as lawyers in these families is we say we stand on justice.
“These victims were the best of the best of us” Sellers said.
The $88 million figure is important beyond its high amount, Sellers said. It represents, he said, a number special to white supremacists because the letter H, referring to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler,” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Roof wore shoes with the No. 88 written on them and said he brought 88 bullets to the church, Sellers added.
According to the Justice Department, settlements for the families of those killed range from $6 million to $7.5 million per claimant. Survivors’ settlements are $5 million per claimant.
Among those who appeared Thursday at the news conference were Jennifer Pinckney, the widow of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the 41-year-old pastor of Emanuel and a state senator, and the Rev. Anthony Thompson, whose wife, Myra Thompson, was also murdered in the shooting.
Also killed were the Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders and the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr.
“The healing process is taking place every day, and it is due not to the settlement,” Anthony Thompson said. “It is due to the courageous and committed acts of the people in the community, people in our church, in our state, people in this nation.”
Jennifer Pinckney, who survived the shooting, was also accompanied by her daughters, Eliana and Malana.
“When I was 6 years old when this terrible massacre happened, I didn’t know that my father was such a big inspiration to people all over the world,” Malana said. “So something I want to leave you with today here is just because you came from nothing, doesn’t mean that you can’t be something.”
Eliana added, “My sister and I are going to go home realizing that the government didn’t sit in silence, but they paid attention, and they valued my father’s life and they value the lives of the eight other people who died.”
Months before the June 17, 2015, church shooting, Roof was arrested Feb. 28 by Columbia, South Carolina, police on the drug possession charge.
But a series of clerical errors and missteps allowed Roof to buy the handgun he later used in the massacre.
The errors included wrongly listing the sheriff ’s office as the arresting agency in the drug case, according to court documents.
An examiner with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System found some information on the arrest but needed more to deny the sale, so she sent a fax to a sheriff ’s office.
The sheriff’s office responded it didn’t have the report, directing her to the Columbia police.
Under the system’s operating procedures, the examiner was directed to a federal listing of law enforcement agencies, but Columbia police did not appear on the list.
After trying the separate West Columbia Police Department and being told it was the wrong agency, the examiner did nothing more.
After a three-day waiting period, Roof went back to a West Columbia store to pick up the handgun.
The lawsuit for a time was thrown out, with a judge writing that an examiner followed procedures but also blasting the federal government for what he called its “abysmally poor policy choices” in how it runs the national database for firearm background checks. The suit was subsequently reinstated by a federal appeals court.
“The mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church was a horrific hate crime that caused immeasurable suffering for the families of the victims and the survivors,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Since the day of the shooting, the Justice Department has sought to bring justice to the community, first by a successful hate crime prosecution and today by settling civil claims.”
In 2017, Roof became the first person in the country sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
Authorities have said Roof opened fire during the Bible study at the church, raining down dozens of bullets on those assembled. He was 21 at the time.
The FBI has acknowledged that Roof’s drug possession arrest should have prevented him from buying a gun.