Justice Department Announces Multi-Million Dollar Civil Settlement In Principle In Mother Emanuel Charleston Church Mass Shooting

Department Agrees to Settle Allegations Surrounding FBI Actions

Today, the Department of Justice announced that it has reached an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple to set­tle the civ­il cas­es aris­ing out of the June 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church mass shoot­ing in Charleston, South Carolina.
These set­tle­ments will resolve claims by 14 plain­tiffs aris­ing out of the shoot­ing. Plaintiffs agreed to set­tle claims alleg­ing that the FBI was neg­li­gent when it failed to pro­hib­it the sale of a gun by a licensed firearms deal­er to the shoot­er, a self-pro­claimed white suprema­cist, who want­ed to start a “race war” and specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed the 200-year-old his­tor­i­cal­ly African-American con­gre­ga­tion. For those killed in the shoot­ing, the set­tle­ments range from $6 mil­lion to $7.5 mil­lion per claimant. For the sur­vivors, the set­tle­ments are for $5 mil­lion per claimant.

The par­ties have been in lit­i­ga­tion since 2016, includ­ing before the dis­trict court and the fed­er­al court of appeals.

“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,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “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.”

“The nation griev­ed fol­low­ing the mass shoot­ing at Mother Emanuel, and no one was more pro­found­ly affect­ed than the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims and the sur­vivors we have reached a set­tle­ment with today,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “The depart­ment hopes that these set­tle­ments, com­bined with its pros­e­cu­tion of the shoot­er will bring some mod­icum of jus­tice to the vic­tims of this heinous act of hate.”

“The depart­ment is pleased to bring clo­sure to this long-run­ning lit­i­ga­tion,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “These set­tle­ment agree­ments rep­re­sent anoth­er chap­ter in the jus­tice system’s efforts to address this hor­rif­ic event, fol­low­ing the government’s pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tion of the shoot­er for fed­er­al hate crimes.”

On June 17, 2015, Mother Emanuel con­gre­gants wel­comed a stranger who had entered their church. They invit­ed him to par­tic­i­pate in their Wednesday night bible study. Tragically, at the close of the bible study, the young man they had wel­comed killed nine peo­ple, includ­ing Mother Emanuel’s pas­tor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, also a South Carolina State Senator.

The fam­i­lies of the Emanuel Nine, as well as the five sur­vivors who were inside the church at the time of the shoot­ing, sued the gov­ern­ment. They sought to recov­er for wrong­ful death and phys­i­cal injuries aris­ing from the shoot­ing. Plaintiffs assert­ed that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (NICS) failed to time­ly dis­cov­er that the shoot­er was a per­son pro­hib­it­ed by fed­er­al law from pos­sess­ing a firearm. Plaintiffs alleged that because of this delay, the shoot­er was able to pur­chase the hand­gun that he used to com­mit the atrocity.

The FBI and NICS play a cru­cial role in com­bat­ting gun vio­lence. Since this trag­ic shoot­ing, the FBI has worked to strength­en and improve the back­ground check process. The depart­ment and FBI are also active­ly work­ing to com­bat gun vio­lence, which is a sig­nif­i­cant aspect of the department’s com­pre­hen­sive vio­lent crime reduc­tion strat­e­gy. After the shoot­ing, the depart­ment pros­e­cut­ed the shoot­er for fed­er­al hate crimes and obtained a conviction.

Under applic­a­ble law, the court must approve the set­tle­ments for many of the plain­tiffs. All par­ties expect that the court will agree that these set­tle­ments are fair and rea­son­able. This case was han­dled by the Justice Department’s Civil Division.