Families in the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church massacre have settled with the Department of Justice (DOJ) for some $88 million over a faulty gun background check that allowed the shooter to buy the firearm he used, the two sides announced Thursday.
The DOJ said in a statement that it settled with the 14 plaintiffs in the case, awarding between $6 million to $7.5 million for each of the nine people killed and $5 million for each survivor.
The survivors and family members first alleged in 2016 that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (NICS) failed to prevent the sale of a gun to Dylann Storm Roof, who wasn’t allowed to have a firearm under federal law.
“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
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Roof said online before the shooting that he was a white supremacist who wanted to start a race war by targeting the historically Black church.
An appeals court in August upheld a conviction to sentence Roof to death for the shooting.
“His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose. We have reached that conclusion not as a product of emotion but through a thorough analytical process, which we have endeavored to detail here,” the three-judge panel said.
Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/578942-families-in-south-carolina-church-massacre-settle-with-doj-over-faulty
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